Since Google ranks websites based on hundreds of ranking factors, it can seem impossible to know what to align your SEO strategy with.
8 Essential Google Ranking Factors - What's REALLY Important For SEO
What are the most important Google ranking factors for your SEO strategy? Read who is at the top of our list and why.
Ah, the ranking factors. The ancient art of ranking in search engines is a lesson in balance and patience.
However, some people read an article like this that talks about the top ranking factors and think, "Yes, I'll take that advice."
Backlinko.com screenshot, September 2021 Ranking factors You read
weird stuff, for example there are Easter eggs.
Screenshot from Backlinko.com, September 2021 Now you can
spend all your time preparing the Easter Egg results and adjusting the Google Doodles in the SERPs, or ... you just can't.
After reading articles like this, take a shower and grab a bar of soap.
So what ranking factors should you focus on to improve your SEO?
According to Google's John Mueller, it must be in "his cool focus."
Screenshot from Twitter.com, September 2021
But with more than 1.8 billion websites on the world today , how do you createcreations amazing?
And what about an oversaturated number of articles that claim to be ranking factors, fact or fiction?
Since Google ranks websites based on hundreds of ranking factors, it can seem impossible to know what to align your SEO strategy with.
What we do know is that Google will continue to tailor its ranking signals to the needs of search engines.
This means that new SEO trends are also rooted in the current algorithm, and with a little creativity and SEO training, you could definitely achieve good rankings.
While ranking signals are by no means limited to this list, the ones highlighted here are some of the most effective on Google Ranking Factors: Fact or Fiction - Search Engine Journal with 88+ ranking factors.
What are the most important ranking factors on Google?
In no particular order, the main Google ranking factors are: •
Quality content.
Mobile first.
Experience pages.
Page speed
Optimize your page.
Internal linkslinks
External
In addition, you will find the most important local ranking factors below. Let's go!
1. Post Quality Content
"I don't need quality content on my website to get a ranking", no one has ever said.
The quality of the content on your website and blog is always of the utmost importance. Content is always king.
Its content must contain valuable information. The creation of pages with no real value can keep track of you thanks to updates to Google's Panda and Fred algorithms.
Sites like this portal site.
Or that.
Even big names like eBay and Apple don't deserve awards for content. Thin content has hurt both brands in the past.
Quality content is about creating pages that increase time spent on the page, reduce bounce rates, and provide useful content to the user.
Blogging sites like this and guides love this kind of high-quality search engine content, and people love it.
Quality content pages should do more for today's SEO than just be well written and long. You should also consider the following to develop your SERP presence.
RankBrain is drawn to the
need to know the search intent of users to create pages with organic traffic. This is where RankBrain comes in.
RankBrain is a machine learning system that helps Google understand the purpose of a search query.
What does it mean? Well, CoSchedule has increased traffic by meeting thechange of 594% its SEO content strategy to better suit users' intentions.
This alignment with search engine intent is especially important because, as Mueller emphasized, intent can change over time.
Google even updated its search results with a new featured snippet designed for multi-purpose queries.
To understand what the intent of your specific search engine is, you need to dive into Google Analytics to see what users are searching for.
Fortunately, you have several techniques.
Reports like Site Search and User Flow can give you an idea of what your customers are looking for.
User feed screenshot, September 2021.
You can also view performance in Google Search Console report. This will give you an idea of which people will click in the search results to access your website.
Keyword usage
Despite popular rumors that ranking does not require keyword research, it still supports the creation of high-quality content. But unlike traditional keyword research, keywords now serve as a roadmap for content creation.
Through competitive research and data mining, you can discover keyword gems that have average search volume but high click-through rates for your audience.
Find out how Chris Hornack, founder of Blog Hands, saw an 80% increase in traffic through keyword research.
So as the industry continues to mutter about the negative effects of keyword research, you need to identify your top keywords and group them into topics that match your search engine.
