I’ve been in content marketing for over a decade, and let me say that it’s never been this hard to rank highly in search.

The reason is that there’s a lot of content out there — Google says that it indexes “hundreds of billions of webpages,” which take up over “100,000,000 gigabytes in size.”

With these numbers, does it even make sense to publish new articles? Absolutely — you just have to change your approach to creating content to improve your keyword rankings.

Here’s how to find out what your current rankings are, along with 11 tips to help you boost your positions.

Table of Contents

• What is a keyword ranking?
• How to Check Your Keyword Ranking
• How to Improve Keyword Rankings

What is a keyword ranking?

A keyword is a phrase you enter into a search engine to get an answer to your query. In an ideal scenario, you’ll get a list of results matching your intent. Keyword ranking refers to a web page’s position in those search results.

For example, if we Google “best content marketing tactics,” HubSpot ranks first for this phrase and Outbrain second.

Why are keyword rankings important?

Since I started my marketing career, brands have fought to secure a spot in the top three search results — and for good reason. The number one result has an average click-through rate of 27.6%, which is 10 times higher than a source ranked in the tenth position.

As the saying goes, the best place to hide a dead body is on page two of Google. Most people don’t want to go through hundreds of websites to find an answer. They focus on the first page, trusting that a high-ranking site means high-quality content.

How to Check Your Keyword Ranking

There are two types of tools for checking keyword rankings:

• Admin panels like Google Search Console (GSC), which provide data directly from search engines.
• External software designed for keyword and rank tracking.

Let’s say you’re starting from scratch and haven’t set up Google Search Console or Google Analytics yet. In this scenario, it’s easier (and faster) to run a quick ranking audit through an external tool. There are plenty to choose from on the market. Personally, I use Keysearch.

That said, you can’t rely solely on commercial solutions like these. Your owned rank tracking tools show you first-party information. You’ll see not only your keyword positions and traffic but also your website performance.

Rank tracking tools let you manage your site technicalities and alert you about any site performance issues — both of which could impact your SEO ranks. You also need them to set redirects between pages and to index your web pages faster.

To set these accounts up, you need to follow the instructions from search engines — here’s a step-by-step from Google.

In this section, I’m going to show you how to get an overview of your keyword rankings using external tools. Most ranking tracking tools work similarly. In this step-by-step, I’ll refer to Keysearch since that’s my go-to choice:

Step 1: Create an account.

You sign up by filling out your details. Some companies offer free basic keyword rank tracking tools (like Ahrefs does with their webmaster tools). Others give you a free trial or require upfront payment. In any case, setting up an account shouldn’t take more than a few minutes.

Step 2: Go to competitive analysis and select organic keywords.

Once you’re in, you can start checking your keyword ranks in search. Different tools can call this functionality differently. In Keysearch, you click on “Competitive Analysis” in the search bar, and then select “Organic keywords” from the drop-down list.

Source

Step 3: Enter your URL.

Enter your URL. If you’re using Keysearch like I am, you’ll have two drop-down lists to choose from before you run your keyword rankings analysis. To see the highest-ranking keywords for your website at the top, select the “by rank” option in the first drop-down list:

Next, you get to decide if you want to see results for the entire domain or maybe just for a specific page. Assuming you’ve never checked your rankings before, you’ll want a site-wide analysis, so you select “entire domain.”

Next, click on “Search” and wait for the numbers to roll in.

Step 3: Analyze your results and use sorting for more context.

For this example, I decided to check HubSpot’s existing rankings. Here’s what I got. Notice that there are a lot of keywords that rank first in Google:

They’re listed in alphabetical order, so you can’t say how many high-volume keywords you have at top ranking yet. You also don’t know how much traffic your domain gets for these particular phrases.

To find the answers, click on the Volume and Traffic tabs. Here’s a sorted list of keywords by their search volumes:

And here’s a view of keywords sorted by the actual traffic your site gets:

You can do the exact opposite and use sorting to see which keywords get little or zero traffic. You can correlate it to the keyword’s search volume and so-called difficulty score (i.e., a score that tells you how hard the competition is for each exact phrase from other publishers).

This is just the start of your SEO keyword rankings journey. Now that you have your current numbers, you can seek out opportunities for ranking for more phrases and, ultimately, getting more clicks.

Important note: If your website is new and doesn’t have many subpages or content, you’ll likely see few keywords in your results. In some cases, you might not be able to see any at all. Don’t worry. You’re just at the start of your SEO journey. The more content and the bigger your site becomes, the more phrases you’ll likely see in rank-tracking tools.

How to Improve Keyword Rankings

To help you put your best foot forward, I spoke to several content and SEO specialists, asking them for advice. I’ve also shared my own experiences from working on keyword rankings for clients. Here are 11 tips I recommend following.

