No, it isn’t clickbait or a false promise. I’m really going to show you how I ranked my blog on the first page on Google.
First thing first, let me show you the article. Instead of taking a screenshot of the article, I figured it’s easier if you see it for yourself. So here’s what you have to do.
- Open your browser.
- Open Google and type “Freelancing and family.”
- You’ll find the first article, “7 Tips on How to Balance Freelancing and Family.”
- Yeap. That’s it.
The article is based on a fairly competitive keyword. And honestly, I didn’t have to do much research to write the article. It was surprising for me as well that it got ranked first on Google.
But that’s the thing. I didn’t write to rank first on Google. In fact, I don’t like to write for SEO.
I only use SEO tactics to write if my clients specifically ask for it.
A Bit of Context
As a freelance writer, I always struggled to balance my freelance and personal life. So I wanted to create a guideline for other freelancers on how to balance personal life and professional life.
Also, I wanted to see if I can write without extensive research and still come up with a compelling blog. In that article, I talked about the general problems I faced as a freelancer and how I overcame those problems.
I always say that keyword stuffing used to work in the past, but now Google is smart and understands the user’s search intent and brings results that match the intent.
And my blog is the perfect example of that. Now let’s see how I did it.
1. Keyword Research
Your first task is to find the right keyword for the article. You don’t have to use any keyword research tool for that.
- Just search for the topic you want to write. You will get a bunch of articles to result based on your search.
- Now look through them and see if you can find some common keywords. For example, I searched on Google “how to balance freelancing and family” and found out that “Freelancing and family,” Freelancing with family,” are some of the keywords almost everyone used on their headlines.
P.S. Use number on your title. Google loves numbered titles. It tells them that this post is actionable. And your content ranks better.
2. Title
One key to rank on Google is to get your title right. For example, I searched on Google “how to balance freelancing and family.” And it can be a perfect heading for the blog as it already includes the keyword I want to target.
Your blog will perform much better if your title includes the keyword people exactly search for. In my case, “how to balance freelancing and family” is the perfect title for my article.
3. Flow of Article
Article flow is essential if you want to rank your blog. Not because of SEO, but for the dwell time. Most people don’t read the whole article and bounce from it because most articles don’t have a good flow.
It’s your responsibility to make the article interesting enough that it hook the readers till the end. If the users spend more time reading your blog, Google tends to rank it higher than their low dwell-time counterparts.
4. Linking & Publication
You’ve heard multiple times that you’ve to link from high authority websites to rank high on Google. But according to Quicksprout, link building doesn’t impact your search ranking that much as other factors do.
Don’t get me wrong. Link building is important, but that only works when your content is great.
I didn’t link any external link in my blog or asked anyone to promote my blog. Still, it ranked on the first page on Google.
Another underrated factor is Publication. You have to carefully choose the publication so that your article gets published on the right platform for the right audience.
5. Write for the Readers
I can’t stretch this point enough. It’s not about writing good content, it’s about writing good content for the reader. If you just blabber about a topic and don’t provide actual value, it will not perform well on the search ranking.
“Write like the way that your readers’ search ends on your article.”
Wrapping up
The best way to rank on the first page on Google is to start searching for topics that you can actually provide value. It will not rank If you take content from the top 10 search results and paraphrase in your article.
If you have knowledge on some topic and understand what people are searching for on that topic, start writing.
If you follow the steps mentioned above, there’s a high chance that your article will rank on the first page of Google.
[source: https://hackernoon.com/how-i-get-my-blog-on-1-page-on-google-without-any-seo-hacks-l6113uf2]
