As most of you know, Google decides early in the lifecycle of content whether it’s worth ranking it higher.
After it crawls your content for the first time, it will track quality indicators like time-on-page, bounce rate and click-through rates to determine your search engine positions (SERP) to reflect if users have benefited from your content. And while "black hat" search engine optimization does not work anymore (keyword stuffing, meta-data manipulation, link farming), there are still tactical SEO tricks to improve your rankings fast, if you're willing to put the effort in.
It all starts with creating great content that's worth reading and relevant for your audience of course. That's a given.
Here's what you can do next after you've created a great piece of relevant content.
Find a large number of friends and family members (or hire some virtual labor from companies like inv.tech ). Have them complete the following steps:
- Ask them to search for the keyword search phrase you like to rank for in a google search.
- Make sure to not click any results other than your site. They may have to go to the next pages to find you. That's the point. Make sure they don't click on anyone else 😊
- Stay on the site. Click through a few pages. Keep them open (say 1-2 minutes, and ideally, ask them to really read them and give you feedback).
- That’s it! Click-through-rates in search results, Time-on-Page, and low bounce rate are what Google will reward with better rankings.
Good "growth hacking" ways to achieve the above are easter egg hunts on your site with some real prize money and real reasons for people to comb through your content and read everything.
