What are the no-brainer steps to getting your website to rank?

Create Content

Create text-based content early and often. Google likes freshness and will reward your website when new words and pages appear frequently. Make content around the keywords you want to rank for. If the content is good, the next section becomes infinitely easier. People will share your content if it’s valuable, earning you valuable backlinks and traffic. Not rocket science.

Backlinks

Google likes when other websites link to your website, but not all links are treated equally. Many major websites insert “nofollow” tags on links that direct off of their own domain – a strategy to retain SEO juice. “nofollow” links aren’t useless, but they’re not as impactful as links that are follow eligible. Facebook, Twitter, Quora, and Wikipedia are all nofollow. Reddit is generally nofollow, but popular posts are rewarded as follow eligible.

Keyword Optimization

Put the keywords you want to rank for all over the place. Headers, titles, page URL, hosted image URLs and image meta descriptions. Balance an aggressive approach with not sounding like an SEO spam robot.

Set realistic goals

Make sure that your keyword goals are attainable. For you to see search traffic, you need to rank on page 1. Is your target keyword broad and generic, and are the incumbent ranking pages from legitimate heavy hitters? Unlikely to crack page 1 unless you’re also a heavy-hitter with a broad backlink profile.