In episode #530, Eric and Neil tell you the real secret about how to raise your Google ranking. Tune in to hear the honest truth that other marketers won’t tell you.
Time-Stamped Show Notes:
- [00:27] Today’s Topic: Learn the Real Secret to Ranking on Page 1 (and What Most Marketers Won’t Tell You)
- [00:37] Eric and Neil rank for a number of keywords or terms.
- [01:08] When trying to rank for those terms, they did not create pages specifically for them.
- [01:25] Eric has created hundreds of pages for Single Grain, but the majority do not rank well; it’s a quantity game.
- [01:34] There was no difference between the pages that ranked and those that did not.
- [01:47] Neil and Eric create a massive amount of content, because it’s a hit or miss game.There is no guarantee that the content will be a hit.
- [02:31] For the posts that rank, they have a process that involves Google Search Console.
- [02:56] Step 1: Install Google Search Console.
- [03:08] Step 2: Go to the Search Analytics section.
- [03:17] Step 3: Click on three buttons/check boxes on the top left (“CTR”, “Impressions”, and “Clicks”).
- [03:36] Step 4: Click on the radio button for “Pages”.
- [03:47] You want to see the pages that have a high impression count, but a low click-through rate.
- [04:17] Low click-through rates are the low-hanging fruit you want to optimize.
- [04:26] By changing the titles of these, it can help you change your click-through rate.
- [04:50] So, create a lot of content, see what performs the best in Google Search Console, go in and fine-tune your content (make it super detailed and try to maximize the traffic you can get from them.
- [05:15] No one knows why some pages rank and others don’t. That’s the big secret!
- [05:33] If you want the most traffic, you need to focus on quantity.
- [05:42] Write at least one article per day and don’t overlap your topics.
- [06:02] They built ClickFlow to help you manage the Google Search Console process.
- [06:26] Focus on creating quality content in mass quantities; over time, Google will start to see your site as an authority, which will cause your domain authority rise, and whenever you write new content, it becomes easier to rank.
- [07:10] Make sure you go after keywords that monetize.
- [07:27] That’s it for today!
- [07:29] Go to singlegrain.com/giveaway if you want to get in on a special giveaway opportunity!
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The post Learn the Real Secret to Ranking on Page 1 (& What Most Marketers Won’t Tell You) | Ep. #530 appeared first on Marketing School Podcast.
Full Transcript of The Episode
Speaker 1: Get ready for your daily dose of marketing strategies and tactics from entrepreneurs with the guile and experience to help you find success in any marketing capacity. You're listening to Marketing School with your instructors Neil Patel and Eric Sui.
Eric Sui: Welcome to another episode of Marketing School. I'm Eric Sui.
Neil Patel: And I'm Neil Patel.
Eric Sui: And today, we're going to learn the real secret to ranking on page one and what most marketers won't tell you. So Neil, what's the secret?
Neil Patel: Yeah, so, Eric and I rank for a lot of terms. What are some of the terms you rank for Eric?
Eric Sui: I don't know, podcast advertising, marketing funnel.
Neil Patel: YouTube something, right? YouTube advertising, I think, at one point, right? You were writing for your entrepreneurial article.
Eric Sui: Yeah.
Neil Patel: Okay. You also rank for some digital marketing terms that are competitive as well.
Eric Sui: Yeah. Digital marketing company, things like that.
Neil Patel: Okay. And I rank for a lot of terms as well. [inaudible 00:00:59] on my marketing, Internet marketing, the list keeps going on and on. Now, here's what's funny. And I'm going to first ask Eric this and then I'll tell you my answer as well. Eric, when you're trying to rank for these terms, did you specifically create pages for these terms?
Eric Sui: No. I did not. Okay? When I rank for a lot of my competitive terms, I wasn't in the mindset of, "I want to rank number one for these terms."
Neil Patel: All right. How many pieces of content have you created, Eric, on the Single Grain blog?
Eric Sui: God. I don't know, hundreds.
Neil Patel: Okay. And some of them rank and some of them don't. Do the majority rank really well?
Eric Sui: No. Okay, it's a quantity game.
Neil Patel: And what was the difference between the pages that rank really well and the pages that don't?
Eric Sui: Not much of a difference.
