How to make sure your content ranks
Step 1 - Find a keywordOne of the most important steps in the entire ranking process is honing in on a viable keyword.Here's the reality - you could be the greatest writer in the world, but if you don't target any keyword, or you target the wrong keyword, you're unlikely to get organic traffic.You'll spend hours researching, writing, formatting, inserting photos, etc. and the world will never read a single line of your content.All that effort for NOTHING.I learned this lesson the hard way (after researching, writing and publishing my first 10 posts).Those posts were not targeted - they were broad.Broad topics typically (not always) result in little to no traffic - especially for a new site.Either no one is searching those terms directly, or they are very competitive.You need a target.Something at least a little bit more specific.There are several keyword research tools out there, and lots of different ways to use them to unearth great keywords.For this example, let's go with "Block Island Beaches" as our keyword.How likely is it that a searcher who types in "Block Island Beaches" to Google is intending to find the "Block Island Beach House" hotel?Not likely! Another good sign for me...Step 4 - Quickly check DR of sites ranking on page 1DR is a made up score that determines how "strong" or "authoritative" a domain is. Basically, how much does Google "trust" a site.In theory, the higher the DR, the easier it is for them to rank content, and the harder it is for you to compete.I say "in theory" because I, and many others, regularly outrank higher DR sites (there are several ways to do this that we'll cover in a moment).