Getting higher rankings on Google can feel like an uphill battle, especially with search algorithms constantly evolving.
But the secret isn’t about chasing trends—it’s about building a strong foundation. 🧱
By focusing on user experience, authority, content, and technical SEO, you create a well-rounded strategy that stands the test of time. This article breaks down each pillar, explains why it matters, and shares practical ways to improve.
You’ll also learn common pitfalls to avoid and discover AI SEO tools designed to make optimization easier. If you want lasting results instead of short-term fixes, this approach will help you climb the rankings with confidence.
What Factors Matter for Google Rankings?
Google is a black box so you can never know all ranking factors. However, some holistic, quality-focused strategies help businesses rank over and over again.
This playbook is created for SEO in times of AI and tectonic changes in the industry, with tactics built on hundreds of case studies. 💪
So here’s what to focus on so your website can stand the test of time, even when times are changing fast.
1. User Experience
Google wants to rank websites that keep visitors engaged. User experience (UX) is all about how people interact with your site—how long they stay, how easily they find information, and whether they take meaningful actions.
Why it matters: Search engines track user behavior like bounce rate, dwell time, and engagement to determine if your content is useful. Poor UX leads to quick exits, signaling to Google that your site isn’t worth ranking.
2. Authority
Authority determines how trustworthy and credible your site appears to Google. This is largely influenced by backlinks, which act as endorsements from other websites.
Why it matters: A site with high-quality backlinks ranks higher because Google sees it as more reputable. However, low-quality or spammy backlinks can do more harm than good.
3. Content
The best-performing content contains fresh facts, expert insights and covers your topic thoroughly. It serves not just to bring traffic to your site, but to establish it as an authority in the niche.
Why it matters: Google ranks pages that best satisfy search intent. If your content is thin, outdated, or unstructured, it won’t rank—no matter how many links you have. If it’s irrelevant to your site, it might even hurt your rankings.
4. Technical SEO
Even the best content won’t rank if Google can’t properly crawl and index your site. Technical SEO ensures your pages are accessible and optimized for search engines.
Why it matters: If search engines struggle to crawl your site due to broken links, slow speed, or poor structure, they won’t rank your content.
21 Tips to Improve These Factors and Boost Your Rankings
Want to climb the SERPs? These 21 tips will help you improve user experience, authority, content, and technical SEO, giving your site the foundation it needs for long-term success.
User Experience
User experience (UX) is all about making your website enjoyable and easy to navigate, keeping visitors happy and engaged. Here are the top tips:
- 1. Speed Up Page Load Time: A slow website frustrates visitors and increases bounce rates. Compress images, enable browser caching, minify CSS/JavaScript, and use a Content Delivery Network (CDN) to improve loading speed. Test performance with specialized tools.
- 2. Optimize for Mobile Users: Ensure your site adapts to different screen sizes. Use responsive design, large tap targets, and mobile-friendly navigation. Check its usability with and fix any issues affecting the mobile experience.
- 3. Improve Navigation and Site Structure: A well-structured site keeps users engaged. Use clear menus, intuitive categories, and breadcrumb navigation so visitors find what they need quickly. Limit the number of clicks to reach important pages.
- 4. Encourage Engagement with Interactive Elements: Boost dwell time with quizzes, polls, interactive infographics, embedded videos, and most importantly, actually useful content. Engaged users stay longer, which sends positive signals to search engines.
- 5. Enhance SEO Accessibility: Make your site easy to use for everyone. Use descriptive alt text for images, proper heading structures, keyboard navigation support, and high-contrast colors for readability.
Authority
Site authority is all about earning trust through quality backlinks, showing Google your site is reliable and worth linking to:
- 6. Build Topical Authority: Create in-depth, high-quality content around a specific subject. Earn trust with consistent coverage, authoritative links, and relevant backlinks to boost rankings and credibility.
- 7. Leverage Guest Posting: Write for reputable blogs in your niche. Offer value to readers, align with their interests, and include contextual backlinks for improved SEO and visibility.
- 8. Publish Press Releases: Distribute newsworthy press releases via syndication networks. Target platforms offering DoFollow/NoFollow links to boost visibility, credibility, and backlink profiles.
- 9. Engage in Digital PR: Earn mentions in articles, interviews, and roundups. Use platforms like HARO to connect with journalists and secure authoritative, organic backlinks.
- 10. Earn Backlinks with Data-Driven Content: Share original research, infographics, or case studies. Promote valuable, unique data to attract backlinks from high-authority websites in your industry.
Content
It’s all about providing valuable, relevant info that both search engines and users love to engage with:
- 11. Optimize for NLP and Entities: Google understands content contextually. Use semantic keywords, entities, and focus terms to reinforce relevance.
- 12. Write for Search Intent: Identify whether users want informational, transactional, or navigational content. Match the format accordingly—how-to guides for informational queries, product pages for transactional ones.
- 13. Balance Internal and External Links: Use internal links to connect related content and guide users through your site. Link to authoritative external sources to boost credibility. Avoid excessive outbound links that dilute page authority.
