The science of satisfying search engines to rank your website at their top SERP (Search Engine Result Pages) is not as tricky as some ‘GURUS’ claim it to be. All you need to know are the top SEO ranking factors that all search engines love.
If you make it very important to always incorporate these factors on every single page on your website, you will start seeing results faster than you had anticipated.
Although there are 100s of SEO ranking factors that will influence your ranking position, focusing on these few will position your website on the first or second pages on Google, Bing, Yahoo, and other search engines. Below are the top search engine optimization ranking factors.
Table of Contents
1. First Top Seo Ranking Factor is relevance
Which website between Amazon.com and Alibaba.com do you think will stand a better chance to rank for the search term ‘Wholesale Electronics Exporters’? The obvious answer here would be alibaba.com because there you will find many wholesale exporters for electronics than amazon. Amazon has a great website, but it would be irrelevant to your search since most Amazon sellers are retailers.
Ensuring your website is highly relevant to your exact target audience will send a strong signal to search engines. Relevancy tells search engines like google that your website can answer or solve a specific problem to the search term or keywords.
Your website will out-rank even the biggest brands out there. Put yourself in the visitor’s place and check if your website is relevant to the search terms or keywords you are trying to rank. “IF IT DOESN’T CONVINCE YOU TO TAKE ACTION, IT’S NOT RELEVANT.”
NOTE: Never try to outsmart search engine crawlers by having multiple pages on your website optimized with similar keywords to gain more exposure. By doing this, you only shoot yourself in the foot. Search engines will know you are trying to game the system, and they will be confused on which page to rank for such keywords. In the end, your website will end up being penalized or ignored.
2. User Experience
The second and also essential SEO ranking factors is the UX (User Experience). Imagine clicking through a website from search engine result pages, and you get confused with the website’s design. I know for myself that I will immediately close the tab and try the next result.
If your website’s user experience is good, your site visitors will find it very easy to navigate your content and better understand your content. Better user experience will reward your website with a Low Bounce Rate, which will send a strong signal to search engines that the searcher found what they were looking for this, increasing your rankings.
To make your website user friendly, use these simple but effective user experience techniques:
- The color pattern on your website should be unique and blending. Use the same color on all your headings. Your CTA (Call To Action) buttons should also have the same color.
- Texts on your website should be visible enough so that anyone could be able to read them.
- Your message should be clear and understandable even by 16 years old readers or visitors.
- Your website should contain high-quality graphics like relevant images because most visitors first scan websites by scrolling down before scrolling back to the top to start reading.
- Paragraphs should be easily distinguished, and all sections should have a subtitle.
3. Keyword Density
Keyword density is the number of times you mention a keyword on your web page. After conducting your keyword research, it’s now time to write a compelling piece of content that resonates with your target audience. Most people think if they include their keywords multiple times, it will get their websites better rankings.
Keyword stuffing might have worked a long time ago before search engine crawlers became smarter. Doing this could get your website on the wrong side of search engines. It would be best to mention your targeted keyword(s) not more than eight times in a 600 words content. Search engines are smart to detect the relevance of your website to specific keywords.
4. Keyword Placement Strategy
Where you place the targeted keywords on your web page will influence the rankings. When search engine crawlers scan your web page, they start at the beginning of the content, move to the middle, and then check the last paragraph on your webpage.
If they find your targeted keyword in these sections of the webpage, they will then thoroughly scan your website to determine the relevance of the webpage. Follow these tips to place your targeted keywords on your website strategically.
- Use the targeted keyword in the first title and the first paragraph, middle paragraph, and the last paragraph on your webpage.
- Use keyword synonyms on the subheadings or titles on your webpage.
- The alternative text (alt-text) of your images on the web page should have your targeted keyword and its synonyms. Alt-text should be descriptive, and it should remind search engine crawlers what your web page is all about. Alternative texts are essential for search engines because they help visually impaired people know the images’ context.
5. Page Length
There isn’t any clear definition or standard for the length of a webpage. It is better to play safe by having between 300 to 700 words for static websites. And 800 to 3000 words for blog posts.
