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Home › Start here › Improve Google rankings
Start here · Marketing

How to rank higher on Google and improve your website's SEO

To rank higher on Google, your pages need to answer what people actually search for, load quickly, work well on phones and be easy for search engines to crawl. SEO software shows which terms your buyers search, where you rank now, what competitors rank for and which technical problems hold your site back. Rankings build over time, so treat SEO as ongoing work rather than a one-off fix.

By Bill Belcamino · Page updated September 23, 2026 · Our methodologyResearched and fact-checked by the HelpCompare team
How to rank higher on Google and improve your website's SEO
Bill Belcamino
Bottom line up frontby Bill Belcamino, founder of HelpCompare
Editorial assessment

Bottom line up front: Do I need a paid SEO tool to rank higher on Google?

Not to start: the search engine's own site owner reports show which searches already find you, and a paid suite earns its fee only once someone has time to act on what it finds.

When you do pay, Ahrefs Starter is $29/mo but the full toolset starts at $129/mo (Lite), and Semrush is from $117.33/mo billed annually ($139 monthly), with extra users from $45/month. I've paid for both, and the quickest gains still don't come from them. Look in the site owner reports for pages that already get impressions but sit just off the first page, because improving a page Google already shows for a search moves faster than ranking a new one. Then guard what you have: the classic way small sites lose rankings is a redesign or platform move that changes URLs without redirects, which throws away the links the old pages earned. Map every old URL to its new one before any rebuild.

My read of the verified data on this page, checked against vendor sources on September 23, 2026. Disagree or spot an error? Tell Bill

How to improve Google rankings, step by step

The software this job takes

What to look for

Common mistakes to avoid

What to settle before you buy

Frequently asked questions

How do I rank higher on Google?

Find the searches your buyers use, give each one a page that answers it more clearly than what ranks now, and fix technical issues such as slow or broken pages. Earn links from relevant sites and keep content current. Track progress in an SEO tool and in the search engine's own site owner reports.

How do I rank on Google AI Overviews?

Start with the search engine's own guidance for site owners on its AI features. In general, pages that answer the question directly, state facts accurately and are easy to crawl are the ones worth building. Be wary of anyone promising guaranteed placement in AI answers.

What SEO tools should a beginner use?

Start with the search engine's site owner reports, then add an SEO tool when you need keyword research, rank tracking and site audits in one place. Pick one your team will actually open, and check how keywords, projects and users are limited on each plan. The table above shows each tool's verified entry price and billing unit.

How do I improve SEO on a Shopify or Wix site?

On a hosted shop or website builder, focus on what you control: page titles, descriptions, headings, image alt text, clean URLs and useful content on product and service pages. Your platform's help pages show where those settings live. An SEO tool's site audit shows which pages to fix first.

How we built this page

We start from the job, not the product. The phrasings people search for this job (for example “how to rank higher on google”) come from our research into how small and mid-size teams describe it. Which software categories the job takes is our editorial judgment. Every tool, entry price, billing unit and date comes from HelpCompare’s open dataset, recorded from each vendor’s own pricing page; nothing is estimated, and where a vendor publishes no price we say so. We take no affiliate commissions and publish no scores of our own. See our methodology or download the data from Open Data.

More jobs in Marketing

Cite this page: HelpCompare, “How to rank higher on Google and improve your website’s SEO”, helpcompare.com/start/rank-on-google/ (updated ).

Source links on this site are checked every month; last check . How sources are checked.

From shortlist to switched

Built for the leader who owns the selection, answers for the spend, drives the rollout, and lives with the results. HelpCompare covers the whole decision, not just the first step.

01 · CompareWhich tool fits your team, side by side.133 comparisons 02 · Price & approveSourced, dated pricing and a one-page brief for sign-off.Decision brief 03 · SwitchWhat moves, what you rebuild, what it costs.264 guides 04 · ShareDownload and cite the data. CC BY 4.0.Open data
Bill Belcamino, founder of HelpCompare
About the author

Bill Belcamino

Founder and author, HelpCompare

Engineer by training, operator by experience, marketer by choice. Bill spent eight and a half years as an engineer at HP, was COO of Auctiva (the number one third-party selling platform on eBay, past 200,000 users) and ran Google’s $70M/year search syndication partnership at Alot.com. Then he spent 13 years building his own web properties with his own money at stake. He has bought, trialled, integrated and cancelled more SaaS tools than he can count, and started HelpCompare because the real cost of switching tools is the part nobody covers.

“I’ve sat on both sides of the table: the agency recommending the tool and the client paying for it.”

Researched and fact-checked by the HelpCompare team. No paid sponsorships, no affiliate commissions.

Read Bill’s story How we verify pricingSpot an error? Tell Bill