- 14. Enhance Readability: Keep sentences concise and paragraphs short. Use bullet points, numbered lists, and bold text to highlight key information. A well-structured page encourages longer dwell time and lower bounce rates.
- 15. Add High-Quality Visuals: Include optimized images, infographics, and videos to improve engagement. Use descriptive file names and alt tags to help search engines understand multimedia content and improve accessibility.
Technical SEO
Technical SEO makes sure your site is crawlable, fast, and mobile-friendly, helping Google and users find what they need:
- 16. Fix Crawl Errors: Use Google Search Console to find and fix crawl issues. Check the Coverage report for pages marked as “Excluded” or “Error” and address them.
- 17. Optimize Your Robots.txt File: Control which pages search engines crawl by fine-tuning your robots.txt file. Allow important content to be indexed while blocking unnecessary pages like admin panels or duplicate URLs. Test your settings using Google’s robots.txt Tester.
- 18. Use Schema Markup: Help search engines understand your content better by adding structured data. Use schema markup for reviews, FAQs, articles, and products. This can improve visibility in search results with rich snippets.
- 19. Create and Maintain an XML Sitemap: An XML sitemap helps search engines discover and index pages more efficiently. Generate a sitemap with tools, then submit it to Google Search Console. Update it regularly as new content is added.
- 20. Fix Redirect Issues: Use 301 redirects for permanent URL changes and avoid redirect chains that slow down crawling. Regularly check for broken redirects using SEO audit tools.
- 21. Secure Your Site with HTTPS: Security is a ranking factor. Install an SSL certificate to enable HTTPS, ensuring encrypted connections. Update internal links to use HTTPS versions and check for mixed content errors after migration.
What are the 6 Common Mistakes That Stop You From Ranking Higher
There are some SEO mistakes that might be stopping your site from ranking higher. Let’s go through the most common ones and see what you can do to fix them.
1. Topical Signal Dilution
Many websites target keywords without considering how it affects the site’s topical authority. A keyword might have high search volume, but if it doesn’t align with your service or niche, it can bring your rankings down.
This is because Google prioritizes relevance. So if you want to be considered an expert in your niche, stick to the topic and work on covering it thoroughly, without getting sidetracked by keywords that are not strictly relevant.
2. Neglecting Internal Linking
A strong internal link structure helps search engines understand site hierarchy and guides users to valuable content. Many sites either lack internal links or use them inefficiently, leading to orphan pages or poor navigation.
Every page should connect to others logically, using descriptive anchor text that signals relevance. And if you want to improve rankings over time, remember to update old pages with fresh internal links.
3. Overlooking Technical SEO Issues
A site can have great content but still struggle due to crawlability issues, slow page speed, or poor mobile experience. Failing to monitor indexing, broken links, or structured data errors can cause rankings to drop.
What you need to do is audit your site regularly with tools like Google Search Console or Site Auditor, which monitors your website 24/7 and lets you fix any technical issue with just one click.
4. Backlink Profile Mistakes
You know backlinks are essential for your site’s authority. However, many marketers will not build them strategically, making common mistakes such as:
- Using spammy directories
- Overuse exact-match anchor text
- Focusing on quantity instead of relevance
- Using too many links from one and the same site
So instead of chasing volume, focus on earning high-authority, relevant backlinks through guest posting, digital PR, and content partnerships. A few strong links from reputable sources are far more valuable than dozens of low-quality ones.
5. Failing to Update and Optimize Content
Many businesses create articles and then forget about them. What happens then is their competitors overtake them with fresher articles and more relevant information, so the rank naturally drops.
To prevent this, update any stats or numbers regularly, improve readability, add new insights, and optimize for emerging keywords.
But it’s not just about refreshing your content.
Tools that analyze content play a huge role in boosting rankings. Search Atlas Scholar is a one-of-a-kind tool that helps you reverse-engineer how Google evaluates your content in relation to competitors.
This insight lets you refine your strategy to better align with search intent, helping you optimize content for both users and search engines.
6. Missing Out on Innovative Tools
Now that there’s more AI content and AI tools out there, traditional tools may not be enough. And missing out innovation means missing opportunities.
For example, Google has now introduced a Javascript rendering requirement that makes crawling more difficult and expensive for traditional SEO tools. More innovative tools like Search Atlas do not have this issue, as they work directly with GSC data.
Also, some improvements are about how you use your time: whether it’s for strategy and growing your business or handling manual tasks.
Automation tools like OTTO SEO can save hours every week by optimizing your content, keyword research, content planning, link building, technicals, and almost any other SEO task you can imagine.
And that with just one click. 🖱️
Boosting Your Google Rankings the Easy Way with AI
Improving your Google rankings isn’t just about optimizing a few elements—it’s about building a solid foundation with the right balance of user experience, content, authority, and technical SEO. Each factor plays a vital role in keeping your site visible and competitive.
But if you want to scale your business and get your clients the best results they’ve seen so far, you may need automation tools. And with Search Atlas, you can streamline your SEO efforts, track progress, and focus on business.
Ready to see how we can help you boost your rankings? Start with Search Attas now, no commitment, and you can cancel anytime. Sign up for a 7-day FREE trial today!
