What are the top SEO Ranking Factors
A Secure and Accessible Website
One of the ranking factors from our SEO strategy is having a URL that is suitable for Search Engine bots. This ensures that they can easily reach and crawl your website, creating a satisfactory user experience.
Mobile Friendliness
When it comes to SEO, mobile readiness is an important factor. More people use mobile devices than desktop ones, and this is why Google has started ranking websites that provide a great experience for these devices higher in search rankings.
Optimized Content
Content is one of the most important aspects of SEO because it heavily impacts how well your business ranks. We’ve talked about content throughout this article in order to make sure you understand its importance. If you want to improve your ranking, you should consider investing in great content for your business.
User Experience
There are many different ways that one can rank webpages, but Google’s RankBrain is based on Artificial Intelligence in order to better sort through the various signals that are used.
Social Signals
When people share your content on social networks, that’s another sign that it’s valuable. Cognitive SEO’s study of 23 million shares found a definitive link between social shares and search engine ranking. People appreciate quality content and often share it with their friends. This can lead to more views for your content that you might not have found otherwise, amplifying the value of your work.
Page Speed (Including Mobile Page Speed)
In recent years, the importance of page speed has been one of the leading factors in determining a website’s SEO ranking. Google wants to offer a better user experience, and fast loading pages do that.
Domain Age, URL, and Authority
Did you know that about 57% of the sites with a top ten Google ranking are 3 years old or more? Data from an Ahrefs study of two million pages indicates that few websites less than a year old achieve that ranking.
Technical SEO
It is important to get the formatting and words right when scaling up your content for better search engine ranking. For many people, this process can be quite daunting due to their lack of knowledge about the technical aspects of web design.
- A sitemap that lists all your pages in a clear and easy-to-follow format is a great way to draw in new visitors.
- A robots.txt file is a good way to tell Google where it can and can’t look for your site information, which in turn helps to keep them out of areas that are either off-limits or not yet ready to be indexed by Google.
- A website created with a well-coded website builder will be one that has been carefully designed with a focus on user experience. The developer of such a website might consider the needs of the person coming to the site and make their journey through it as smooth and pleasant as possible.
This is definitely another major SEO ranking factor. worth considering, more people are using mobile devices than desktops to access the internet. That’s why there have been changes in how Google ranks search results.
When it comes to SEO ranking factors, mobile readiness is an important factor. More people use mobile devices than desktop ones, and this is why Google has started ranking websites that provide a great experience for these devices higher in search rankings.
Mobile Friendliness an important SEO Ranking Factor
Google’s now mobile-first index is now a reality, which means that it’s drawing its results from mobile-optimized sites first, rather than sites geared towards desktop computers. If your site isn’t mobile optimized, you risk getting needlessly under-ranked. We can help you create a mobile site that will rank higher on Google’s result pages.
- Make sure that your website's content is not hidden due to advertisements by adjusting your website template and ensuring that the essential content is always present.
- When designing your site, it is important to include easy-to-follow menus. This will allow for better navigation by users on the site.
- Typography is a very important part of any website's design and the font type and size should be selected to ensure that readability is not sacrificed on smaller screens.
- Have a site that automatically adjusts to fit for viewing on any device, no matter the size.
Some studies show that target keywords in the domain name can be beneficial to SEO performance. Exact match domains (those where the target keyword is found in the URL) are still penalized by Google though.
Did you know that about 57% of the sites with a top ten Google ranking are 3 years old or more?
Data from an Ahrefs study of two million pages indicates that few websites less than a year old achieve that ranking.
5. Optimized Content
Content is one of the most important aspects of SEO ranking factors because it heavily impacts how well your business ranks.
We’ve talked about content throughout this article in order to make sure you understand its importance. If you want to improve your ranking, you should consider investing in great content for your business.
1Not only is SEO about the main keyword. There’s also LSI keywords, that help to provide additional information. This can help Google understand what you are writing more easily and rank higher for your desired keywords.
2You should also consider what people are searching for when optimizing your content. That means you need to find out what people are hoping to find as they type in search keywords.
3Yes, Google wants your content to be quality and long enough. Creating more words just to make it longer is never usually helpful, but if the subject requires depth then give it depth
4You might need to start including video in your content strategy. Videos get much more engagement than other kinds of content and you will benefit from search engine rankings when people share them with others.
…Google search relies on keywords that are the words and phrases that searchers use when they're looking for information.
They're also the words and phrases that go into describing topics your site is about.
One of the most damaging factors related to SEO is duplicate content. For that reason, use fresh, original content on your site. And if you have pieces of original content that are similar, make Google declare which one should be ranked as most authoritative by using canonical URLs.
7. User Experience
There are many different ways that one can rank webpages, but Google's RankBrain is based on Artificial Intelligence in order to better sort through the various signals that are used.
The percentage of people who click to visit your site after an entry comes up in search results is a number that you can use to gauge the effectiveness of your SEO efforts.
The number of people who visit your page but quickly return to the search results is a good indication that they were not satisfied with the content on the page.
how long on average each of your visitors stay on your site after they’ve arrived.
Inboud Links
Google will look at how people are talking about your content, what other sites are linking to it, and how authoritative the people linking to your site are.
You may have heard that inbound links are also referred to as “backlinks.” A good strategy is to make sure you only attract the best-quality sites to link back to you. That way, even if it's an old site or if your site quality isn't the best, you'll still be getting high-quality traffic from them.
Outbound Links
It’s important to show your visitors that you are producing quality content, so you should use outbound links to link to authoritative sites in your niche.
Your content should always be your priority. That being said, outbound links can still have a positive effect on the authority of your site.
When you are doing your research, make sure to only use sources that have high domain authority. To be fair, you should do this anyway for your user’s sake as well as your own.
Internal Links
By linking to your own content can help tie pages together for both Google and your visitors. A good link helps make a page more valuable. If you have a high-quality page and link to an authoritative page on your site then that will help future visitors find that other, related page.
When you create new content, make sure to backlinks it to other pages on your site, so that the information you’re sharing is organized and has a clear logical flow. In addition, don’t forget that we said this at the start of this section.
9. Social
Signals
Another SEO ranking factor that can is valuable if you have a great social presence
When people share your content on social networks, that’s another sign that it’s valuable. Cognitive SEO’s study of 23 million shares found a definitive link between social shares and search engine ranking. People appreciate quality content and often share it with their friends. This can lead to more views for your content that you might not have found otherwise, amplifying the value of your work.
Google stated on this matter that social shares are not direct ranking factors. Links from Twitter or Facebook are not treated the same as links from other websites.
There is no denying that the top results in Google search usually have a lot of shares, but it’s probably due to a few related factors.
- The more shares an article gets, the more traffic it will be getting.
- More shares also make your content more likely to generate backlinks
This last tip is really important for any business. The absence or presence of trusted information about your business can make a huge difference when it comes to local rankings and may also have a significant impact on the organic search results that come from that area.
OUr Last SEO Ranking Factor TIp
So it’s important to look after areas like:
- NAP (name, address, phone number)
- Business listings on Google My Business and Facebook
- Reviews on both those sites and relevant directories like Google Reviews and others
- The right local search terms