SEO is a multi-billion dollar industry. SEO is getting a website to align with Google’s ranking factors.
What is a Google ranking factor?
SEO is the thorough process of optimizing your site to rank as high as possible in the organic search results, and when talking about search, we use the term ‘organic’ to refer to unpaid search results. The organic rankings on the search engine are determined by an algorithm that considers various characteristics and SEO metrics. There are over 200 Google ranking factors, and the ranking factors and algorithms may shift. Following are the types of Google ranking factors-
- On-page ranking factors.
It refers to the quality of the content on the page and the keywords it is targeting.
- Off-page ranking factors.
These factors are like the endorsement from other website pages, and they involve backlinks.
- Technical ranking factors.
They measure your website’s ability to be crawled and indexed and render content quickly and safely for the searchers.
- Local ranking factors.
These ranking factors involve all three of the above factors, focusing on reputation, listings and review.
Following are some of the Google ranking factors that are important-
1. High-quality content
Content is king, and in the case of Google ranking factors, the quality of your content has a huge impact. If you create unique, fresh and helpful content for users, then the search engine will rank it higher on the SERPs. Google pays special attention to the quality of your content. No matter how optimized your webpage is, you cannot expect higher rankings if the content is not valuable.
High-quality content.
Google gives a higher preference to original content, and you should create web pages that respond to your audience’s needs, not copied from another source. If your content is duplicated, it will harm your SEO. If you regularly publish duplicate content, Google may also reduce the crawl rate on your site. When creating content, ensure that it is different and better than other websites ranking for your targeted search terms.
Valuable content
One more way to boost your content quality is by keeping it updated and fresh, and the search engine favours newer content, whether it was recently published or updated.
2. Backlinks
Backlinks are another critical factor, and the incoming links from other websites have a massive influence on Google’s ranking algorithm. The webpages with fewer backlinks get much less organic traffic as they are buried deep in the search results.
Backlinks are also called inbound links, and the links from high authority websites are more valuable, and they will also boost your rankings more than the links from lower rated sites. When you acquire these links, it sends a signal to the search engine that your content is trustworthy. Many people avail of the services of SEO Gold Coast, which is a digital marketing agency that provides different types of SEO services to people.
3. Search intent and content relevancy
One more crucial factor for Google is how well your content matches the search intent of a user, and a search intent is a term which describes what the user is trying to accomplish with a search.
Every searcher is different, and it is essential to understand the why behind any search query so that your content addresses it adequately.
If you were to create the content, you should select the suitable types of keywords. For instance, in some of the cases, Google displays mainly video and infographics in the top results. For ecommerce sites, the search intent also gives you information about where the visitors are in the buyer journey. By matching your content with the search intent, you can also answer questions and create content that people are looking for.
4. Website loading speed
Google made website loading speed a part of its core web vitals and the website speed includes metrics that Google considers critical for the user experience. It also measures your website’s overall speed and responsiveness along with the loading speed of different elements such as images and fonts.
5. Mobile friendliness
One more thing along with speed that needs to be taken seriously is the performance of the site on smaller screens. Your website should be responsive on any screen size. Previously, Google used the desktop version of your website. If you want to maximize your rankings, your website should be mobile-friendly.
6. Domain authority
It is the metrics that grades the expertise of your website on a particular topic and the ability to rank on the search engines. The higher your domain authority is, the higher are your chances of ranking on Google for keywords related to your area of expertise. There are different ways you can boost the authority of your website and one way is acquiring high-quality backlinks. You should create amazing content that is focused on your main subject. You should try to focus on your website and blog content on one major topic.
7. Keyword optimization
One of the most crucial ranking factors is the right use of keywords on your websites. The keywords should match the search term user type in the search engines and it is important that your web pages contain the keywords your audience is searching for.
8. Website structure
Along with keyword optimization, another factor you should consider is the structure of your site. The architecture of your website is important from a crawling and indexing perspective. For speeding up the indexing of the new and updated content, you can create a sitemap in WordPress and it contains all the important pages that you want the search engines to know about.
The sitemaps help Google crawler to navigate through your website and discover new content and index your pages.
Your website can also have more than one sitemap and you can use the WordPress plugin and you can make special sitemaps for the video and news content. This helps in boosting your rankings for those particular types of content in Google search.
This is a comprehensive list of the ranking factors.