A thin content web page means it is less informative and can’t answer detailed questions from the search intent. So make sure your content is lengthy enough to answer at least 75% of the search query.
6. Use Mixed Media Content Types
The two most significant search engines are Google and Bing. Their ranking signals are slightly different from each other in terms of priorities. Google loves a lot of text and videos, while Bing loves high-quality, relevant images.
To gain recognition from both search engine giants, you must use at least text and images or text and videos on your webpage. The use of mixed media will place your website amongst top quality and highly informative websites in your targeted keywords.
In return, this will boost your SEO rankings, thus getting you more exposure and leads for your business.
7. Page Speed
Page speed refers to how fast your site content can be visible to the visitors once they open your website. Page speed is also an essential SEO ranking factor because visitors will immediately click out of your website if they realize it loads very slowly. As an effect, it will signal search engines that your site is not relevant due to the high bounce rate.
What Causes sites to be slow:
- Images: Images are one of the leading SEO ranking factors to determine the speed of a website. Large images take a longer time to load for your site visitors. People usually don’t sit around for more than 7 seconds for a site to load. So make sure to reduce the sizes of such images. You might be asking, ‘Won’t the quality of the image be affected by size reduction?’
- Too Many Unnecessary Javascript
8. Internal Linking
Internal linking refers to how each page or piece of content on your page and your entire site are connected. Having links in your content linking to other relevant blog posts keeps your visitors longer on your website.
Such a linking structure sends a signal to search engine crawlers of your site’s relevance. If your site is considered highly relevant, search engines will place it at the top on result pages.
9. Backlinks
Backlinks or inbound links refer to your web page address on another website that takes the visitor on that website to your webpage, usually through anchor text. Although this is an influential SEO ranking factor, backlinks are of different quality levels. A quality backlink comes from a website or web page in the same industry as yours and a non-spammy website.
People often stress the number of backlinks they get to their website, and they start purchasing links from other sources. I will tell you now is; focus on quality backlinks and try as much as you can to get it naturally by reaching out to other website owners in your industry and telling them about your content or business. They will include your link on their webpage.
10. Use Accurate Business Information.
Gone are the days where you can rank a website with fake or no business information. Major search engines like Google and Bing now give preference to real businesses. User protection is the highest priority for search engines.
Make sure to include accurate business information on your website. Include details;
- Company Name
- Company Address
- Company Phone number
- Company registration number
You shouldn’t just include the above information on your website. Make sure these company details are set up correctly on all your social profiles and other directories.
Once you have the company information set up correctly, you have to set up a Google My Business account. Properly setting up your Google My Business account sends a signal to Google itself as a legitimate business. Check out this article about local SEO solutions to properly set up your Google My Business Account.
If you don’t have a business yet, use the same social handling on your blog on all your social media sites.
11. Legitimacy of your social media presence
Being present and engaging on social platforms is a great way to boost user engagement. Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc., posting links to quality content allows you to click and attract users. There are more than 3.6 billion people use social media.
Social media users are a large audience to reach (which means a lot of possible traffic to your website)! To determine which social media platforms to focus on depends mainly on your target audience. This demographic breakdown of social media users can help.
Google pays increased attention to social media accounts in general. For example, buying followers for social media accounts can backfire. A social network account with 100,000 subscribers but no interaction seems less legitimate than accounts with 10,000 and a lot of active engagement. Google has even filed a patent for a technology to determine whether social media accounts are real or fake.
When using social media, avoid spamming link requests or buying links from other sites in the hope of improving your page ranking. Instead of promoting every little content you create, focus on promoting larger, more engaging items. Long, well-documented articles that address current topics in your niche are great for sharing!
So what are my thoughts?
To conclude, there are many more SEO ranking factors to consider to better rank your web pages on search engines. But using the tips above will get you ranked on the top search result pages on search engines. In addition to this SEO ranking factors article, you can check out the DIY SEO article. If I have left out any factor you think is very important in the better ranking, please comment below.
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