Create topic clusters.

Content clusters are a tactic I can swear by as someone who’s implemented it across multiple projects.

If you haven’t heard of them before, it’s an approach popularized by HubSpot, which focuses on structuring content around core topics (pillar content) with related, interlinked supporting pieces. You can take a look at the image below to understand the structure:

Start by creating a list of keywords that revolve around the main topic. Then, create articles and a pillar guide around them. This lets search engines notice that you publish a lot of content around a topic, which positions you as a subject expert (and, ideally, boosts your content in results above other brands who don’t pay much attention to the area).

Parker Warren, founder and CEO of PWA Media, also found success with this tactic. He told me that his brand uses clusters to strengthen content relevance and interlinking.

“We identify the main keyword that is already ranked, and then we focus on developing supporting content for the closely related topics. From these closely related topics, we then link back to our main page, signaling Google about the well-structured content and completeness of the topic”, Warren shares.

PWA Media used this approach to help a healthcare client increase their primary keyword from position number #14 to number #3 in search in just three months. Warren says that this also increased organic traffic by 60%.

Work on your DA.

One factor that significantly impacts your keyword rankings is your Domain Authority (DA). The higher your DA, the better your chances of ranking in the top 10.

I am not saying that a lower DA makes it impossible to secure a good position. Exceptionally good content can sometimes outrank a brand with a higher DA. That said, a higher DA generally makes ranking easier.

The best way to improve your Domain Authority is by building backlinks. Focus on quality over quantity — a few backlinks from high-authority sites are far more valuable than dozens from low-authority ones. Also, it’s worth comparing your DA against your competitors.

For example, if you were a freelance writer, you’d have to compete with DAs as high as 80 and 90. An average DA for the phrase “freelance writing” is 56, and this is the score you should aim for (initially).

Use semantic keywords.

A good tactic for boosting your keyword rankings is adding semantic phrases to your main keyword or topic.

Brendan Brown, SEO expert and content strategist at Global English Editing says he focuses on strengthening content through related terms and context. Instead of just targeting the same keyword repeatedly, he aims to improve its relevance by integrating similar terms that support the overall content.

Brown points to the article “The 120 Best Websites for Writers.”

“I didn’t just focus on the main keyword ]websites for writers.’ I also included related terms such as writing/planning tools, freelance writing, and online writing platforms in a natural, helpful way. This helped Google see the page as authoritative on the subject and boosted its rankings without keyword stuffing,” says Brown.

Use Schema markup.

Schema markup (also called structured data) is a type of code that you add to your website to help search engines understand what your content is about. By clearly communicating to Google the purpose of your content, you enable it to display the right pages to your target audience, which can improve your CTR and drive more organic traffic.

Jakob Kapus, chief marketing officer of Newsapi.AI, calls this strategy “Data-Driven Serpentine Storytelling.” It involves creating a seamless content journey using structured data to anticipate and answer follow-up queries a user might have after interacting with the main article.

“For instance, if an article focuses on ‘How AI revolutionizes journalism,’ we embed structured FAQ schemas that predictively address deeper questions like ‘What are the risks of AI in journalism?’ … The content flows like a story, with each section designed to capture long-tail keywords users might search for after their initial query,” says Kapus.

Such an approach not only satisfies user intent but signals relevance and depth to search engines, helping Newsapi.AI rank higher and retain traffic.

Look into user engagement metrics.

At first glance, it might seem like on-site user engagement and keywords are unrelated, but that’s not true. Looking at how long visitors stay on each of your landing pages and blog content can inspire plenty of keyword-related improvements.

Hanzel Talorete, content manager at Get Smart Series, told me that she analyzes several on-site behavior statistics.

“We analyze how readers interact with our content — what they click on, how long they stay, and what they share. We then use this data to adjust the content’s depth, clarity, and usefulness, tailoring it to meet user intent more effectively,” Talorete says.

These learnings can also inspire new keywords worth including in each blog post.

Talorete says that aligning content more closely to their readers’ values brinings two benefits. Firstly, it’s about meeting their audience’s needs. Secondly, about signaling to search engines that these valuable pieces are worth ranking higher.

Identify underperforming content and update or remove it.

It’s never enjoyable to see your content hidden way down in search results. The silver lining is that not all declining or plateauing keyword rankings are lost forever.

Chris Bajda, managing partner at Groomsday, recommends using tools like GSC and Ahrefs to analyze two types of keywords:

• Those that your site currently ranks for between positions 8-20.
• Those with declining clicks and impressions.

You should then reassess the intent behind each such keyword. “Has it shifted? Ensure your content aligns with current search intent (e.g., informational, transactional),” Bajda says.

