A step-by-step guide on how to rank higher on Google (Organically)
Author: Ryan Walsh
Date: 17/07/2025
In this article, we will cover the following:
- How does Google’s algorithm rank pages?
- What are ranking factors?
- How to improve your business’s on-page SEO (this is usually where we start work first)
- What are keywords?
- How to improve your business’s technical SEO
- Why it’s crucial to write helpful, well-written content marketing (Google E-EAT)
- Why it’s a good idea to work on reducing your business’s bounce rate
- The 10x principle, mentioned by Moz and why we think this is a good SEO strategy
- Why backlinks are still important and why they are referred to as “votes of confidence” in your business
- How to use Google Analytics and Google Search Console to track SEO performance
- How to use good on-page SEO so that readers get to the section that they want to read
- How to improve your business’s CTR
Introduction
Whether you’re a local, national, or international business, organic SEO is an excellent way to improve your businesses marketing.
If you run a business, you might be at the start of that journey right now and wondering how your competitors got to the top of Google?
We all know that you can pay for Google AdWords, commonly also referred to as PPC or pay-per-click.
Yet, how do you climb to the top of Google’s organic results?
How exactly does Google rank pages?
Google has perfected its complex algorithm since the very early days, when it used “Google Page Rank”.
The evolution of Google’s algorithm, from its initial development to its current state, has been a long and gradual process, culminating in its current form in 2025.
For example, Google has implemented numerous updates aimed at combating spam.
Many low-quality pages were removed, for example, because of the Google Panda updates.
The Google Penguin update affected businesses that overused spam and low-quality links.
Then there was the Google Hummingbird update, which further refined the results.
Fast forward to where we stand today, and we have Google AI Overviews, which provide highly tailored answers to queries presented at the top of the page.
SEO doesn’t stand still for very long.
It’s also important to remember this from the outset; some businesses will have invested hundreds of thousands, if not millions, into getting their companies onto page one of Google.
Therefore, to occupy their spot or rank above these companies, it requires a significant amount of work, and this process can be slow, which is also important to remember.
On-page SEO (why we usually start here)
Once a web designer has finished designing a website, sometimes they will have paid no consideration on how to improve the companies SEO.
Often the websites content marketing for a brand new website is often not strong enough to get that company anywhere close to page one of Google.
A website where the on-page SEO is weak.
A website with no backlinks, and therefore a brand-new website, may not rank in the first 10 pages of Google when it first gets indexed.
However, this is pretty normal.
New websites may rank beyond page 10 of Google. The reason being is often they will have no backlinks, plus the on-page SEO is often weak.
Every business has to start somewhere; therefore, over time, by gradually implementing high-quality work, you can move closer and closer to page one.
Page title
You often hear that the page title is the most important on-page element.
This is with good reason, think how Googlebot would.
For those who are unfamiliar with what Googlebot is, Googlebot is an automated bot, often referred to as a “spider”.
Googlebot’s primary function is to crawl and index web pages.
Now, when you consider that on any one page, there could be a lot of text, including product descriptions, alt text, anchor text, and FAQs with extensive content that could be placed in accordion menus. This is not the mention all of the text that goes into writing the H1-H6 text, and the list goes on.
Therefore, where would Googlebot go to find out exactly what that page is about?
Naturally, it would read the main page title.
This is why a well written page title is so important. It should be short, snappy and summarise what that whole page is about.
Long-form content is good.
When you first receive your brand-new company website back from the web designers, there’s often a common issue.
Its often what us SEO consultants call a “content thin” website- now this can mean its hard to get that business onto page one of Google.
That’s if all the pages just have a word count of say 100 words or less.
The website may look amazing, everything your business had asked for from the web design agency to build; however, there’s an issue.
For any page to be placed on the first page of Google, it needs to be, well, the best of the very best.
The page should have:
- A high enough word count to ask any commonly asked questions customers typically ask
- A good E-EAT score
- The product descriptions should be well written
- It needs to offer a comprehensive answer; therefore, a page that’s “content thin”, perhaps even worse, pages that are entirely written by
- AI will never rank on page one of Google.
Word count and being helpful
When we first started, we often heard, especially from web designers, that you were adding too much text to key pages, such as the homepage.
What those website designers didn’t realise is that well written text, especially on key pages can help to improve your organic SEO.
Web designers and SEO consultants, although they shouldn’t, often see their forms of marketing as areas that don’t overlap; however, they should. This means we think for a businesses search engine optimisation to be truly successful, often the web designers should work closely with the SEO team. As when you improve a websites user experience, you can improve the companies organic SEO as well.
Any business should offer a good UX.
What are LSI keywords?