For example, a Google study found that mobile searches like [brands like] and [stores like] have increased by 60% in the last two years. This study explains the need to tailor your keyword strategy to the mobile consumer.
Andrea Lehr, Brand Relations Strategist at Fractl, reveals how you put your keywords here.
Gone are the days when keyword research was done on individual keywords.
Nowadays it is better to combine topics with keywords in topics. Think of synonyms, long-tail keywords, and keywords related to a similar topic or topics. Here's how to target your keywords.
Fresh freshness
is nothing new. When Google first announced it in 2011, it caused confusion about what was considered "new content."
So what is it? And how does freshness compare to permanent content?
For persistent content, don't update the date every year. You need to dig into the content to see what needs to be updated.
For example, if you have created a list of instruments, you can update the screenshots, prices, and information for each instrument.
For this reason, it is ideal to conduct a quarterly content audit to understand which parts are worth updating and which can be redirected to similar pages. Before making changes to your content, review your data to make smarter decisions.
2. Make your website
mobile friendly. Mobile first indexing was officially completed in March 2021. The process has been long and slow since it began in 2017.
In short, mobile first indexing is how Google indexes your website. If you have a separate mobile website, the URL of your mobile website will be indexed and used for ranking instead of the desktop version.
To be clear, there is no separate index dedicated to mobile devices. Google indexes and rates your content that comes directly from the mobile version of your website.
Also, an index focused on mobile devices should not be confused with mobile usability. Let's take a look at the difference in mobile usability.
Use on
Ease ofmobile devices Remember when we recommended that you host the mobile version of your website at m.URL.com?
While it doesn't always hurt you, more and more websites are switching from this mobile website method to building responsive websites.
Although Google has stated that it does not publicly endorse any of the established methods of building mobile websites (whether responsive, dynamic, or separate URLs) when it comes to ranking, it converts the recommended format to one. Website...
ResponsiveGoogle said responsive design helps its "algorithms accurately assign indexing properties to a page rather than signaling the existence of pages suitable for desktop and mobile devices."
In the age of the mobile-centric index, your mobile website is at the heart of your SERP existence. To stay alive, follow Google's guidelines and make sure your content is the same on your computer and mobile device.
Responsive mobile layouts are not required for mobile-centric indexing, but you still want to optimize them for a better page experience and therefore higher rankings.
Whenever you can help the search engine improve results, do it!
3. Convenience of working with the site.
Enhance Enhance user experience
. User experience (UX) influences SEO as we saw in the last updates to the page.
If you don't think about UX, your website will land in metaphorical garbage.
In fact, 38% of users stop interacting with a website if the content and design are not attractive.
Finding the right solution to this problem can be very helpful. Digital marketing agency Main Street Host grew 66% by increasing the number of visits to its attorney's profile page by updating content and optimizing call-to-action buttons.
And Ezoic revenue increased byuser experience 186% per 1,000 visitors and.
Rover is a good example of user experience:
robust screenshot from Rover.com, September 2021 Creating a functional
user interface that works well for your SEO is vital if you want to excel in SERP. It's like choosing a Backstreet Boys song to sing while playing karaoke. Even if the performance is good, when the song ends no one will sing with you.
Site architecture Site architecture
is a related component of the user experience that has a significant impact on SEO.
John Doherty from Credo says,“One of the biggest changes I can make is to improve the architecture of your sites.
It goes on to talk about a website where you change the URLs from a tag page to a subcategory page to put the above link in the website architecture. It was able to increase the number of regular sessions by 74% and the number of pages per session by 41%.
Here is an example of a suitable site architecture:
Kanopy.com screenshot, September 2021
Site architecture not only helps users find what they are looking for through improved site navigation, but It also helps search engine bots to make more pages to find on the site. site.
In short, your website should be extremely easy to use.
All pages and navigation should be presented as simply as possible.
A user only needs three to four clicks to find a page on a website. While this is not always possible on large websites, there are ways to help users find and find pages to ensure they find what they are looking for.
With the release of the Page Experience update, the website architecture will have a greater impact on your SEO.
