How do I look high on Google (First Page Guide 2019)

How do I look high on Google?

Search engine optimization is evolving and constantly changing.

Every year, some methods are embraced by the SEO community as "must regular," while others are pushed to the brink of history thanks to Google's algorithm updates.

In this light, SEO is seen by many as an endless battle between search engines and SEO professionals who are still studying updates to gain more traffic and increase SERP visibility for a while.

But does that really work? How exactly does SEO work?

In this article, I will present my view on SEO today, list a number of fundamental search engine behaviors and share my understanding of the internal functioning of SEO and why the combination of multiple tactics through tests and errors is the only one a way to successfully drive your campaign.

The current SEO of 2019

Let's get a broader perspective of what's going on in SEO right now.

Google and other search engines suppress organic search results.

Although Google continues to display 10 organic results per page, they are designed to draw attention to ads, answer boxes, "People Requests" and other widgets.

It's no surprise that organic CTR has fallen by 37% since 2015 and will probably continue to decline.

While the competition to win a business organization positions in the rankings has fired worldwide, this alone is not enough for an SEO professional to survive.

We will see below the factors that apply and we must always have rules to be able to offer our clients the best possible result.

Fundamental principles of SEO today

1. The links are communique

Links have been significant since the early days of SEO and are still one of the most powerful indicators of the excellent performance of a website on Google.

The more relevant, relevant links are acquired, the higher your SERP will be.

In short, links are still fundamental to SEO

It makes sense to make investment in Link Building as part of your SEO efforts.

2. Relevant, optimized content wins

The problem of links with content is a dilemma.

You need content to attract links, but your content needs links to increase your site's ranking in search results and help promote traffic to a piece of content.

Ultimately, the conclusion is this: Links and content is the backbone of SEO.

If you want to get to the first page on Google, you need links to your relevant and well-optimized content.

Here are some things to keep in mind when creating and optimizing your content:

The keywords matter in context. Keywords still have a lot to do with Google, but instead of scanning the "keyword look" page, the detectors are now analyzing the context and related sub-keywords that share the investigator's intent.

Titles in your Website, Meta descriptions, ALT attributes, H1 tags, and URLs are still very important. Include targeted and relevant keywords on these items.

Increase Your Know-how, Power and Trust (EAT). Read Google's quality guidelines for quality guidelines for content. Google says that the amount of content required to satisfy the page depends upon the subject and its purpose of the page.

In short, create a process for producing and distributing high quality, optimized content. Make sure all content is written for people, but it's optimized to feed data to search engines.

3. UX signals have an impact on SERPs

User experience (UX) plays an essential role in how your site makes a difference with search engines.

Unfortunately, user experience depends on too many factors (such as site infrastructure and layout, content, etc.) and is often very difficult to measure.

To figure out where your site does not have a UX perspective can be a painful experience. So, some SEO professionals choose not to deal with it completely.

Make sure your stay time and CTR are high and the dropout rate is low. Although these labels have been around for quite some time, Google does not use them as direct ranking factors, optimizing your site for high loyalty can not hurt and could help indirectly.

Improve the architecture of the site. The key part is to improve the navigation of a website and make sure that search engines can crawl all pages and users can easily find a page they are looking for. The "simplest, best" approach works perfectly here.

Optimize speed. Regardless of the platform, your site needs to be loaded in 2 seconds or less. Image compression, code and structure optimizations, and faster servers will help you.

Attracting a professional UX to optimize the customer's journey according to the user's intention. Since SEO has evolved to become more user-centric, you need to work with UX people to offer excellent digital experiences at every stage of a customer's journey. To be honest, your primary goal is conversions and sales, not just traffic and leads.

UX optimization has become a fundamental part of SEO.

Focus on the visitor will probably play even more important role in the future (as Google is smarter and clearly improved for a user's sake) and you should at least learn the key elements.

4. Mobile SEO can take you off or disappear

As Google is determined to use the  mobile-first index to sort and display search results across devices, it's time to fine-tune your site in a mobile way.

Unfortunately, while Google's traffic makes sense (with more than 50% of global traffic generated on the mobile), simple site and site performance is not simple.

Initially, you should invest in a responsive plan, as recommended by Google.

You should also make your content consistent with desktop and mobile devices and make sure your site is fast and easy to use.

What does all this mean :

Optimize your content for mobile users 
Accelerate the speed of your page. 
Improve mobile friendliness.

In a nutshell, you will need to open your mobile game or you will notice your page being in bad position in the ranking.

5. Voice search is already a fact

I do not believe that voice search will revolutionize SEO in the near future, customers seem to love Voice Search.

Northstar Research reports that 55 percent of US teenagers and 41 percent of US adults use voice search.

According to Google, over 20% of all mobile phone searches are voice searches.

Specifically, you can start with these steps:

Optimize your content using natural language (i.e., longer-lasting keywords aligned with search intent) and answering questions. 
Optimize special excerpts. 
Create and highlight a FAQ page (use questions and answers). 
In short, while voice optimization is not necessary, relevant optimizations make sense and can help you get more traffic to Google.

Combine and experiment with the test and error

The success of SEO usually comes from best practices plus some testing and error.

Today, the basic principles outlined above are to combine and experiment.

Unfortunately, SEO rules are not standard. Rules and tactics are changing and evolving constantly.

There is no universal SEO formula. only test and error can help you determine which SEO methods work and which do not apply to your specific site in your specific location at a specific time.

The secret of SEO is simple:

You have to learn how to combine and experiment with many methods and then analyze the results, keeping in mind that all your work can be wasted because of the latest update of the Google algorithm or what your competitors are doing.

In the process, you get good tactics while cutting off those that do not work anymore. Then rinse and repeat.

In this way, you will never end up with a linear or SEO strategy that, although successful for a short time, can prove dangerous in a few days. Google is usually quick enough to figure out when someone discovers a way to cheat their algorithms.

Ending ..

SEO is an endless, ever evolving, multidimensional science. Every SEO professional would like to find the magic formula that could explain once and for all how SEO works, with specific rules and specific table equations.

Unfortunately, SEO is very complicated to fit into a standard. Although it evolves around principles and some rules, its internal function is to analyze and apply tactics that work with others that do not.

Keep this in mind, and keep a close eye on your competitors, and you will surely achieve the search results. This is the way SEO works and will continue to work until the process is entirely outsourced to artificial intelligence.