Well, everyone on the digital web wants to rank for something. When you rank, you rock. And the beauty is that your efforts finally pay off and you’re in position to execute your plans as you so wished.

However, there are hinderances on how to rank well for a keyword or how to get rankings from the search giants. Mainly Google which is the king today, to get to rank for a keywords is no just an easy to do thing. Not even your brand name is easy to rank for.

So in this blog, i’ll share will with you some of the tips i implement or what that i’ve seen work for me other people to get search rankings specially on Google.

Everything in this blog post will major on websites or blogs that are self hosted. And that means you should have access to your Domain DNS and your hosting account. If you have cPanel, even the better but we can still get going without even having a cPanel account.

So, lets get started on how you actually get rankings for your preferred keyword or brand name.

Get a Gmail Account

I always like to advice people and that means getting started from the very basics. To be in position to get started with Google services, the number one advise is for you to own and operate a gmail account. Since you’ll be required to signup for Google services using your gmail account and alot more.

Services like the Google search console, Google my business, Google Adsense, Tag manager and alot more require you to have a Google email account in order to be in position to make use of them.

Do Keyword Research

The real work goes down to which keyword/s you want to rank for. At this point i wouldn’t advise that you dive in for very competitive keywords. Competitive keywords are those with a very high search volume.

That means, it would be very hard to rank for as your competition already ranked for such keywords and eagerly watching.

Instead, i advise that you go in for low volume search keywords in the range of 250-700 monthly searches.

That way, you’re able to compete easily with the already existing players. The beauty about going for low competition keywords is that you have the opportunity to rank on page one even if you’re just getting started.

Google uses a smart algorithm which uses spiders, bots and web crawlers to index urls into the search that helps in indexing websites (even if they’re new) for specific keywords based on over 200 ranking factors.

[bctt tweet=”Part of what’s required for easy rankings is the domain authority, domain age, backlinks and page authority. All those are factors that Google considers so that you happen to appear in the search results page for a given search query.” username=”gotechug”]

To Read: 5 Great Ways To Make Money Blogging For Beginners With WordPress

Start and Run a Blog (self-hosted)

Well, if you want to rank for a specific keyword, there is no option but to start and run a blog. A blog is a simplistic website where you can easily login and writing about just anything and then hit publish. What is published in known as blog posts (stories or articles).

Since search engines love new and fresh content, blog posts perform way better in the search than static pages. And that’s what brings us to the actual meaning of a web-blog. A website that’s frequently updated or and publishes new content.

In today’s world, running a blog just became even easier.

There a couple content management systems (CMSs) out there that even don’t require you to have any techie skills in order to start and run a blog or website. These content management systems are free to use. Most offer you the ability to use the WYSIWYG and a classic editor.

Just to mention but a few, CMSs like WordPress, Joomla and Drupal are a go to by may content creators and web designers. I personally use WordPress and its what this website is powered with.

I basically have to install the software on the server (host) and then am able to edit and customise it to my liking without touching a single line of code.

A self hosted blog basically means that you’re going to have your own domain and then a hosting provider so that your website can be accessed by anyone anywhere in the world.

You can get a domain name for as low as $13 per year and hosting for about $5 per month. The CMS is free and if you have no knowledge on creating your website and have no time to invest a couple of hours on how to customise your website, you can simply hire a professional to do that for you.

Depending on what you want to do with your new website, you can be charged from as low as $500 to $15000 on order to have it setup and work/designed the way you want.

Now that you have your website/blog created and ready to get started.. Then we head to the next point.

Register Site with Google Search Console (Webmaster Tools)

Since your website is live and can be accessed by just anyone around the web. Now you need to make sure that search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo can crawl and index it in the search results pages.

That means that you’ll have to submit your website to those search platforms. Google search indexing platform is called search console which is within the webmaster tool set.

All you need to do is to submit your website. You’ll be required to prove that you’re the true website owner by verifying the domain or even hosting platform. That process will require you to upload a special file provided by Google onto the hosting account.

Once you have your website registered by Google and ready to be indexed.. Then we get started on the next steps.

Write an SEO Optimized Blog Post

Having written content on your website is just the beginning of having your content ready for the search engine. There are several steps you have to take in order to have your website content optimitzed and indexed in the search.

[bctt tweet=”One of the things you have to do in order to have an optimized blog post or page content is to write content with your target keyword added in the tittle, permalink, meta description, first paragraph, alteast in 2 H1 or H2 headings and in the very last paragraph.” username=”gotechug”]

Next is to interlink your content with newer and older posts on your website.

Also, add media in your blog content. Media could be images, videos or infographics. That aside, research by search genius Brain Dean found out that the largest number if NOT all, blog posts on the first page of Google are all over 1000 words.

And what does that mean for you?, it means that if you want to beat your competition, you should publish content that is 10x better than whats existing. Yes, that’s if you really want results.

And the beauty about publishing long form content is that you’ll have the benefit of adding several of your related/suggested keywords within your blog.

Add an SEO Tool like Yoast

So, when we talk of having an SEO optimized website, it goes far from just the words. There are tools that have been made to simplify the whole process of optimizing your website or blog for the search engine.

Tools like Yoast seo guide you through the baby steps on getting your websites indexed in the search engine. But being indexed is far from actually ranking for a specific keyword.

And that’s why you’ll have to write and seo optimize your website content like pages, blogs so that they are easily understood by the search engine, indexed and finally rank for the target keyword.

Then we head straight to next point in this section.

Publish and Promote Post (Social media, create backlinks, Q&A platforms)

Once you’re done with your blog content, next you’ll have to publish your blog by simply hitting publish. But that’s just the beginning phase to get indexed and rank for a keyword you’ve always wanted.

The effort you have to put in after you publish your content should be x10 what you used on researching and writing your content.

[bctt tweet=”You’ll need to let people know that your content is up and ready for them to consume. And that means that you’ll have to reachout to your possible prospects, share on social media platforms, share your content in question – answer forums, and lastly build links to your content.” username=”gotechug”]

All the last 4 blog promotion ideas are just to give you an insight on what you can do upon having your blog published. I advise you go ahead and read a separate blog on those blog promotion tips shared here.

To Read: How to MAKE a HOTEL BOOKING WEBSITE using ELEMENTOR in 25 Steps from Start to Finish

Inclosing

Hopefully this blog gave you an insight on how you can actually get out there and rank for a keyword in the search engine. A keyword would be a statement that describe best, your business or service offering. It could be just a topic you’re writing about.

Hopefully this blog bring you value. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to drop them in the comment box below. Or its something you think i can add, feel free to shoot me an email or a tweet.

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