Let’s share ways How to Rank a Blog in Google’s Top 10 Search Results.
Step 1: Find low performing keywords
Most SEOs find page 2 rankings and preach to get them to page 1.
It sounds logical, but there are two reasons why it’s not a good idea.
- Improving the ranking by 10 points or more is not always easy.
- If you want to increase traffic, you shouldn’t aim for just a one-page ranking.
For that second point, look at the average CTR curve on the first few pages of Google results.
You can see that as your rank goes down, the click-through rate goes down exponentially.
In other words, simply increasing the rank by one of n.5 through # 4 will drive traffic compared to increasing the rank by 10 from # 20 through n.10.
That’s no small difference either!
If your main target keyword is getting 10,000 searches per month, this number is roughly:
Position # 5 → # 4 = + 210 visitors / month
Position # 20 → # 10 = + 8 visitors / month
So all you have to do is find the keywords that already ranked 2 to 10 on the first page and focus almost exclusively on them.
To do this, paste the domain into Ahrefs Site Explorer, go to the Organic Keywords report, and then filter the report to show only the keywords that are currently ranked from 2 to 10.
Site Explorer> Enter Domain> Organic Search> Organic Keywords> Add Filter
After all, we only want to see the “true” rankings, so we use the SERP feature filter to exclude any SERP features that we own. Click the drop-down menu, click Exclude, select All Features, and then check the Only link to the target box.
Step 2: Select the keywords that you want to rank highly:
All of the keywords in this leaked report are already ranked keywords but not in pole position. In other words, there is still room for improvement.
The next step is to search this list for the keywords that you want to improve your ranking for.
That being said, it doesn’t make sense to hunt for low-value keyword rankings or for keywords that can be a daunting task. Hence, there are a few things you need to look for in order to identify the best candidate.
a) Keywords that are already generating more traffic:
Generally, if your goal is to maximize organic traffic, keywords at the top of this report are your best goals.
If you look at the Traffic column, you can see that there are some keywords that are already generating a lot of traffic in the posts, although the rankings are not perfect.
Since a single increase in ranking can increase your CTR by up to 93% on average, you don’t need to rank these keywords that high to increase traffic significantly.
b) Keywords with high search volume:
Improving just one ranking can almost double your traffic for that keyword. But there is still nothing double.
So check the Volume column to make sure the keyword has search volume.
c) Keywords with a low KD score:
Keyword Difficulty (KD) is our unique keyword difficulty level. It runs on a scale from 0 to 100, whereby the upper limit is often more difficult to classify than the lower.
In other words, it usually takes more effort to rank for the keyword KD50 than the keyword KD20.
Therefore, it is recommended to take a quick look at the KD column of the report and prioritize those with the lowest KD scores.
d) Keywords with high business value:
If it doesn’t generate more sales, there is no point in bringing more organic traffic to your website.
So it’s important to always prioritize keywords with business value.
To explain this concept, imagine you had a bakery in New York.
Keyword # 1 for the keyword “New York Bakery” will likely generate more sales than the ranking “Cupcake Recipe”. The reason for this is that those who search first are more likely to be paying customers. Therefore, “New York Bakery” has a higher commercial value than “Cupcake Recipe”, and the search volume of the latter is 7 times higher.
e) Unbranded Keywords:
We’re not talking about your own branded keywords here, we’re talking about third-party keywords.
A blog post by Ahrefs, for example, ranks 6th as “Google Keyword Planner”.
At first glance, it seems like a good keyword to use to improve your rankings. However, if you hit the [SERP] drop-down menu to view the current homepage, you can immediately see that it is not.
This is because Keyword Planner is Google’s free keyword search tool, so it is a branded keyword.
No matter how hard you try, this query won’t beat Google.
f) Keywords without the SERP functionality above you:
Google can display feature snippets in search results and SERP features such as the “People Also Ask” box.
Now it’s possible to classify some of these SERP features, but it’s a completely different ball game. So for now, it’s a good idea to keep things simple rather than keeping track of the rankings for those keywords.
Step 3: Understand why you have exceeded the range:
One website can be superior to another for hundreds of reasons, but don’t let that put you off.
Many people (including us) have studied various “ranking factors” many times and found three things that often correlate with rankings and traffic.
- Number of referring domains
- Page permissions
- Website permissions
But before you get to them, there are more important ranking factors that need to be defined if you want to rank higher.
The intent of the seeker:
The purpose of Google is to provide the most relevant results for a given query. Your entire business model is based on doing this consistently across hundreds of billions of searches. Because of this, they invested a lot in understanding the intent of the query – that is, why a person entered a certain thing on Google first.
For this reason, the top-rated link-building sites are blog posts and guides that provide information, and not from companies that provide link-building services.
Google knows that people who want to learn link building want to learn not to buy.
What does that mean for you? This means that if the page doesn’t match your search intent, you’ll be immersed in water before starting.
So how do you decipher the intent behind the search?
The best and fastest way is to analyze the current first page of results to find out what the search engine wants to call the three Cs.
- Type of content
- Content format
- Content angle
1. Content type:
Content types can generally be divided into four groups: blog posts, products, categories, and landing pages.
2. Content format:
Content formats are more likely to apply to blog posts and landing pages. Common blogging formats that appear include how-to-guides, step-by-step guides, list posts, and opinion pieces.
A landing page can be a tool or a calculator.
3. Content angle:
The content angle is the USP of the content. It’s basically a single hook that sells your page to search engines and gets them clicked.
Just by matching the search intent, the ranking rose from 40 to 6 in just four days.
a) Number of referring domains:
A survey of nearly 1 billion websites showed a clear correlation between the number of referring domains that refer to a page and their ranking.
In general, getting backlinks from more referring domains should help you move up the ranks. So all you have to do is look at the SERPs and see the number of referring domains that you are surpassing.
To do this, press the SERP drop-down menu for the selected keyword on the Organic Keywords report. Look at the Domain column.
b) Page permissions:
The Google ranking algorithm is based on the so-called PageRank, which effectively measures the “backlinking rights” of a website.
To do this, look at the “UR” column in the SERP summary for your target keywords.
c) Website Permissions:
Google continues to give mixed signals on the ranking factor “website authority”.
Still, Google’s John Mueller said in an interview that he was looking at some indicators that “map to something similar”.
It’s unclear if this is because search engines are expecting high brand rankings for this search query, using Google website permissions as a ranking factor, or both.
But what is clear is that unless you’re a big, well-known brand with a lot of “authority”, you are unlikely to rank for that particular keyword.
What you are looking for is an indication that this is not just a “big player” keyword. If one or more websites are classified in DR and not very different from your website, this is a positive sign. You may be able to increase your reach.
Note, however, that the only way to rate untrustworthy websites by keyword is to create more specific and focused articles.
Step 4: Defeat other important sites:
Now that you know why you rank high, your next task is to fill those gaps.
Here is a quick guide on how to do this:
When the number of referring domains is the main problem
Create a higher-quality link to the page. It’s that simple.
There are many ways to do this, such as These include posting guests, duplicating competing links, creating “skyscraper” links, and finding unlinked references.