Neil Patel: Exactly. It's a hit or miss game. That's what most marketers don't tell you. Eric and I don't know the solutions to everything. We're creating content. We create a shit ton of content and we do it in quantity. Of course, we want the quality of the content to be really high, but it's a hit or miss game. We don't know, which ones are going to rank. Yeah, you can build links, and do social shares for each one, and try to really boost it up. But it doesn't guarantee that they're all going to hit, right? Google's algorithm is Google's algorithm. Sometimes they like your content because it's more thorough. Or sometimes they don't because someone else has more through content. Or sometimes people don't care for that term because it's not global compatible and someone else is. You can try to fix a lot of these things, but there's still no guarantees in rankings. And that's why Eric and I have the mindset of just crank out a ton of high quality content. And some posts are going to rank and some posts don't.
For the posts that start ranking, we do have a process that involves Google Search Console, that allows us to make these posts that are somewhat ranking, to rank even higher. And Eric right now is going to dive into how he uses Google Search Console to get some of those pages that already somewhat rank. Cause you're going to have a lot of pages or posts that rank on page two, or three, or four, and they're getting some traction. But you want to really push them up. Now, Eric, let's walk them through this strategy.
Eric Sui: Yeah. So this is simple. I'm assuming all of you have Google Search Console installed. If you don't, go ahead and install it right now. It's free, it's Google's free SEO tool. Add it, right? And so, the good thing I like about Google Search Console is, once you go in, go to the Search Analytics section. So Search Analytics. Click on that, and then, what you do there is, once you're on that page what you want to do is, you want to click on three buttons at the top left. These are radio buttons, right? Or check boxes, I believe. So you want to click on CTR, which is a click to right. You want to click on Impressions, right? And then you can also click on the ranking, as well. But I like Impressions, and then also the CTR, and the Clicks. Those are what I'm really looking at.
And then from there, what I do is, I click on the radio button for pages. So I'm really looking at the pages. So what am I getting at right now? What I'm getting at is, I want to be looking at the pages that have a high impression count but a low click-through rate. So Google is showing the impressions for this page, but I'm not doing my job of getting people to click on it. Cause the title under [inaudible 00:04:01] description, when people see the page, that's what entices them to bring people to your site. It's marketing, you're bringing people to the point of sale. So you want to sort by high impression count, but low click-through rate. From there, you're really looking at anything that has a lower click-through rate based on what you're seeing on that page.
So let's say, for example, my average click-through rate on a top fifty pages in-search console is three to four percent, or so. And I start to see click-through rates that are one percent or below. Those are the low hanging fruit opportunities that I want to optimize. Once I change a title on those, I can get those to a higher ... basically higher click-through rate, and that's going to help me drive more organic traffic. Once I have a higher click-through rate, my rankings are going to go higher because, believe it or not, RankBrain. We want to talk about things like that. That's going to help you to get to a number one position.
Neil Patel: Yeah. And that's what we do. We create a lot of content. We look what does the best within Google Search Console, and it tends to be where like ten, twenty percent of your posts are doing extremely well. Go in and fine tune them. Google will show you all the keywords that you're getting impressions for and you want to start rewriting the content, make it super detailed, like 10,000 words, and just maximize how much traffic you can end up getting from them. It's a simple strategy. It works. But, the big secret that most marketers won't tell you is, they don't know why certain pages rank, and do or don't. It's more so a hit or miss game. Some people find content extremely valuable and they share it a million times on the social media. And then they link to it a ton of times.
And yet, you can do a lot of manual stuff. But that doesn't guarantee rankings. If you want the most traffic, put out quantity content. In other words, you have to do a lot of it. And, of course, you want to make sure its high quality at the same time. And, ideally, to do this right, you should be writing at least one article a day. And make sure you're not overlapping on topics. So, if you write a page on, On Page SEO, you don't want to have another ten posts on, On Page SEO. You want to talk about link building, or Off-Page SEO, or social media marketing. By having a variety of different topics, you're much more likely to rank for different keywords.
Eric Sui: Great. And on the Google Search Console front, we built up a tool called clickflow.io, to help with that entire process. Cause Google Search Console can be a little feature lacking sometimes. But here's the other thing. Like Neil mentioned, we don't talk about, "Oh, let's try to hit these keywords all the time." There are certain companies that just try to hit these specific keywords. What we do is, from the very beginning, you focus on creating quality content. Over time that starts to stack and Google starts to see your site as an authority. Your domain authority goes up and, whenever you write new content, they start to see that Neil's blog is tied to marketing. Mine's tied to marketing. It becomes easier to rank. And once they see something ranking from number five and number thirty, or like the exercise I talked about with Search Console. We see things within striking distance, that's when we have a strategy to move those things up. We're going to implement the tactics that will help us move into a number one position.
