Probably you’ve heard about Google ranking factors and wondered what are they and how to optimise your website accordingly. Well, you’re on the right page.
Do you know? Google uses over 200 ranking factors in their algorithm. Yes, you read it right 200. Search engine king Google uses 200 plus ranking factors to determine which sites they should show in search results and how they should be ranked. But, don’t fret. Not all ranking factors are equal, and some are more important than other.
If you want to claim the top position of search engine result pages, you will have to optimise your website according to these ranking factors. But, what are they? Which are the most important ranking factors a business should focus on? When planning your SEO strategy, try and pay attention to the following factors that greatly influence the rankings.
What Are Ranking Factors?
It’s nothing new that SEO is the process of optimising your website to rank high in search engine result pages. When it comes to rankings, it’s all about organic traffic and rankings. It’s completely different from paid advertising, a kind of strategy that focuses on paid traffic generation. That said, both paid and organic rankings on search engines are determined by algorithms that consider various factors and metrics that are important to Google policies for ranking a website, those are the ranking factors that you should be considered when optimising your website.
While it’s impossible for a business to know all the ranking factors, you can identify the important ones as revealed by Google, and that’s what we, seo Sydney experts, have shared in this blog post. Please be aware that algorithms will change so is the ranking factors.
Top SEO Ranking Factors
Site and Page Speed
Do you know page load time is one of the signals used by Google’s algorithm to rank pages? If your website is taking too much time to load and access, you’re losing potential customers. According to a research, “about 76% of online shoppers who have trouble with website performance say they won’t return to the site again, and while the page that loads within 2 sec has an average bounce rate of 9%, webpages that loads in 5 sec have a bounce rate of 38%.”
With these stats in mind, now you know the importance of site and page speed. In fact, Google has said that a fast site helps you to rank better than other sites that take too much time to load. Site speed is a ranking factor for mobile searches.
Users want a pain-free browsing experience that’s why page speed is an important ranking factor among others. Keep this in mind when auditing your websites’ SEO performance and try to optimise your site.
Mobile-Friendly Website
Mobile-friendliness represents how a website performs and looks when users access the site from their smartphones. Mobile-friendly websites provide users with a great experience with a responsive design that automatically adjusts the contents, pictures, and other website elements to look good on every screen size. Since 86% of traffic comes from mobile, it makes sense to have a well-optimised site that can be accessed from any device and navigated easily. Having a mobile optimised site will affect your rankings significantly.
Core Web Vitals
Search engines constantly evolve to enhance user experience. To help users find relevant information for their query, they consider how users interact with the results to determine useful page. Google recently announced an update called Core Web Vitals. It’s nothing but a set of standardised metrics from Google that help developers understand how users experience a page. Page loading performance, Ease of interaction, and visual stability of a page from a user’s perspective should be focused on in future. Largest contentful paint, first input delay, and cumulative layout shift are search engine ranking signals that will greatly influence a website’s rankings in search engine result pages.
Content
Content is still the king, and it’s one of the major ranking factors. Create contents that are fresh, unique, and helpful for users. In fact, you must be creating content based on Google’s EAT principle, expertise, authority, and trustworthiness. It’s Google’s way of protecting users from low-quality content that doesn’t provide any valuable information to the user. Produce original, unique, and valuable content.
Backlinks
After content, backlinks still remain to be one of the most important ranking factors. High-quality backlinks are an important part of Google’s ranking algorithm, and it’s how search engines can find your website. Backlinks and SEO go hand in hand. There’s no SEO without content and backlinks. Try to build high-quality links from authoritative websites. You can boost your organic traffic and get higher rankings when you have more quality backlinks.
Search Intent
Matching the search intent of your content is one of the major ranking factors. Search intent is nothing but what your potential customers are looking for. Every keyword is different, and you need to understand the purpose of the query and keywords. So, create the right content that your users are looking for.
Need help with optimising your website for these ranking factors? Seo Sydney experts can help you. However, finding the best seo company is the key to achieving your SEO goals, boosting your rankings, and sales. Search for Seo Company near me or seo experts near me for finding the right SEO experts in your area.