Once you know this, you can enrich content with questions related to the topic using tools like People Also Ask or AnswerThePublic. He also recommends enriching the content

with updated statistics, multimedia (videos, infographics), and unique insights.

Bajda uses such an approach to improve keyword rankings at Groomsday.

“For example, our ‘Top Wedding Gifts’ article was slipping from page one, so we added fresh product recommendations, updated links, and integrated long-tail keywords. This not only revitalized the content but also increased user engagement, leading to a 20% boost in organic traffic and reclaiming our spot on the first page,” Bajda says.

How about content or pages that became obsolete and seem hard – if not impossible – to fix? Nathan Clark, CEO of Organix SEO Agency, says that it’s worth pulling the plug on some pages as they can harm your rankings. This is known as “content pruning”.

“It’s effective because when you get rid of weak pages, you ensure that only quality and useful pages are left, and enhance your site’s authority,” he says.

What about keywords lost in the content deletion process? You can repurpose them in new articles or copy/paste parts of the deleted content into other articles to create cornerstone content for your audience. This can improve rankings because you focus on providing real benefits to the users.

Use internal links.

When you create a new content piece, do you remember to add internal links? If you don’t then you should start immediately. Maurizio Petrone, founder and CEO at PressHERO says strategic internal linking is his favourite tactic for improving keyword rankings.

“By identifying high-authority pages on your website and linking them to the pages you want to boost, you can transfer link equity and improve their rankings,” says Petrone.

Here’s how he does it step by step:

• Find a high-authority page (e.g., a comprehensive guide) that ranks well for relevant keywords.
• Identify a target page you want to improve rankings for.
• Add a contextual link from the high-authority page to the target page, using descriptive anchor text.
• Monitor the target page’s rankings and organic traffic over time.

“I’ve used this tactic to improve rankings for key pages by 2-5 positions on average, resulting in a 20-30% increase in organic traffic,” adds Petrone.

Kacper Rafalski, a demand generation team leader at Netguru, follows a similar approach. He says that internal linking is often an overlooked strategy that, when done right, has a huge impact on rankings.

“I’ve seen results quickly — about a 15-20% boost in rankings for some of our lower-performing pages within a few weeks,” adds Rafalski.

Integrate long-tail keywords into your already high-performing content.

A lot of us marketers are guilty of focusing mainly on broad, high-volume keywords, hoping to attract more traffic. Unfortunately, they’re very competitive and as such hard to rank for. Also, as they’re more generic, they have a lower conversion potential. Does it mean you should ignore them completely? Absolutely not.

Rather than focusing solely on broad, highly competitive terms, pinpoint and incorporate specific, niche long-tail phrases that closely match the search intentions of your audience, says Dionne Jayne Ricafort, marketing manager at CSO Yemen.

Ricafort notes that refreshing top-performing pages with detailed phrases allows the team to boost visibility for more targeted queries. They can also increases user engagement by meeting the searcher’s needs.

“This approach has been particularly successful in moving our rankings from the top 10 to the top 3 for several key pages,” adds Ricafort.

Include expert insights.

If I were to give you just one piece of advice for your content, then this would be it. For each article you publish, try to include a few first-hand experiences or tips.

Depending on the subject you’re writing about, these could come from your own knowledge of the topic or from someone from your company. You can also enrich your content with insights from external experts (as you’ve probably noticed, this content is a perfect example of such an approach).

Google pays attention to the expertise, experience, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness of online content (known as EEAT). The more you can prove to readers – and search engines – that you’ve written a valuable piece, the higher your chances of taking a high spot for a phrase.

Focus on MOFU content.

Marketers love creating TOFU (top-of-funnel) content because it usually includes high-volume keywords. However, while this approach may drive more traffic, it often results in low conversion rates, as these keywords are too broad to attract the right audience. So, what should you do instead?

Alex Ugarte, operations manager at London Office Space, recommends shifting your focus toward mid-funnel content, targeting keywords and topics that align with the specific interests and needs of your buyer personas at this stage.

“It’s a strategic pivot that allows us to capture the attention of users who are further along in their decision-making process. By pre-emptively offering them the detailed information they’re seeking at this point in the customer journey, they’re less likely to seek it out elsewhere,” Ugarte says.

According to Ugarte, by concentrating on content that compares services with competitors, the company engaged more qualified leads and improved conversion rates.

Many Factors Contribute to Reaching High Keyword Rankings

Getting your web page or article to the first few results in Google comes down to a lot more than just shortlisting relevant phrases. Just because a keyword has a high search volume or a low difficulty score doesn’t necessarily mean you should target it.

Working on your organic search ranks requires strategic thinking about each keyword’s intent. What do people entering the term into Google want? Is that something you can offer?

Perhaps most importantly of all, make sure that the content you write always adds value. If you create relevant content, search engines will take note – and so will your audience.