The practice of aligning your website with search engine ranking factors is called search engine optimization (SEO). You do not necessarily search engine-optimize your whole site at once, but rather each individual page on your site. Here’s how to do so:

1. Determine Your Keywords

First, determine which search queries you want Google to answer with your website pages. These are known as keywords—which, by the way, can be single words OR phrases.
Examples of keywords include:
• “MA tenant laws”
• “salon near me”
• “brunch Boston”
• “air conditioner repair Brighton”
• “how to plug a leaky roof”
• “how to get on the first page of Google”
Each page on your website should target a different set of keywords so that the pages aren’t competing with each other.
The right keywords for your business are those that your ideal customers are typing in to get the products and services they need. For help choosing keywords for your business, check out our article: How Local Businesses Can Improve SEO: Tips for Ranking on Google

2. Tell Google Your Keywords

Google works by crawling the web, inventorying the millions of pages that exist, and storing them in an index. When a user performs a search, Google can then scan through its more organized index (rather than the whole web) to quickly come up with relevant results.
Therefore, another important step for showing up on the first page of Google is to make it as easy as possible for Google to scan, index, and retrieve your site. Do this by placing keywords in the following places of your webpages:
• TitleEvery blog post and page of your website has a title. This title appears at the top of your page but also as the title of that page’s listing in search results.
• Meta DescriptionThe meta description is the little blurb that shows up underneath the title in Google search results. In addition to telling Google what your page is about, the meta description quickly tells a searcher what they can expect if they click on your page, increasing the relevant clicks to that page. Therefore the meta description helps Google to put your business on the right first page for the right searches and helps Google searchers to keep it there.
• URL
A URL is basically a fancy name for “link”. It consists of your domain name (such as thrivehive.com), followed by a forward slash, followed by text separated by dashes. For example, the URL of this page is thrivehive.com/get-on-the-first-page-of-google/
Including keywords in your URL will help Google more quickly identify what your page is about. Also, the URL appears in between the title and meta description in search results. A clean URL that matches the title of the page is more appealing and trustworthy to users, and better suited for first-page appearances.
• Alt Tags
Google can only see images if the image has a text alternative (aka alt tag). If your alt tag includes keywords, Google can detect further relevancy of that page and feel more comfortable putting you on its first page of search results.

3. Write for Humans

Of course, the body of your page’s content is the most important place to include the keywords for which you’re trying to rank. However, it is crucial that these keywords are not systematically and excessively inserted but naturally incorporated. In fact, Google can now detect keyword stuffing and if it does it will place you far, far from the first page of its results.
The key to getting on the first page of Google is providing useful, trustworthy, easy-to-read, but informative content that will keep your target audience on your pages and coming back for more. If you want to rank on the first page of Google for a particular keyword search, your page needs to provide the information, and not just the keywords, that users are trying to obtain when they type that search into Google.

4. Emphasize Location

Another way to get your website pages on the first page of Google is to target location-based queries. Make sure your website clearly indicates your city and/or geographic area, via your contact page and potentially also through blog posts and services pages. That way, when people search: “your industry” + ”your city”, Google will pick up that information and show your business as a “near me” search result.
Even if a user does not search using a specific location, Google will still serve up geographically relevant results based on their IP address, so local SEO is always important.

5. Optimize for Mobile

You will not find a website at the top of a Google search that is not responsive. Consumers now use phones and tablets more than computers and laptops, and the majority of local searches are performed on mobile devices. As a result, Google favors mobile-friendly websites. Responsive is ideal, as your website will adapt to any size screen and maintain functionality. However, if you don’t have a responsive website, there are adjustments you can make to your site to ensure the most seamless experience for a mobile user.

6. Focus on User Experience

Being mobile-friendly isn’t enough for a website. It must also be appealing and user-friendly. A website with intuitive navigation, clear calls to action, and answers to your visitors’ most immediate questions will keep visitors there longer and coming back later—which Google will notice and, in turn, rank you higher. The higher you rank, the more traffic you will get to your site, and the more likely you are to show up on the first page.