6 Tips for Getting Your Blog Ranking on Google

Last updated on 26 November 2024

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In this blog post, we’re going to take a look at some of the ways you can go about getting your blog ranking on Google, even if you’re a new blogger!

When I started my blog, I had no idea about things like SEO or HTML or CSS or any other ‘weird’ internet lingo. But the more I worked on my blog, the more I paid attention to things that others were doing and I learnt about all those things (and plenty more!) the more I saw my content doing well.

But it didn’t happen overnight. Heck no! I’m still working on bettering (is that a word?) my blog posts, and going back to some of those older posts and updating them so that people can actually find them. I’m still learning new things every day, so you’re not alone in this one.

Whether you’re a new blogger or you’ve been around these parts for a while now, it’s still good to have a few tips up your sleeve for pulling your blog posts to the top of Google in the search results. Let’s get into it!

6 Tips for Getting your Blog Ranking on Google

Use long-tail keywords that people search for
Use keywords in the title, subheaders and description
Use user-friendly URLs
Optimize your page speed
Make sure your website is mobile-friendly
Actually write what you wanna write

Use long-tail keywords that people search for

Keywords are just words that people put into search engines like Google to find answers to their questions and solutions to their problems. Every time you put words into a search engine, those are keywords.

But there’s a difference between keywords and long-tail keywords.

A keyword might be ‘travel’, for example, or even ‘travel tips’. They’re things you might search for, but there are going to be millions of hits on ‘travel tips’.

If you searched, however, for ‘travel tips for visiting London’ or ‘travel tips for travelling solo for the first time’ … they’re long-tail keywords. They’re more like phrases or short sentences containing more words. And those are the searches that are going to actually yield better results for you. They’re more specific.

All that to say: use long-tail keywords that people search for. Get into their minds. Use tools like UberSuggest, SEMrush and others to figure out what combinations of words people are actually looking for.

Use keywords in the title, subheadings and description

And then once you’ve got those keywords that you’re going to use in your posts, make sure you use them all throughout your posts. Be sure not to cram them all in there, but do use them in your Title, Subheadings, and the description of your blog posts, as well as throughout your post.

It may seem little and not that important, but it’s a great way to start getting your blog ranking on Google.

Use user-friendly URLs

My URLs used to be pretty atrocious back in the day. Think about your URLs and how you structure them. You don’t want them to be too long, and neither do you want them too snappy. Try to use your keywords in your URL, but make sure it’s also natural and obviously not the same as any of your other posts (your blog platform shouldn’t allow you to do that, don’t worry).

💡 Top tip: remove the date from your URLs. This will keep it looking tidy but it will also mean you can update the post without your links breaking here, there and everywhere.

Optimise your page speed

When you land on a blog or any website, you want it to load quickly. I’m gonna be honest with ya, I’m always trying to work on this one. My blog is over a decade old now and there are some posts back in the day that has images that are far too big and other things that slow my site down.

But if you’re like me, try optimising your page speed for your blog. Things like big images will slow your site down, so that’s one thing you can immediately check in on. Visit Google’s Developer Page Speed site to check what your blog’s speed is and see suggestions as to how you can speed it up.

Another option for checking how fast your blog is is the Speed Page Test on Experte. This site uses Google’s Page Speed too but is a bit easier to understand and follow. It has a handy breakdown of what the numbers and figures you’re looking at are, so you can quickly see which of your blog pages you might need to tweak to ensure they’re as fast as they can be. You can also check the speed of multiple URLs from your blog at once, which is really helpful.

Make sure your website is mobile-friendly

Long gone are the days when having your website or blog look savvy on a desktop and not worry about anything else.

How many times a day do you look up something on your phone? Probably many times, right? Right. And all those websites that you visit (hopefully) are optimised for mobile and are mobile-friendly.

They look good on mobile, and if you looked at them on your tablet, they’d look pretty swish there too. Your blog? It doesn’t have to be super fancy on your phone, but it does need to load and be usable. People are going o be looking at your blog on their phones, possibly even more than they will on a desktop or laptop.

But it’s more than that. Google knows what’s up, y’all. Google knows if your blog is mobile-friendly or not. And that’s going to make a difference to your getting your blog ranking on Google.

Actually write what you wanna write

Honestly. At the end of the day, you’re not writing for Google. I know that I’ve spent this entire blog post talking about how to get those views up and get your blog posts to rank on page 1 of Google … but here’s the rub: it ain’t about Google. It’s about the people.

Google could pull your blog post to spot 1 on its lists for certain keywords, and while that’s great if the people get to your blog post and they’re not encouraged, educated, inspired or entertained by your posts … what the heck is even the point?

Write what you wanna write, my friend.

Find some good keywords that suit that post and use them to boost and bolster your content. But remember that at the end of the day, the aim of getting to spot 1, 2, 3 or 4 is not to make Google happy, it’s to help people find your content. Content that is going to help them solve their problems, put a smile on their face, make them laugh or cry, or evoke some emotion in them. It’s to engage with the people on the other side of that screen, and Google is just a way to connect you with them.

There are a lot of things you can do to optimize your website so that it ranks higher on Google, and we’ve looked at quite a few ways you could go about getting your blog ranking on Google.

But just remember that you want your blog post to do well on Google because you’re writing for the people.

Will you take any of these on board? Drop them in the comments!