LSI keywords may sound complicated; however, they are simply words or phrases directly connected to the main topic of a page. For example, this article is primarily focused on offering quality SEO advice; however, we also mention web design and UX as these topics are related.
The reason is that, regardless of which product or service you’re selling, often there are many crossovers.
There will be topics that naturally overlap; however, incorporating these topics into content marketing as well is beneficial from an SEO perspective. Google, through the “semantic web,” will recognise that these topics are related.
For example, talking about e-bikes, you may mention bike helmets, bike tyres, as these are all interconnected. You may write blog posts about famous events you are sponsoring as well. This all helps Google to understand that your business is all about biking, mountain bikes and e-bikes.
Bounce rates
Instead, the business may focus on using split testing and working with web designers to identify which elements could be causing the inflated bounce rate.
Is it that it’s hard to sort items on an e-commerce website, this could be inflating the bounce rate.
Is it that there’s a high bounce rate, for example in regards to the shopping basket, because the buying process is not simple, well this most definitely should be fixed.
Why not ask people for their feedback, staff, family, and friends? What element of that website do you dislike?
Were there any problems they encountered when trying to buy items from you?
How can we improve the design?
This is how UX, or user experience, overlaps with SEO, as when dwell times increase and bounce rates reduce. The average shopper may start visiting on average 7 product pages rather than one- this means shoppers are more interested in your products that you have for sale.
Google’s algorithms will spot this- high dwell times, can mean that the website will rank higher.
So, how do you work out which LSI keywords to add to a page?
Google Suggest
Google Suggest works in a similar way to predictive text, to an certain extent.
When you’re typing out an email or just about to send a message on WhatsApp, you often get many suggestions for what you’re about to type next from the Android device.
Well, Google Suggest works in a similar way when you’re looking for new keywords to optimise the company website for.
It gives SEO consultants an idea of the keywords they may want to add to the article, as well.
For example, if you type ‘e-bikes,’ you may get suggestions for e-mountain bikes, as well as city and hybrid bikes.
The point we are trying to make is simple: you can optimise the page so that it appears for more keywords by adding LSI keywords.
Technical SEO is so important.
If your website’s technical SEO is not right, this can damage your business’s organic visibility.
For example, you could have no-index tab left on, broken links, or slow page speeds could also be damaging your businesses organic search engine optimisation.
Mobile devices
Here at Walsh & Partners, we do most of our work from our laptops; however, for many shoppers, it’s often more convenient to buy items on the move from their smartphone or let’s say a tablet whilst relaxing on the sofa.
Therefore, if you are selling goods and services, the mobile version of your website needs to be optimised.
It needs to be super simple to use, and it needs to take shoppers from the homepage to the product they want to buy as simply and effortlessly as possible.
What does “Core Web Vitals” mean?
If your company website loads quickly, meaning every page loads quickly, many agencies believe that this can give your business an SEO boost.
This makes a lot of sense when you think about it; no one wants to wait for a slow-loading page to load. Shoppers want to find the right products quickly.
This therefore builds upon our previous point regarding user experience (U.X).
If you make it easier for the customer to buy an item or a service from you, they are likely to spend longer on your website and make a purchase.
However, if that person is, say, on the train and waiting for a page to load for too long, they may become frustrated and leave your company website.
This means they may leave the website, causing the bounce rate to increase.
A sustained and high bounce rate, that can be negative to your businesses rankings. For example Google’s RankBrain will spot that the bounce rate is very high, therefore, possibly moving you down Googles organic ranks.
That’s because a sustained high bounce rate shows that a lot of people landed on one page on your website, yet then decided to leave.
Use Google Search Console
Page indexation
If you’re having trouble getting pages to index by Google, then you may well be able to find the solution within your Google Search Console account.
We would also highly recommend submitting your main pages through the Google Search Console fetch tool.
Check if the pages can be indexed, and if you receive a green tick indicating that the page is being indexed or has already been indexed.
Why you should aim to be 10 x better and why your content marketing needs to be, well, excellent
For any page on your website, whether it’s a main page or blog post, for it to rank on page one of Google, it needs to be better than what’s currently on page one of Google right now.
Therefore the page will often need:
- High Google EEAT score
- A lot of backlinks
- Well written
- Offer a good user experience
- Be helpful to the shopper
For example, if someone is looking for “what are the best e-bikes of 2025”, well, you have to see which pages are currently on page one of Google.
Can you write a better guide than what is already there?
A more helpful page on the best e-bikes?
If so, your business may be able to do that.
Yet, you also have to think of all the off-page elements, for example, how many backlinks connect to those pages?
Can you beat that number?
Can you obtain even higher-quality links?
Then there’s the author, are they a well-known bike journalist?
They may possibly work for a cycling magazine or have their own YouTube channel?
