Search Engine Positioning: What Is It & How To Improve It

Neil Patel
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Author: Neil Patel | Co Founder of NP Digital & Owner of Ubersuggest
Published October 17, 2024
A graphic that says "Search Engine Positioning: What Is It and How To Improve It.

You’ve spent ages building your website and optimizing your content… only to find it languishing on the second page of Google.

It’s frustrating when this happens. Trust me, I’ve been there thousands of times!

However, just because you’re on the second page of the search engine results doesn’t mean you have to stay there. Search engine positioning is a strategy that allows you to optimize your pages and push them to the top of the results.

Want to improve your pages with search engine positioning? In this article you’ll discover what search engine positioning is, the benefits, and how to increase the chances of getting that all-important top spot in the search engines.

Key Takeaways

  • Search engine positioning is when you make changes to pages on your website to help them rank higher for specific search queries.
  • Search engine positioning is different from search engine optimization. Search engine positioning concerns fewer pages, and you typically see results sooner.
  • Using search engine positioning to improve your search engine ranking increases your click-through rate, meaning more organic traffic and conversions.
  • You can improve your search engine rankings by refreshing your page content, reviewing internal links, optimizing your metadata, and using targeted outreach to get backlinks.
  • It’s essential to track your pages in the search engine rankings to see if you need to make further amends. 

Table of Contents

What Is Search Engine Positioning?

Search engine positioning is when you optimize specific pages on your website to rank higher in the search engine results.

Let’s say you carry out a SERP analysis and discover a particular page on your website is ranking in position eleven, just outside the first page of the search results. With a few tweaks, you can improve its visibility and get it in the top ten.

You can also use search engine positioning to secure additional real estate in the search results, increasing the odds of people clicking through to your site. For example, through featured snippets and AI Overviews.

Example of a featured snippet in Google

Why It Matters

The higher you rank in the search engine results, the better for your business.

Good search engine positioning can improve your click-through rate (CTR), meaning more organic traffic and conversions. 

According to a recent academic study, the top three results in Google have a collective CTR of 18.21 percent, with CTR decreasing with each step down the results.

Aside from increased organic traffic and better brand visibility, search engine positioning has additional benefits too:

  • It increases the chances of the search engines using your website as a featured snippet or a source for AI Overviews.
  • Appearing high in the search engine results shows prospective customers that your brand is reliable and trustworthy.
  • Updating your pages provides additional value to readers, making them more likely to see your brand as a voice of authority.

Search Engine Positioning vs. SEO

At this point, you might think search engine positioning and search engine optimization (SEO) are the same thing. After all, they both concern themselves with improving your rank in Google, right?

However, they are slightly different strategies.

So, how are search engine positioning and SEO different? SEO focuses on optimizing your entire website, while search engine positioning focuses on optimizing a specific page or small collection of pages to achieve higher rankings.

SEO is a long-term strategy, while search engine positioning is more short-term. With SEO, it can take between three to six months to see optimal results across your website. 

With search engine positioning, as you’re concentrating on a smaller group of pages, you can potentially see results sooner. 

Tips to Improve Your Search Engine Positioning

My team and I use search engine positioning a lot on the Neil Patel blog. We track the rankings of all our pages and regularly make updates to ensure all our content ranks as well as possible.

This means we’re well-placed to help you improve your search engine positioning – here are six of our expert tips. 

1. Single Out Target Pages

The first step for successful search engine positioning is to identify the best pages to optimize – ones where you will see maximum results  effort. 

Ideally you want to focus on pages that are on the:

  • Second page of the search engine results that you can push onto the first page.
  • First page of the search engine results that are in striking distance of the top three.

You’ll also need to think about the type of pages you want to optimize. For example, evergreen content that people will continue to search for in the future, or core product pages which drive conversions across your site.

You can determine which pages to optimize, as well as which keywords to optimize for, with an SEO tool. 

Google Search Console is great for this – go to Search Results, toggle to Pages and you can see your average search position for each web page.

Search results report in Google Search Console

You can also use Ubersuggest’s Rank Tracking Report to see which keywords you’re ranking for, keyword competitiveness, and trends over time.

Ubersuggest Rank Tracking report

2. Refresh Your Existing Content

Once you’ve decided which page (or pages) you want to target, it’s time to refresh your content.

Google’s Helpful Content Update, which launched in 2022, prioritizes trustworthy, high-quality content that provides value. This means a refresh can improve your search engine presence, as well as make your readers happier.

Added bonus – updating your content and changing the publish date updates the date in the search engine results, making it more appealing to readers!

