You're asking
a classic question that a lot of online publishers ask, and I'm talking about publishers with half a clue because the other half don't even know about indexing.
They just publish and hope for the best.
At least you got half right.
Well, I'm sorry to say that to get your posts ranked, you must
first come up with the right posts.
This is the step that a lot of people neglect.
In fact, in many cases, they're completely clueless about this part.
It begins with keyword selection.
You have to understand that in almost all niches,
keyword selection can mean the difference between life and death.
I know that sounds melodramatic, but it's true.
Because if you pick a keyword that the heavy-weight giants in your niche already dominate, good luck with that!
It's not gonna happen because you just have a brand new site with no domain authority.
So you have to
find keywords that are easier to rank and that are directly related to your niche that pulls some amount of traffic.
This should be your main task.
The good news is there's a shortcut to this.
It's called
reverse engineering.
Find the top sites that are targeting the niche that you're focused on.
Enter their domain names into paid SEO tools like SEMrush or Ahrefs.
You will then get a list of keywords that are easier to rank.
Now cross-reference this with the monthly search volume for those keywords.
At the end of this process, you should have keywords that are easier to rank and have low-to-decent levels of traffic.
But you're not done yet!
You have to load each of these keywords into Google and pay close attention to the results.
Are the results the kind of information that you would want if you enter those keywords?
The step focuses on search intent because a lot of people publish content based solely on what they think that keyword means.
They don't care about what actual users are looking for.
Google is paying attention to user experience.
If people enter keywords into a search field and pull up your site and then click the back button, Google is going to interpret that sequence of events as indicating that your site has low content quality.
Pretty soon, your rankings will drop so search intent is crucial.
Once you're clear on the search intent, the next step is to enter your target keywords into tools like Surfer SEO or Frase and come up with content with contextual keywords.
The final step is the most important part.
Read what you write.
Ask yourself the following questions
Is this stuff the kind of content my target viewers would want to read?
Is it engaging?
Is it easy to scan?
Is it easy to read?
Does it thematically flow with the rest of my site?
Is it easy to link to?
Is it easy to link from?
Does it contain up-to-date information?
Does it contain information that can't be found in one place, except on my site?
By asking yourself these qualitative questions, you go a long way in beating your competitors.
I'm not just talking about writing something that is longer than your competitors.
I'm not just talking about making sure that it has the right contextual keywords.
All those are important.
But the ultimate question you should be asking is "Is this content serving the needs of the people that searched for the keyword that this piece of content targets?"
That's how you get indexed and that's how you rank.