Your website's Google ranking is a crucial factor that indicates how successful your website has become. That is why achieving the top spot in the ranking among hundreds of other websites is a huge deal for a website owner like you. Your website getting ranked in the first place means that you've already reached the peak of your achievements. However, this is never a reason to put your guard down and slack off when maintaining your website. No matter how good it feels to be on top finally, it would help if you didn't let it get to your head because your competitors are still making extra efforts to catch up and steal that spot from you.
The importance of maintaining a top rank on Google
In today's generation, people primarily rely on the Google search bar to find companies and products from all around the world. This is why your brand's online presence and visibility can be a big help to your overall success and profit. For example, suppose a web user inputs keywords relating to your business's services, and your website takes the spot of the first result that pops up. In that case, chances are that individuals will click on your site and be persuaded to buy your products or hire your services. Ensuring you stay on the top ranks of Google search is an effective marketing strategy for your brand.
The steps you should be taking upon securing the top rank
Google's algorithm can regulate the content that shows up on the search engine result page. This algorithm is complicated and meticulous, so you would have to assess multiple factors.
Continue improving the content that you put out.
Primarily, you must be aware of and familiar with the different factors that affect your website's ranking on the Google search result page. The first thing to maintain is the quality of the content that you are putting out. Populating your website with high-quality and excellent content can more likely attract search engines. One thing you can keep in mind is to ensure that each page of your website will have not less than 300 words of content that your brand originally crafted. This is to ensure that search engines will not penalize your page for duplicate content. Checking if your content meets the standards mentioned in Google's EAT criteria can be a great help.
Moreover, it won't hurt to keep an eye on the content that your competitors are putting out as well. Even if you think your content is already miles ahead of the competition, it doesn't mean they can no longer level with you regarding the content they release. It is recommended to do your research and go through your content and your competitors' content. In this way, you'll know exactly what keywords are working and not working. You can do this easily with the help of Ahref's Site Explorer. Ahref allows you to discover your competitors' top-performing pages to make it easier for you to formulate a solution that can outperform their content.
Ahref's Content Gap Tool under Site Explorer can also help you identify gaps in the content you're publishing. This tool can look for the most important keywords your competitors use that are not present on your site. As soon as you gather enough information, you can then apply it to your content. The goal here is to monitor your competition and ensure that you're taking bigger steps than them.
Keep promoting your content and building links.
A common misconception is that you should only be focusing on your website and content. It IS important, but disregarding your competitors' progress can lead to you saying goodbye to your current ranking. As your competitors continue to build links in an attempt to catch up to you, you can keep track of their movements through Ahref's Site Explorer and SEMrush backlink tool.
SEMrush provides an incredibly easier way to track and access all of the backlinks that you've recently gained. This can be a great way to take advantage of the link opportunities that are unconsciously presented to you by your competitors. On top of that, as your competitors' backlink strategies are visible to you, you can also replicate the tactics that work well for them.
Other than that, finding different ways to promote your site through brand monitoring can help you keep your top rank for a more extended period. Through SEMrush's Brand Monitoring tool, you can conveniently locate particular keywords being used in different sites that relate directly to the content you put out. Finding these keywords can help you reach out to other sites and request them for links and shares.
Furthermore, Ahrefs also have an Alerts feature where you can be notified when another website mentions your brand but fails to provide a link to your website. Once you identify the websites that mention you, you can reach out to request the addition of your website's link.
Constantly monitor your ranking progress.
Rank tracking tools are also a common way to maintain your position. Closely monitoring your rank is essential to the success of your SEO efforts. SEMrush's Rank tracking tool will allow you to observe the progress of your rankings as well as the changes that might arise. At the same time, it also provides reports regarding the results of your marketing campaigns.
Similarly, Ahrefs also provides a tool that can track your rankings. Through their rank tracker, you can track your site's movement and apply an analytical approach. That way, you can make the most out of this data and lead more traffic to your website.
Deflect SEO issues that might compromise your ranking
Common SEO issues might arise once and a while. Their effects may negatively impact your current position in the ranks. To avoid this, you can use the SEMrush Site Audit tool to run a live crawl and spot the existing issues with your site.
The first thing you can do with this tool is to see your overall website health. After that, you can effectively investigate deeper and point out specific problems like missing description tags, meta titles, or HTML tags. This helps you narrow down the complications and fix them accordingly.
The Bottomline
Ranking first place doesn't mean your job here is finished. Your content that ranks at the top should be adequately protected and secured. Neglecting these rankings can lead you to lose them faster than when it actually took you to get there. Many other competitors are frequently on the lookout for gaps that they can take advantage of to steal your spot from you. The tactics mentioned above can surely help you keep your top rankings for a longer time, eventually leading to your brand's growth and development.