It can be so frustrating to put out a great piece of content only for it to get stuck at the lower end of the rankings. If this is the case, then we feel your pain, but at the same time, you might count yourself lucky in some ways.
The vast majority of pages on the internet never see an organic visitor, so if you’ve got just a handful then you’re doing better than most. No doubt this doesn’t make you feel much better about your plight though – you want to see your page at the top of the rankings and that’s exactly what you should be striving for.
If you don’t seem to be making any progress in the rankings, then check that you’re nailing these 5 important points and find where you can make improvements.
Slow Loading Speeds
Don’t let slow loading speeds torpedo your chances in the rankings. Check your loading speeds and if they’re not where you want them to be, then start to look to make changes. You might have to upgrade your hosting to a superior provider like Onyx.io or it might be as simple as deleting a few plugins. Load speeds are absolutely vital in the search engines’ algorithms and you can’t afford to skimp on this point.
Quality Content is Crucial
If someone else has better content than you, then why would Google rank you above them? You’ve got to earn your positions in the rankings by giving your visitors some exceptional content. Do your keyword research, find an interesting topic, and address that topic better than anyone else on the internet and you’re starting to earn the right to rank highly.
Tick the SEO Boxes
It would be great if you could just write the best content out there and know that it would jump straight to the top of the rankings but sadly that’s not the case. That’s because the search engines have their limitations and they can’t dissect information in the same way as a human can.
In order to reach the top of the rankings, you have to be able to speak the search engines’ language at the same time as you communicate to your readers. This means understanding SEO and making sure you’re at least doing the basics.
E.A.T
If you Google “what is this lump on my arm,” the chances are you want a trustworthy source to come up as the first answer rather than someone with no medical background telling you you’ve definitely got cancer.
Google thinks so too, and to make sure the results that come up at the top of their rankings are accurate they place a lot of value in E.A.T (expertise, authority, trust). This means that Google’s algorithms are constantly looking for signs that your website is trustworthy and authoritative.
If you feel like you’re doing everything right, but you’re just not seeing the results you’re expecting then your website could have problems with E.A.T. Be sure to get your site audited and work on improving your expertise, authority, and trust.