Search Engine Positioning: 5 Strategies to Boost Rankings

Search engine positioning involves optimizing specific pages on your site to improve their rankings.

This helps to drive more traffic to those pages.

To improve positioning, you’ll usually start with the pages with the most potential to improve a few key metrics, like:

• Visibility
• Click-through rates (CTR)
• Overall organic traffic

Understanding Search Engine Positioning vs. SEO

Search engine positioning and search engine optimization (SEO) are related but distinct concepts.

• SEO encompasses all strategies to improve website visibility. This might include on page SEO, off page SEO, and technical SEO.
• Search engine positioning is about hyper-focusing on individual pages. It’s a tactical subset of SEO.

Why Search Engine Positioning Matters

Search engine positioning directly influences how easily your audience can find you online. There are three main factors.

Enhanced Visibility for Your Brand

Customers are increasingly looking for trusted brands when they search for solutions online.

In fact, SparkToro found that more than 44% of Google searches are for brands.

Your business’ reputation matters, and you need to help customers to see your site as a trusted source of information.

Remember: 81% of consumers need to trust a brand before they consider buying from it.

When you carefully optimize pages for relevant keywords, you’re associating your brand with the things your audience is searching for.

The stronger those connections are, the more searchers will connect your brand with the topics you cove

As a result, your brand becomes more recognizable to the people who are most likely to make a purchase.

Increased Traffic

Growing your business is all about expanding your audience.

Organic search is a great source of traffic, so achieving top positions in search engine results pages can drive growth.

As you expand your reach and build traffic, you get more opportunities to convert those clicks into customers.

This strategy works irrespective of the type of conversions that are important to your business. For example, it can boost:

• Online orders
• Subscriptions
• Sales chats
• Contact form inquiries

Overtaking Competitors

It’s easy for searchers to become overwhelmed by options.

Standing out in search engine results means capturing the attention of a potential customer before they see your competitors’ site.

This first mover advantage is especially important in saturated markets where multiple businesses are fighting for the same customers.

When customers consistently see your website has good search engine positioning across similar keyword queries, that can make the difference between gaining a customer or losing them to a competitor.

How Search Engines Determine Positioning

Search engines determine positioning by assessing the relevance and quality of web pages relative to a given search term.

A mixture of algorithms and machine learning systems evaluates your site based on:

• Content Quality: High-quality, informative content that offers value to readers tends to rank better.
• On-page Optimization: Keyword usage, meta tags, and content structure all play a significant role in ranking well.
• Backlinks: Links from reputable sources signal authority and trustworthiness. The more quality backlinks a page has, the higher it may rank.
• User Experience (UX): Websites that cater to the user and follow good UX design principles will be favored by search engines.
• Technical Performance: Site speed, secure connection (HTTPS), the underlying code (HTML, JavaScript, etc.), and other technical SEO features can all impact a page’s search position.
• Mobile-Friendliness: Given that most searchers use a mobile device, having a website that works well on a phone, tablet, or other mobile technology is critical.

The exact ranking factors they use are a secret – along with how much each factor impacts a page’s search engine positioning.

With that in mind, it’s best to take an inclusive approach when trying to improve your website’s position.

How to Check a Page’s Search Engine Position

Knowing your page’s search position helps you understand visibility and adjust strategies for improvement.

You can do this without purchasing a specific tool. Just check using Google. Here’s my simple approach:

1. Open an incognito window to avoid personalized results
2. Search for your target keyword
3. Scroll through the results to find your page and note its position

This will show you exactly where your page ranks in Google Search.

While this is easy, it can become tedious after a while. I prefer to use the Semrush Position Tracking tool:

1. Log in to your Semrush account and navigate to Position Tracking
2. Set up a new campaign or select an existing one
3. Enter your domain and target keywords
4. Review the dashboard to see where your pages rank over time

Compared to basic SERP checkers, Semrush makes it easier to track keywords at scale and monitor changes over time.

It also provides detailed insights into your rankings, competitors, and overall performance.

How to Improve Search Engine Positioning

Improving the position of individual pages can be labor-intensive, so I recommend starting with the pages with the highest potential to convert.

1. Revisit and Update Existing Content

Reviewing and revising your current web pages can significantly enhance their performance in the SERPs. That’s because content naturally decays over time.