Core Web Vitals Highlighted
Like Google's John Mueller, Core Web Vitals is more than a determining factor. This metric influences many other SEO-related factors.
For example, Core Web Vitals affects usability. When a search engine hits a page and converts, its UX, page speed, and content affect its conversion rate.
Basically, Core Web Vitals is designed to help you improve your user experience.
Building a secure website (HTTPS)
Dr. Pete J. Meyers wrote that 30% of first page results Google use HTTPS.
Refusing to switch to HTTPS doesn't necessarily hurt your website, but since Google first announced HTTPS in 2014, there have been some changes as a ranking signal.
In 2017, Google announced that its Chrome browser (which 45% of us use) will mark websites as "unsafe" in the URL bar if they are not HTTPS.
And after the final warning, you may find that if you don't transition, your bounce rates will increase.
This is what you will see after implementing HTTPS:
se Chrome Screenshot of Google Chrome, September 2021 as
All of this shows that Google considers HTTPS important.
However, switching to HTTPS (and SSL as they work together) can also cause a lot of canonical problems on your website if done incorrectly.
For more information, see Migrating from HTTP to HTTPS: Complete Stress-Free Guide by Oleg Barisevich.
While this in and of itself does not have a significant SEO impact, updating Chrome may mean that it pays to switch sites (by people with experience).
Ad experience The ad experience
was introduced in 2017 and is targeted at Chrome users.
Chrome can remove all ads from your website if it violates Better Ads standards. Chrome can now influence website owners by serving aggressive ads.
Glenn Gabe gave examples of Chrome's ad filtering in action.
The advertising experience is linked to the perception of the page and the basic elements of the web, since it is influenced by the user experience and the way the user interacts with your website.
4. Optimize your page speed.
As a pure computer ranking factor, page speed has become a Google mobile ranking factor. In 2018, the
slower your website loads, the more visitors and revenue you will lose.
For Amazon, a single second can mean $ 1.6 billion in annual sales.
British publication The Telegraph found that a four-second delay reduced page views by 11.02%.
Why take that risk?
There are tools to check the average page speed of a website.
The lighthouse is your friend.
Many fixes are relatively straightforward if done by someone who knows the way (for example, not everyone knows how to minimize JavaScript).
Faster page load results in a better overall website experience, which is why Google aims to make it a ranking factor on mobile devices.
5. Managing your optimization
is closely related to on-page perception. Page Optimization, a page that takes care of the behind-the-scenes components of your content and SEO.
These aspects have been around for many years and still have a significant impact on your website's visibility and ranking for your specific keyword topics.
Mockingbird 62% For example, increase organic traffic just by updating H1 tags.
And Brand New Copy increased organic traffic by 48% by cleaning up internal link structures and metadata.
It's worth it? I think so.
Optimizing your website can help search engines and users find high-quality existing content faster.
Here are just a few of the ways that page optimization will continue to make a big impact for years to come:
Metadata
This information includes title tags and page descriptions - information about your sites that users see in search results.
Google sometimes pulls content from a page and dynamically inserts it into SERPs as a description when it best matches the user's search query.
It might look like this: In quotes, type
search screenshot [cloud storage], Google, September 2021,
best possible titles and descriptions for your pages, but remember they are not always used.
There are many other SEO meta tags out there. And remember, simply adding a specific meta tag can add a 300 percent increase in Google Discover clicks.
Thescheme
markup is another "hidden" component of a website that tells search engines more about its content.
Founded in 2011,currently almost 600 different types of information areat your disposal .
Graphics make it easy for search engines to find important information on a website.
In a session onMaking Structured Data Search Different fromGoogle I / O, Andrew Valente shared a sample Google case study showing how schema markup and rich search results can help drive engagement and engagement. clicks online.
Click-through rate on Rotten Tomatoes bookmarked pages has increased by 25%. And the Food Network saw a 35% increase in recipe visits from premium recipes.