Therefore they will be an expert on bikes. If they write a piece of content marketing, plus they link this to there own LinkedIn account it shows that they are an expert on what they are talking about.
Backlinks
Backlinks have always been a very important part of search engine optimisation.
Backlinks are extremely important because they are among the top three most important ranking factors Google considers when evaluating the strength of a websites SEO.
What does DA mean?
DA is a metric that Moz first invented.
Moz makes some fantastic and useful SEO tools, so we recommend checking them out.
Moz invented DA, which is domain authority; it’s simply a score out of 100.
This score is primarily calculated based on the business’s backlinks.
Monitor your business’s organic traffic.
Using your businesses Google Analytics account, you can monitor how many organic visitors are coming to your website each day, month or for the entire year.
Therefore, you could use an SEO tool, such as Moz to say track where your website ranks for specific keywords.
However, it’s also essential to use Google Analytics and track the number of organic visitors the website receives.
FAQ: On how to rank higher on Google
How can we get our business listed in Google Maps results?
The Google Business results are separate from the organic business results.
The Google AdWords results are separate business listings again.
All of these are powered by separate algorithms.
To get your business ranked within Google Business results, you should focus on improving the following:
– Number of business citations
– Ensuring NAP consistency
– Writing high-quality content marketing
– Building backlinks from high-quality local businesses. The links should also be relevant
– Gaining positive business reviews on Google Business
How can we improve our national SEO?
National SEO is much harder, the reason being to sell items or services nationally your business will face a lot more competition.
Often, therefore, you will especially need very strong backlinks if you want your business to be on the first page of Google across the U.K.
How can we improve our ranking in local organic search results?
Improving where your business ranks in the organic search results, for just one city or town is a lot more simpler than national SEO.
The reason being, there’s less competition on a local business.
Locally, you may well be competing with just 25 local competitors, yet nationally, you could be competing with over 2500.00.
Which ranking factors would you concentrate on improving first?
When a new client provides us with a website, we typically begin by improving the on-page SEO first.
For example, we ask if the on-page SEO is strong?
Are there well-written page titles?
How has the meta description been written?
Then we might, for example, add new paragraphs or add some internal links.
Why are backlinks so crucial to the SEO process?
Since Google’s inception, when they created Google PageRank, backlinks, or links have been a crucial factor in determining where a page should rank on Google’s search results.
Should it rank on page 10 of Google?
Alternatively, should it rank on page 1, right in the top position?
The businesses that rank right at the top, the companies that occupy the first position, typically have powerful do-follow links.
These links could come from, for example, The Guardian newspaper or another high-quality website.
How much should we be paying for SEO?
SEO costs vary massively depending on whether you choose a freelancer, a marketing agency or a dedicated SEO company.
Prices for local SEO typically vary between £500 per month and £ 2,000.00.
For National SEO, the costs are significantly higher, ranging upwards of £ 5,000.
The cost is dependent on the level of competition your business faces.
How often should we be writing new content marketing?
This depends again on how competitive your business sector is. For highly competitive business sectors, such as a solicitor’s practice in a large city, new work may need to be added as frequently as once a week.
For less competitive business sectors, such as a plumber in a town, once a month should be sufficient.
Can SEO be started and stopped? What are the impacts?
If you stop paying for SEO or implementing the work yourself, you could start to drop down Google’s ranks. It therefore very much depends on how hard your direct competitors are working on their websites. If they are working on their websites a lot, plus building links, and the work is quite intensive, then you may find that if you stop, you start to drop down Google’s ranks quite substantially.
Why should we only use the best methods even if it takes longer?
Google rolls out regular algorithm changes.
The significant algorithm changes are called Google Core algorithm updates. If a website is using spam or low-quality methods, it’s usually during these large algorithm updates that the website may end up moving down Google’s ranks if the work is deemed spam or low-quality.
How do you build backlinks?
We would recommend earning backlinks.
Ask your top copywriters to work with an expert who knows everything there is to know about that particular product or service.
Then you can create helpful content marketing.
Think of the sort of questions that your customers frequently ask, then aim to answer these commonly asked questions in the best way you possibly can.
This way, readers worldwide are likely to find your content marketing helpful.
Whether that’s how to remove a dent from your car, or how to make a lovely farmhouse cake.
If your work is valuable, it could be read by millions of people worldwide. The dwell time may be high, as people enjoy reading how to bake that lovely cake.
The bounce rate may also be low.
Therefore, this can help to improve your business’s SEO.
How long does SEO take?
SEO does take time; you need to implement work gradually and then slowly monitor the results.
Whether it’s national or local SEO, this process does take time
Cardiff
If your business wants to improve its SEO in the city of Cardiff, then please give us a call.