[SEO] How My Blog Ranked From Page 6 to Page 3 on Google Search Within a Day

Did you launch a new website recently? Chances are, it’s buried in the Google Search results.

Currently, a few of my articles are already ranking on the first page on Google search for long-tail keywords. But where does my blog homepage ranks on Google?

This article will be a case study on how simply updating my Site’s Meta Tag Improved my blog’s Google search ranking from page 6 to page 3 within a day.

A site tag is the text description to tell Google what your website is all about.

Let’s do a step-by-step case study on how I checked my rank and change my site’s tag.

Let’s get started:

Knowing Your Main Keyword

How do you want your site to be found organically?

For me, I want my blog to be found when people Google search one of the following search phrases:

Personal Finance Blog for Malaysian Millennial – (too specific)

Personal Finance Blog Malaysia – (specific, good search traffic)

Personal Finance Blog – (too broad, massive competition)

The keyword phrase ‘Personal Finance Blog Malaysia‘ would be perfect for my new blog to compete for at this stage.

It explains what my blog is all about, and it’s in an optimum spot between enough search traffic and not too much competition.

For you, it could be: ‘Malaysia Corporate Development Trainer’ or ‘Kuala Lumpur Luxury Car Rental,’ etc.

Now let’s see where my blog currently ranks:

Check Your Website’s Google Search Rank

Let’s open up Chrome Incognito and search for ‘Personal Finance Blog Malaysia.’ Here are the first page results (where I want to be):

The first page results are all known personal finance blogs that already have followings, or I’m an actual fan myself.

These are all the websites that I have to compete with for the top spot on Google.

Google ranks these websites based on who it thinks provides the most comprehensive answer to someone’s search queries.

My blog (Balkoni Hijau) is relatively new, with only 50+ articles. It’s not on the first nor the second page of Google for the search phrase ‘Persona Finance Blog Malaysia.’

So let’s keep going down the Google pages until I find my website.

Found it, in the middle of page 6:

Yikes, page 6? That’s nowhere near acceptable. The text description below my website title (known as a site meta tag) looks a little weird:

‘A Personal Finance Blog for Millennials. Hire Me. Recent Post’

This reminds me that I have most probably have not set my site’s meta tag. 

Without a configured meta tag, Google automatically pulls data from the front page of my website: 

‘Hire me‘ was from the button
‘Recent Post‘ is the header

The fact that Google took the first three texts from my home page as my site’s meta tag means that Google doesn’t have a clear idea of what my website is all about.

Now I know that meta tag is the issue, let’s see what we can do:

How to Update Your Site’s Meta Tag

Go to your WordPress admin page. Usually, your Meta Tag will be under Settings > General.

As can be seen below, my tagline box is empty:

Depending on what theme that you’re using, in my case, mine has a built-in SEO section that will override the default meta tags by WordPress.

So it makes sense for me to change it at my theme’s setting level.

My Theme Settings > SEO:

I typed in the Site Title & Site Description of whatever I want Google to put as my site’s meta tag:

Hit save and now wait for Google to crawl your website.

After About 24 Hours

I was expecting Google to take some time to index my blog’s changes. But I got impatient and checked anyway after about 24 hours.

I made it to the bottom of page 3 now!:

The night before, it was at the top of page 4. When I was writing this blog, it was at the bottom of page 3.

Google consistently ranks content, so expect your ranking to fluctuate.

Key Takeaway

A quick recap of what we achieved:

I Improved Google Search Ranking from page 6 to page 3 within 24 hours by simply updating my website’s meta tags.

What’s Next to Rank On 1st Page?

We all want to rank on the first page of Google Search. Improving a new tiny website from page 6 to page 3 within 24 hours is pretty impressive.

The only way you can get to page 1 of Google Search organically is to keep posting quality, engaging, and helpful content.

Please help to share this article to new small website owners out there and help to improve their ranking 🙂