Outline markup helps Google display rich snippets in search results, which makes it an important part of SEO.
Now you can also add schemas to the page header using JSON-LD. Use a generator like this one from Hall Analysis for basic markup needs.
Featured Snippets
, sometimes referred to as coveted 0 position, are snippets of content pulled from a copy of a page and displayed directly in search results.
If you want to capture the featured snippet, you need to understand RankBrain and the search goal that is found you want to thank behind the search query for the snippet.
Screenshot from Twitter.com, September 2021.
If your content is of great value to a search query, search engines will present your content in a featured snippet.
Himani Kankaria shares her tips and tactics for optimizing selected snippets.
Google Discover
Google Discover is one of the emerging SEO factors related to content.
Google Discover is like opening a Taco Bell combo box full of burritos, as it has the potential to drive more organic traffic than standard search results.
To see if you're currently listed on Google Discover, check the report on Google Search Console.
Screenshot of Google Search Console, September 2021.
Read Lily Rae's article on the characteristics of high- performing content in Google Discover to see how you can optimize it.
6. Internal link structure Internal link structures
help users and search engines find pages more easily.
Corey Morris, Vice President of Marketing at Voltage, talks about prioritizing your internal link structure in five different areas:
Helping users.
Control the flow of links (for example, where the traffic goes when it reaches your website).
Create a roadmap for specific content topics.
Canyons
Priority indexing of individual pages.
This means that your strategy for creating links to different pages on your website should focus primarily on the user. Then you can focus on how to drive traffic to your front pages.
Think about how an internal linking structure can help users go from signing up for your newsletter to completing a live demo request.
7. Get relevant and authoritative links.
Links are still one of the main parts of SEO if you want to rank well. Ecommerce link building is particularly crucial for online retailers aiming to boost their visibility and sales.
Ignore those who say you can be successful without inbound links (aka backlinks).
While some websites can, it would be foolish not to use powerful link building strategies that work.
Since each industry is unique, there are different retention opportunities for everyone.
Looking for ideas? See the Reference Manual for search engine protocol.
Even if links may lose value for decades to come, they are still an active ranking signal.
8. Local
Google states that the area is divided into three ranking factors.
Support.google.com screenshot, September 2021
Relevance Relevance
refers to how close the company is to user demand. Speaking of local search relevance, you might come across searches like "best burritos." Relevance is the cornerstone of Google's local algorithm.
Ads related to your business, such as Google My Business, Bing Places, etc., are linked to your NAP (name, address, phone number) and other important attributes related to your business. The key to filling in all the business information in these directories is helping search engines better understand your business and its relevance to search engines.
Distance Distance
refers to the physical distance between your business and the user. The closer your business is to a search engine, the more likely that location will appear in search results on a local map.
The focus here is on searches with the word "near me".
Screenshot of search results [Burrito Near Me], Google, September 2021
Fame
Fame depends on how popular your business is offline. By measuring popularity, Google tells us exactly what it is looking for:
"awareness" is also based on the information Google has about a business on the Internet, such as links, articles, and directories. The number of Google reviews and their scores influence the ranking of local search queries. More positive reviews and ratings can improve your company's local ranking. Your position in internet search results is also an important factor, which is why advanced search engine optimization (SEO) techniques are used.
"Remember: EAT influences all ranking factors.
EAT stands for competence, authority and trustworthiness and is at the top of Google's ranking guidelines for search engines.
EAT is not a ranking factor, but indirectly influences your ranking. This helps us understand that Google is focused on improving the quality of search results.
EAT is used to measure the accuracy of your content, which in turn affects your ranking. Take advantage of this value.
Use these factors rankings to create up-to-date SEO.
All ranking signals combine to help SEO marketers create freshness. Ranking factors are not limited to these nine. Search engine rankings are not the best and the latest tips and tricks.
Ranking factors should be used as a guide to working through what you need to do to get great.
Be Great means having a more comprehensive and well thought out SEO strategy to stay current and improve future performance.
