10 Ways to Rank Your Own Website

Don’t have the budget to hire a search engine optimisation agency? Or maybe you’re just interested in how SEO works. Here are 10 ways you can rank your own website. These are the same methods we use to rank our clients’ sites. (Need help? Visit our SEO services page.)

1. Market Research

The first step in any successful SEO campaign is thorough market research. All SEO professionals do this. A basic method is to use the Google Keyword Planner tool available in Google Ads. You’ll need to create a Google Ads account (or log in) first, then follow the steps below:

1. Log in to Google Ads.
2. Click on the ‘Tools’ menu, then choose Keyword Planner.
3. Select ‘Discover new keywords’ and enter the main search terms you think people use to find the products and services your business provides. Make sure you set your targeting (location and language).
4. Review the keyword ideas. You’ll see the terms you entered along with the number of searches each keyword gets per month, plus a list of related keywords and their search volumes.
5. Sort the keywords by average monthly searches to see which have the best volume. You’ll notice that just changing the order of a search term can make a big difference — for example, ‘Window cleaning Brisbane’ will have many more searches than ‘Brisbane window cleaning’.
6. Download your keywords and save the file as a spreadsheet. You can refer back to them later when planning your on-page strategy.

2. Create Title Tags for Your Main Pages

This is a key area that many businesses just don’t get right. Having your main keyword in your title tag is one of the biggest influencing factors in ranking for that keyword, so you’d create a title tag based on the keyword(s) you’re targeting. Let’s use the ‘Window Cleaners Brisbane’ example.

Say ‘Window Cleaning Brisbane’ is the best keyword to go after. If your company name was ‘AAA Window Cleaning’ you would make your homepage title tag something like:

Window Cleaners Brisbane – AAA Window Cleaning

Notice that this title tag has the company name, the city, and another top keyword, ‘window cleaners’. With this title tag it would be possible to rank for more than one keyword in your list.

Now that you understand this, you’re probably wondering how to set the title tag. If you’re using WordPress, you can use an SEO plugin like Rank Math or Yoast SEO. If your site isn’t on WordPress you’ll need to insert the title tag into the header of your homepage. In code it would look like this:

<title>AAA Window Cleaning Brisbane | Professional Window Cleaners</title>

If you’re not comfortable with code, you can find a reliable freelancer to do it for you. It doesn’t have to be stressful — just choose someone with good reviews and a proven work history. And if you give a contractor access to your site, change your passwords once they’ve finished.

3. Optimise Your Homepage

Another important ranking factor is having your heading tags configured properly. There are three heading levels to set up on your homepage: H1, H2, and H3.

Your H1 tag is the most important of the three. It should contain your main keyword or another important keyword, just like your title tag. Using the example above, you’d make the H1 something like ‘AAA Window Cleaning’.

Your H2 tags cover your next main keyword, or your main services. For this case study we only need one H2 because the business has one main service: ‘Professional Window Cleaners in Brisbane’.

The H3 tags are other related keywords. You could have an article on the homepage that uses H3 tags for subheadings — for example ‘window cleaning services’, ‘professional window cleaners’, ‘how to clean windows’, or ‘why choose our window cleaning services’. The important thing is that the H3 tags contain terms relevant to the services you offer.

The HTML heading tags could be configured like this on the homepage:

<h1>AAA Window Cleaning</h1>
<h2>Professional Window Cleaners in Brisbane</h2>
<h3>Window Cleaning Services</h3>
<h3>How We Clean Windows</h3>
<h3>Why Choose Our Window Cleaning Company</h3>

When your heading tags are configured properly, search engines clearly understand what your site is about and which terms matter to your business. If you have no H1 and messed-up H2 and H3 tags full of useless terms (we see this a lot), there’s a good chance search engines won’t know what your site is about.

4. Optimise Your Website’s Performance

This is a topic many web developers miss. We’ve tested many websites with various tools and found them to perform poorly. Believe it or not, the more attractive a website is, the worse the performance in many cases. We’ve written an entire article on how to optimise your website, so we won’t repeat all that information here.

5. Increase Domain Authority

Domain Authority (DA, not to be confused with domain age) is a metric created by Moz. Major sites like Facebook have a DA close to 100, the highest attainable. You can raise the DA of your website by earning backlinks from trusted web properties.

Some properties won’t pass authority to your site even though they have a high DA. But it’s a great sign of trust to have backlinks from high-DA sites like social media platforms. Search Google for top Web 2.0 lists and create an account with each, remembering to include a link to your website.

This is also a great way to establish your brand across authoritative web properties. Web 2.0 links should be among the first links that go to your site because they help establish trust.

6. Create Directory Listings

Directory listings are a great source of backlinks for local businesses. These listings are also called ‘citations’. To find directories to list your business in, just search Google for ‘business directory’ or similar. Some are paid, some are free. Not all paid directories are worth it — they try to justify the cost by telling you how much traffic they get, but in our experience very little business comes directly from directories.

However, there’s real value in the citation and the backlink to your website. Just make sure you’re consistent with your business name, address and phone number across every directory. If you vary the information from directory to directory, it could cause problems.

Apart from helping your website gain authority and trust, directory listings also play a key part in getting your business ranked in Google’s local results.

7. Outreach

A very effective, if time-consuming, method of getting more links to your site is by contributing to other websites. With outreach, you can offer to write a guest post with a link to your website in the article or author profile. Outreach takes a lot of time because it requires research, contacting website owners, and creating quality content — but the high-quality links it earns are some of the most valuable you can get.

8. Social Signals

Having social interaction on your website is powerful. Search engines favour sites that provide value to others. When you get likes and shares, it shows people enjoyed the experience. Make sure you have social sharing buttons installed on your site. If your site is on WordPress, a plugin like ‘AddToAny’ automatically adds share and follow buttons.

After the buttons are installed, reach out to friends, family, staff, and customers to get them to like or share your site. Some businesses get creative and put an interesting image on their site that people like to share. Social signals are great and will help support your rankings.

9. Avoid Common Pitfalls

One of the most effective ways to get sustainable, long-term rankings is by avoiding common pitfalls. Be very careful about buying cheap backlinks — it can be extremely dangerous. Many SEO providers sell links and services that will get you penalised. It’s just not worth it. Disregard any claim that links are ‘safe’ from penalties.

SEO is a delicate process, and no two websites are the same. You can get penalised based on the anchor text you use, the frequency of link building, the quality and topic of the sites linking to you, and a host of other factors. You may see a competitor get away with something, but you could be penalised for doing the same thing.

The recommendations in this article are safe and aligned with Google’s guidelines. But once you start mixing in shady SEO and poor-quality paid backlinks, you’re going to get into trouble. Removing a penalty is extremely costly in both lost rankings and service fees, and it can take months. Just don’t do it.

10. Content Strategy

If your website is thin on content, there’s a good chance it just won’t rank. Aim for at least 700 words on each page, especially your homepage. The more relevant content the better. Use pictures and video as well if you can.

Write informative articles that provide real value — content people actually want to read. Aim to become an authority in your market. You don’t have to know everything, but if you’re consistent and thorough, you’ll build trust with your audience.

And there you have it — 10 ways to rank your own website. We use these exact methods to rank our clients’ sites. This list isn’t exhaustive, but these methods are extremely effective at getting your site ranked.