As we enter into the New Year, it’s a strong time to review your website and your online marketing strategy. Take some time to analyze what worked and what didn’t work over the last year, there are more SEO ranking factors that help search engines to complete which sites should show in search results and how they should rank. If you want your site to claim the top spots on SERPs, you need to optimize your online existence to outfit to these factors.
A list of the most important Google ranking factors a beginner should know.
- High Quality and Relevant Content
- Site Security
- Mobile Friendliness
- Site Speed
- Technical SEO
- Target long-tail Keywords
- Backlink Profile
- Domain age
- Metadata
High Quality and Relevant Content:
Content is one of the ways to boost user traffic on your site and address to search engines is by frequently publishing high-quality content on your site. Google algorithm prefers freshly updated content. It does not mean that you have to edit your pages all the time. For example, if a user clicks on a page that provides useful information and they stay on it for certain minute reading, this is likely to result in a higher ranking page.
Site Security:
Site security indicates the use of HTTPS encryption. Sites with HTTPS encryption have SSL certificates that create a secure connection between a website and its users. It adds an extra layer of security that protects information exchanged between users and the site. Search engines want to drive users to the most dependable sites, and HTTPS encryption shows them that a site is secure. If your website URL begins with HTTP it’s not a secure site, beginning with HTTPS is a secure site and you should add an SSL certificate.
Mobile Friendliness:
Mobile-friendly sites provide a good user experience by using a responsive design that adjusts the content so that, it looks good on each screen size. It makes sense for Google to list results that are easy to read and use on mobile.
Site Speed up:
The website takes more than 3 seconds to load and 80% of visitors won’t return. if the website takes more time to load the visitor of your website will browse another website, Google will lower your website’s rank if it finds the users are spending less time on your site. The lower your website ranks, it will get less visibility. This ultimately affects your organic traffic as it gets hard for users to find your site
Technical SEO:
Technical SEO focuses on the back-end of your website to see how the pages are technically set up and formulated. Factors include elements like page speed, crawling, indexing, and more. here some basics about technical SEO.
- Fix broken links
- Create an XML sitemap
- Optimize Internal Links
- Include Your Main Keywords in Image Alt Text
- Install an SSL Certificate for Your Website
Target long-tail Keywords:
Long-tail keywords account for a majority of web searches, Focusing on long-tail keywords is a great SEO tactic. Long-tail keywords are keywords or keyphrases that are more specific – and usually longer – than more commonly used keywords.
Backlink Profile:
Links help Google to assess your authority and they also help other web users to find your content, The most important off-page ranking factor with the biggest impact is backlinks pointing to your website, Backlinks occur when other websites link back to your website. You can access backlinks by off-page SEO techniques.
Domain age:
Domain age is used to find how old your website is often considered a ranking factor. While Google doesn’t clearly state this as one of its SEO ranking factors, research has found that older domains tend to rank better.
Metadata:
Metadata is a series of mainframe communications between your site and search engines. It’s important for e-commerce marketers to understand the metadata that drives search engine optimization. Without metadata, we weaken our ability to demonstrate relevance to search engines. That, in turn, lowers our rankings and reduces the number of consumers to our e-commerce sites.
