Ranking factors are the things that search engines use to determine which websites should rank highly for keywords and phrases. Here, we explain what the different ranking factors are, and how you can ensure you are ticking all the boxes Google Ranking for your website.
Great Content
Publishing high quality content is essential for good SEO. Your content must provide valuable information rather than just being “filler” pages which offer little to the average user. Search engines will usually penalise sites which are packed with thin, low-quality content – the algorithm updates “Panda” and “Fred” both focussed on this area. A good marketing agency will be able to help you to create excellent content for your site!
Mobile Friendly
Mobile-first indexing was finalised in March 2021, with a slow introduction kicking off back in 2017. Mobile-first indexing is the way that Google indexes your site. If you have a separate mobile website, the URL will be indexed and used for ranking instead of your desktop version. There is no separate mobile index and desktop index – instead, Google would simply index and rank your mobile site rather than your desktop site. There are different ways of optimising your site to be mobile-first. You could have a separate URL, responsive site or a dynamic site.
Page Experience
The user experience (UX) has a big impact on SEO, and if you ignore this aspect of your site you are likely to see much poorer results. Research suggests that up to 40% of people will stop using a site if the content and layout are unattractive. One of the biggest changes you can make is fixing your site architecture. Site architecture not only improves website navigation and makes it easier for users to locate what they’re searching for, but it can also assist search engine crawlers in locating additional webpages.
Core Web Vitals
Core Web Vitals is more than a tiebreaker, according to Google’s John Mueller. This statistic has an influence on a variety of SEO parameters.
UX, page speed, and content all have an impact on conversion rates. For example, Core Web Vitals has an influence on your usability. If a searcher clicks from one page to another and converts, the UX, page speed, and content of both pages will affect the conversion rate.
Essentially, Core Web Vitals was developed to assist you in delivering a superior online experience for your consumers.
Internal Link Structure
A website’s internal link structure makes it easier for people and search engines to locate sites.
You may rank your internal linking structure in five ways:
- Working with customers.
- Maintaining link flow (e.g., where the traffic goes after it reaches your site).
- Creating a road map for specific content themes.
- Canonicals are used.
- Page indexing is given precedence over other pages on the site.
This entails starting your link-building approach with a user-centred focus. After that, you may concentrate on how to grow traffic to a set of basic pages.
All signals flow together to assist SEO marketers in creating successful websites. Ranking variables are not limited to these. It’s not about the most up-to-date and innovative strategies when it comes to ranking in the SERPs.