Content decay happens for many reasons:

• Articles become less relevant as new information comes to light
• Competing results can overtake yours in the SERP simply because they were published more recently (a concept known as “freshness”)
• The search intent for a keyword can subtly change, making your content less relevant than it used to be.

So optimization often involves enhancing content quality, keyword usage, and UX at the same time.

To optimize your content:

1. Use Semrush’s Position Tracking tool to identify underperforming pages
2. Analyze which keywords they’re ranking for and where
3. Open the SEO Writing Assistant within Semrush
4. Improve your content based on recommendations for readability, SEO, originality, and tone

If possible, display the date that you last updated the content. This signals to your readers that the content has been proactively maintained.

2. Improve Title Tags and Meta Descriptions

Title tags and meta descriptions are HTML elements that summarize your page’s content in search results.

• Title Tags: These will often appear as linked text in a search result.
• Meta Description: These are short summaries that appear under the title tag.

Updating the title and meta description can improve your search engine position and click-through-rate (CTR) by making your result more appealing.

In turn, higher CTRs can signal to search engines that your page is valuable, potentially boosting rankings.

It’s important to remember that search engines can change the title and meta description on the fly, so the text you choose may not be displayed every time someone searches.

However, if the title or meta description is missing, the search engine might generate something that doesn’t fit your page at all.

To optimize these elements:

• Keep title tags under 60 characters and meta descriptions around 155 characters
• Include relevant keywords and related phrases naturally
• Make them descriptive and compelling

Use Semrush’s Site Audit tool to check for missing or duplicate meta titles and descriptions. It can also identify pages that need improvement and provide recommendations.

3. Incorporate Relevant Internal Links

Internal links connect one page on your website to a page elsewhere on the same site.

These links are important for users because they aid navigation. For example, you can use internal links to provide more context on a specific term or topic.

In terms of search engine positioning, internal links help by distributing authority and helping search engines understand your site’s structure.

For example, linking from a high-performing blog post to a related product page can boost the product page’s visibility in the search results.

Tips for effective internal link building:

• Use descriptive and concise anchor text that includes keywords
• Link to pages that are contextually relevant
• Prioritize linking from authoritative pages to less visible ones
• Ensure all internal links are functional and not broken
• Avoid overloading content with too many links
• Employ breadcrumbs whenever it makes sense to do so

While some tools can add internal links automatically, it’s much better to do this manually.

Manual internal linking ensures that all of your links make sense in context.

4. Build High-Quality Backlinks

Backlinks are links from other websites that point to your site.

When a search engine sees a number of backlinks pointing to a page, it signals that the page is valuable and worthy of higher positions.

Building high-quality backlinks from authoritative sources can significantly improve your search engine positioning.

To monitor and enhance your backlink profile:

1. Use Semrush’s Backlink Analytics tool to view your existing backlinks and compare them with competitors
2. Identify high-quality sites to target for backlink opportunities, and create an outreach strategy
3. Use Semrush’s Backlink Audit tool to analyze your backlinks for potential issues, such as toxic links

Increasing backlinks is time-consuming and requires some manual outreach, but it can significantly improve search engine placement.

It’s important to ensure that you build backlinks to high-quality content that provides value to the site that links to it.

5. Conduct a Competitor Analysis

Competitor analysis involves researching and evaluating competitor strategies to identify opportunities for improvement.

Conducting a competitive analysis can improve your search engine positioning by revealing what works in your industry.

For example, you might discover that competitors rank higher due to specific keywords or content types.

You can take clues from competing sites and apply them to your own site to improve your search engine ranking position.

To perform a competitor analysis:

1. Use Semrush’s Traffic Analytics tool to examine your competitors’ traffic sources
2. Identify which pages generate the most traffic for them
3. Analyze their content, keywords, and backlink profiles and reverse-engineer them

You can then apply these insights by optimizing your pages for similar keywords or creating content to fill any gaps you identify.

Improve Your Search Engine Positioning Today

Search engine positioning is a powerful technique that can directly impact your rankings, leading to increased traffic and conversions.

It’s a continual process of refinement and improvement that requires ongoing investment of time. For long-term success, you need to continually refine and adapt your content.