Example of dates in Google Search results

When refreshing your content:

  • Check external links – remove any broken or out-of-date ones.
  • Update out-of-date or irrelevant information.
  • Make your content easier to read with paragraph breaks, subheadings, and bullet points.
  • Optimize for new keywords.
  • Fix any grammar or spelling mistakes.
  • Add new images and videos alongside optimized alt text.

I recommend looking at what’s ranking at the top of the search engine results, as this is the content you’ll want to beat. See who the content targets, how long it is, and what questions it answers.

A solid internal linking strategy has many benefits. It:

  • Helps readers find new information and stay on your site for longer.
  • Helps the search engines crawl your website, meaning pages get indexed sooner.
  • Passes link equity (or “link juice”) to other pages, giving them a boost in the search engine rankings.
Diagram showing how link juice works

Here’s how to make sure your internal linking helps your search engine positioning efforts:

  • Think carefully about which pages you link to – which will get the most benefit?
  • Use contextual anchor text – avoid vague phrases like “click here.”
  • Don’t use too many links on a page – this can dilute their value.
  • Refresh old content with new, relevant internal links.

4. Improve Organic CTR

Search engine positioning isn’t just about making changes to your page – it’s about optimizing your content in the search engine results.

Your title tag and meta description are the first thing people see in the search engine results. An engaging, relevant title tag and meta description encourage them to visit your site, boosting your CTR and showing the search engines that your content is valuable.

Title tag and meta description in the search engine results

Here’s how to enhance your CTR and improve your search engine positioning:

  • Use unique titles and descriptions for each page on your site.
  • Keep your titles and descriptions short so they don’t get cut off in the search results.
  • Use keywords where possible – but don’t shoehorn them in.
  • Include a call-to-action to encourage people to click to your website.

It’s essential to be aware of the Google ranking factors when optimizing your pages. Backlinks are still one of the strongest ranking signals around. 

Links from high-quality, relevant websites act as a vote of confidence in your pages, having a significant effect on where they appear in the search results.

There are two ways of getting backlinks for your pages:

  • Create amazing content that other sites want to link to.
  • Engage in targeted outreach to convince other sites to link to your content.

An easy way to do link outreach is to use a backlink analysis tool to see which backlinks your competitors have on their pages. You can then reach out to the relevant sites and ask them to consider a link to your pages too.

Remember that quality is better than quantity when getting backlinks – one good link will do more for your search engine positioning than lots of spammy ones!

6. Measure Your Efforts

Once you’ve carried out these steps, you need to monitor your page rankings to see if the changes you’ve made have had a positive effect on your rankings.

As in step one, Google Search Console and the Ubersuggest Rank Tracking report are great places to start. Semrush and Ahrefs have great page and keyword tracking tools too.

If your page rank hasn’t increased, you may need to make more changes. Revisit your target audience and look at how you can offer content that appeals to them and resolves their pain points. 

Don’t Forget Your Technical SEO Basics

Search engine positioning can be a highly effective tool, but it’s still essential to implement SEO best practices.

You could have the most informative, keyword-rich, value-driven page in the world. However, if it’s not mobile-responsive, is slow to load, or performs poorly when it comes to the Core Web Vitals, it won’t rank highly.

Think about the user experience you offer on your page and take technical SEO into account.

This won’t just boost the rankings of specific pages of your site but give your entire website a welcome boost in the search engine results.

FAQs

What is search engine positioning?

Search engine positioning is the process of optimizing a particular web page to help it rank higher in the search engine results.

Why is search engine positioning important?

Search engine positioning is important as by improving your search engine ranking, you increase the chances of prospective customers visiting your website.

It can also increase the likelihood of your web page getting selected as a featured snippet or as a source in an AI Overview.

How do you measure search engine positioning?

You can measure search engine positioning with a good keyword or page tracking tool. For example, Google Search Console or Ubersuggest’s Rank Tracking tool.

Conclusion

If your content isn’t doing as well as you expected or a competitor is now ranking above you in search results, search engine positioning can help you climb the rankings.

Remember that search engine positioning is all about small changes that make a big impact. Identify the pages that need the most attention and what you can do to make your content the most engaging.

Let me leave you with one final piece of advice – search engine positioning should be a continuous process. 
By regularly optimizing pages that need attention, you can ensure you rank as high as possible in Google and offer well-written content that your customers want to read.

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Neil Patel

About the author:

Co Founder of NP Digital & Owner of Ubersuggest

He is the co-founder of NP Digital. The Wall Street Journal calls him a top influencer on the web, Forbes says he is one of the top 10 marketers, and Entrepreneur Magazine says he created one of the 100 most brilliant companies. Neil is a New York Times bestselling author and was recognized as a top 100 entrepreneur under the age of 30 by President Obama and a top 100 entrepreneur under the age of 35 by the United Nations.

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Neil Patel

source: https://neilpatel.com/blog/search-engine-positioning/