But just trying to start out and saying I want to rank number one for all these things, when you haven't started to build kind of a foundation initially, that's going to be really difficult. And that's why Neil and I always talk about the long game. Neil?
Neil Patel: That's it from my end. And make sure you're going after keywords that monetize. I was getting a ton of traffic for the term "free word press plug-ins." Thousands and thousands of visitors a day, like four thousand. But it didn't even make me a dollar in revenue. So make sure also, when you're creating the content, pick words, and topics, and phrases that you can actually monetize.
Eric Sui: Great. So before we go, just go to singlegrain.com/giveaway to check out our special giveaway, and we will see you tomorrow.
Speaker 1: This session of Marketing School has come to a close. Be sure to subscribe for more daily marketing strategies and tactics to help you find the success you've always dreamed of. And don't forget to rate and review so we can continue to bring you the best daily content possible. We'll see you in class tomorrow, right here on Marketing School.
Eric Sui: Welcome to another episode of Marketing School. I'm Eric Sui.
Neil Patel: And I'm Neil Patel.
Eric Sui: And today, we're going to learn the real secret to ranking on page one and what most marketers won't tell you. So Neil, what's the secret?
Neil Patel: Yeah, so, Eric and I rank for a lot of terms. What are some of the terms you rank for Eric?
Eric Sui: I don't know, podcast advertising, marketing funnel.
Neil Patel: YouTube something, right? YouTube advertising, I think, at one point, right? You were writing for your entrepreneurial article.
Eric Sui: Yeah.
Neil Patel: Okay. You also rank for some digital marketing terms that are competitive as well.
Eric Sui: Yeah. Digital marketing company, things like that.
Neil Patel: Okay. And I rank for a lot of terms as well. [inaudible 00:00:59] on my marketing, Internet marketing, the list keeps going on and on. Now, here's what's funny. And I'm going to first ask Eric this and then I'll tell you my answer as well. Eric, when you're trying to rank for these terms, did you specifically create pages for these terms?
Eric Sui: No. I did not. Okay? When I rank for a lot of my competitive terms, I wasn't in the mindset of, "I want to rank number one for these terms."
Neil Patel: All right. How many pieces of content have you created, Eric, on the Single Grain blog?
Eric Sui: God. I don't know, hundreds.
Neil Patel: Okay. And some of them rank and some of them don't. Do the majority rank really well?
Eric Sui: No. Okay, it's a quantity game.
Neil Patel: And what was the difference between the pages that rank really well and the pages that don't?
Eric Sui: Not much of a difference.
Neil Patel: Exactly. It's a hit or miss game. That's what most marketers don't tell you. Eric and I don't know the solutions to everything. We're creating content. We create a shit ton of content and we do it in quantity. Of course, we want the quality of the content to be really high, but it's a hit or miss game. We don't know, which ones are going to rank. Yeah, you can build links, and do social shares for each one, and try to really boost it up. But it doesn't guarantee that they're all going to hit, right? Google's algorithm is Google's algorithm. Sometimes they like your content because it's more thorough. Or sometimes they don't because someone else has more through content. Or sometimes people don't care for that term because it's not global compatible and someone else is. You can try to fix a lot of these things, but there's still no guarantees in rankings. And that's why Eric and I have the mindset of just crank out a ton of high quality content. And some posts are going to rank and some posts don't.
For the posts that start ranking, we do have a process that involves Google Search Console, that allows us to make these posts that are somewhat ranking, to rank even higher. And Eric right now is going to dive into how he uses Google Search Console to get some of those pages that already somewhat rank. Cause you're going to have a lot of pages or posts that rank on page two, or three, or four, and they're getting some traction. But you want to really push them up. Now, Eric, let's walk them through this strategy.
