How to reach the first page of Google with your website?

As a web agency and e-commerce website creation platform, one question comes back to us often:

How long will it take for my website to be visible on Google?

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This question can actually require 3 pieces of information:

1. 1. When will my site be indexed on Google?

1. When will my site be ranked on the first page of Google?
2. When will the updates made on my site be visible on Google?

In this article, we will answer question 2 and explain in detail Google ranking and its habits.

We answered questions 1 and 3 in the previous article:
“How long does Google take to index your website or update it?“.

Factors that affect ranking

Some pages of your website or blog articles are on the first page for many queries, while others are not even in the top 10 pages.

What causes such variation in ranking for pages of the same site?
We’ll answer you in 5 questions, the important points that affect your Google ranking.

Is the content of a page really important for Google?

What determines the ranking of search results is the relevance of the pages calculated by Google’s algorithm.

And do you think a sloppy content, which doesn’t teach anything new or is difficult to understand with several mistakes, will have a good relevance score? No.

Relevance is calculated with many pieces of information. The average time spent on the page and interactivity are two of them.

In addition to interesting content that captivates your visitor and keeps them on your page, don’t hesitate to add videos to increase their time on the page and for blog articles, add a section “Articles you may like” or “recommended”.

For your pages, remember to structure the content with h1, h2 tags… it helps Google understand your page 😉

Is it equally difficult to rank for all keywords?

Do you think it’s more or less difficult to rank on the first page for a search term like “florist Montreal” than “boutique bouquet of dried flowers with free delivery”?

If you answered “More difficult,” congratulations!

According to a study by the Search Engine Journal, 93% of internet visits start with a search engine (91.5% with Google). Being well-ranked for keywords is therefore crucial.

So the more sites indexed related to a specific search term, the more difficult it will be to rank in the top results for that specific term.

To rank well on Google, here are 2 tips:

• With tools like Ubersuggest, Ahrefs, or Google Keyword Planner, try to find keywords with an interesting search volume and low keyword difficulty (Keyword difficulty). Getting ranked first for them will be much easier.
• To climb in the ranking of search results for highly competitive keywords, try to differentiate yourself from your competitors with a catchy, up-to-date title… well-configured SEO tags, and relevant content as mentioned in the previous point.

Do new pages have the same chance of landing on the first page as old ones?

A study by Ahrefs, a very good tool for analyzing sites and their popularity, analyzed nearly 2,000,000 queries on Google to see the results.

The result: the average age of pages ranked in the top 10 Google results is over 2 years. While pages ranked first have nearly 3 years.

Only 22% of pages ranked in the top 10 Google results are less than a year old. That’s 2 pages out of 10!

About 75% of pages a year or less old are not ranked in the top 100 Google results for searches related to those pages. And less than 6% of pages appear in the top 10 results.

Find the pages of your site that are well-ranked and try to keep visitors coming through those pages with internal links to other pages of your site, for example.

Are all sites equal in Google’s eyes?

Do you think a page of your site is on the same level on Google as a page from a popular newspaper, a Wikipedia page, or a reference site in the targeted domain?

You think not? You’re right.

Google, and search engines, rate all sites based on the relevance of their pages, their traffic, the age of the domain name, and many other points like the good adaptation of the site’s pages on different devices.

This is domain authority. You can find out the authority of your domain with Ahref (DR) or Moz

(DA).

To help you understand the score you’ll get, you should know that the rating is on a scale of 0 to 100. The higher your score, the better your site is rated:

• From 0 to 25, your site is not very well-rated and needs to work on that (see next question for example) (on Ahref the DR from 0 to 35).
• From 26 to 45, your site has an average rating, some of your pages may be very well-ranked (on Ahref the DR from 36 to 55).
• 46 and above, your site is well-regarded by Google, its new pages will be seriously considered to appear on the first page if the content is relevant (on Ahref the DR from 56 and above).

Know that your pages also have a rating.

Is it beneficial to be referenced by other sites?

Another site mentions you on one of its pages with a link pointing to your site, this is called an incoming link or “backlink”.

Backlinks are very useful in Google’s algorithm to judge the relevance of a page. The more sites point to a specific page, the more it means that this page is relevant and interesting.

Do all backlinks have the same value?

No, of course not. Sites with high domain authority (see above) or pages with a very large number of visitors will have a greater impact on your relevance if they reference you.

However, as explained in this article listing 10 SEO directories, all backlinks are good to take.

To get quality backlinks, several methods exist:

• Create original quality content that can be referenced because it will be unique
• Establish partnerships with famous bloggers and influencers to be featured on other websites
• Do interviews in the press to be mentioned in the web article and gain a new incoming link from a popular site

Other tips to improve your ranking

Finally, here is a list of small tips and tricks, simple to implement and still relevant, to improve your ranking:

• Maintain a blog and write recurring articles about your products, services, and your market.
• Write textual content on all your pages, including the home page, structuring with <h> tags
• Complete title and meta-description tags for all your pages

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