Eric Sui: Yeah. So this is simple. I'm assuming all of you have Google Search Console installed. If you don't, go ahead and install it right now. It's free, it's Google's free SEO tool. Add it, right? And so, the good thing I like about Google Search Console is, once you go in, go to the Search Analytics section. So Search Analytics. Click on that, and then, what you do there is, once you're on that page what you want to do is, you want to click on three buttons at the top left. These are radio buttons, right? Or check boxes, I believe. So you want to click on CTR, which is a click to right. You want to click on Impressions, right? And then you can also click on the ranking, as well. But I like Impressions, and then also the CTR, and the Clicks. Those are what I'm really looking at.
And then from there, what I do is, I click on the radio button for pages. So I'm really looking at the pages. So what am I getting at right now? What I'm getting at is, I want to be looking at the pages that have a high impression count but a low click-through rate. So Google is showing the impressions for this page, but I'm not doing my job of getting people to click on it. Cause the title under [inaudible 00:04:01] description, when people see the page, that's what entices them to bring people to your site. It's marketing, you're bringing people to the point of sale. So you want to sort by high impression count, but low click-through rate. From there, you're really looking at anything that has a lower click-through rate based on what you're seeing on that page.
So let's say, for example, my average click-through rate on a top fifty pages in-search console is three to four percent, or so. And I start to see click-through rates that are one percent or below. Those are the low hanging fruit opportunities that I want to optimize. Once I change a title on those, I can get those to a higher ... basically higher click-through rate, and that's going to help me drive more organic traffic. Once I have a higher click-through rate, my rankings are going to go higher because, believe it or not, RankBrain. We want to talk about things like that. That's going to help you to get to a number one position.
Neil Patel: Yeah. And that's what we do. We create a lot of content. We look what does the best within Google Search Console, and it tends to be where like ten, twenty percent of your posts are doing extremely well. Go in and fine tune them. Google will show you all the keywords that you're getting impressions for and you want to start rewriting the content, make it super detailed, like 10,000 words, and just maximize how much traffic you can end up getting from them. It's a simple strategy. It works. But, the big secret that most marketers won't tell you is, they don't know why certain pages rank, and do or don't. It's more so a hit or miss game. Some people find content extremely valuable and they share it a million times on the social media. And then they link to it a ton of times.
And yet, you can do a lot of manual stuff. But that doesn't guarantee rankings. If you want the most traffic, put out quantity content. In other words, you have to do a lot of it. And, of course, you want to make sure its high quality at the same time. And, ideally, to do this right, you should be writing at least one article a day. And make sure you're not overlapping on topics. So, if you write a page on, On Page SEO, you don't want to have another ten posts on, On Page SEO. You want to talk about link building, or Off-Page SEO, or social media marketing. By having a variety of different topics, you're much more likely to rank for different keywords.
Eric Sui: Great. And on the Google Search Console front, we built up a tool called clickflow.io, to help with that entire process. Cause Google Search Console can be a little feature lacking sometimes. But here's the other thing. Like Neil mentioned, we don't talk about, "Oh, let's try to hit these keywords all the time." There are certain companies that just try to hit these specific keywords. What we do is, from the very beginning, you focus on creating quality content. Over time that starts to stack and Google starts to see your site as an authority. Your domain authority goes up and, whenever you write new content, they start to see that Neil's blog is tied to marketing. Mine's tied to marketing. It becomes easier to rank. And once they see something ranking from number five and number thirty, or like the exercise I talked about with Search Console. We see things within striking distance, that's when we have a strategy to move those things up. We're going to implement the tactics that will help us move into a number one position.
But just trying to start out and saying I want to rank number one for all these things, when you haven't started to build kind of a foundation initially, that's going to be really difficult. And that's why Neil and I always talk about the long game. Neil?
Neil Patel: That's it from my end. And make sure you're going after keywords that monetize. I was getting a ton of traffic for the term "free word press plug-ins." Thousands and thousands of visitors a day, like four thousand. But it didn't even make me a dollar in revenue. So make sure also, when you're creating the content, pick words, and topics, and phrases that you can actually monetize.
Eric Sui: Great. So before we go, just go to singlegrain.com/giveaway to check out our special giveaway, and we will see you tomorrow.
Speaker 1: This session of Marketing School has come to a close. Be sure to subscribe for more daily marketing strategies and tactics to help you find the success you've always dreamed of. And don't forget to rate and review so we can continue to bring you the best daily content possible. We'll see you in class tomorrow, right here on Marketing School.