With organizations around the world solidifying their image on the internet, SEO is more important now than it ever was. Billions of searches are made on Google every year, each of which can be an excellent opportunity for you to reach out to your target audience and make them discover your business. However, search engine optimization is certainly not as simple as it seems. One needs to consider several considerations while promoting their website – one of them being SEO ranking factors.
What Are SEO Ranking Factors?
As the name suggests, SEO ranking factors are the factors that are responsible for your website getting ranked in search engines. As you create and launch your site, search engine crawlers scan through your website with every search that contains the keywords you are targeting. While being crawled and indexed, search engines use specific factors that determine the position of your site on the search engine results pages (SERPs). These factors are the SEO ranking factors.
So, what are the most important SEO ranking factors?
The Most Important SEO Factors That Matter
Here are some of the most essential ranking factors in SEO you should focus on to climb up the ladder of SERPs:
Site Security And Accessibility
One of the most important ranking factors in SEO is the security and accessibility of your website. You need to have the right kind of URL to be scanned effectively by the bots. Always make sure that your website is built using a well-coded and secure website builder. Moreover, a website needs a robots.txt file that informs search engines where they can and cannot look for your website and its content.
According to Google, HTTPS is not the most important factor in deciding whether a page would be indexed or not. Instead, the lightweight ranking is more important in getting your site ranked high on the SERPs. Also, if you haven’t enabled SSL security on your website, you should enable the same to make your site secure.
Page Speed
Today, internet users are no longer ready to wait for more than a couple of seconds for a website or a webpage to load. This makes the page speed of your website an essential factor in getting your site ranked high.
Before going ahead with your SEO campaign, it is important to note that the page speed applies to both desktop and mobile versions of your website. If your site loads faster on desktops and laptops but is slow on mobile devices, it would adversely affect its rank on Google.
Mobile-friendly Nature Of The Site
According to Statista, more than 55% of web traffic comes from mobile devices. Internet users today prefer doing searches and browsing sites on mobile phones. This makes mobile-friendliness an important SEO factor.
Irrespective of the industry you belong to, it is always essential to have mobile customization. For example, if you run a real estate company in Mumbai and are willing to promote it through SEO, make sure that you work with an SEO expert that takes into consideration the mobile-friendly nature of your website. This would make it easier for your target audience to discover your business online.
User Experience
Lately, Google has started using an AI component called RankBrain for indexing and ranking websites on its SERPs. RankBrain further uses three significant factors for getting your site ranked appropriately – bounce rate, dwell time, and click-through rate. The combination of these factors contributes to the over-user experience about your website.
Click-through rate refers to the percentage of users clicking on your website once it appears in their search results organically. Bounce rate is the percentage of internet users visiting your website and leaving it quickly. Finally, dwell time refers to the average time visitors spend on your website.
Internal Links
It is a well-known fact that internal links make SEO better. They help the crawlers scan and navigate through the different sections of your website more effectively. If you have a well-connected network of internal pages with the correct links, your website will likely rank better on the SERPs.
However, make sure that you do not stuff your website with too many internal links. If you add more links than required, it will imply that you are forcing your site to get ranked.
High-quality Content
Always focus on creating unique, engaging, and relevant content for your website to get it ranked higher. With the help of its AI component, Google reads the content posted on your website/webpages, ascertains its quality, and indexes the pages accordingly.
Never resort to copying content from other websites and pasting it on your site to get the desired traction. Make sure that the content posted on your website is original and in tune with your unique business objectives.
URL, Authority, And Domain Age
Google often ranks older websites higher on its SERPs due to higher authority. So, if it has been a while since you launched your website, the chances of it getting ranked better (with good SEO) are high. The domain name of your site also plays a vital role in getting it ranked high on the SERPs. While choosing the domain name for your site, make sure that your URL reflects the essence of your business.
Moreover, the domain and page authority of your website allows Google to rank your site better on its SERPs. While domain authority refers to its relevance for the industry you operate in; page authority is the score that provides you with suggestions regarding where your site will rank on the SERPs.
The Final Word
These were some of the most important ranking factors in SEO that require your attention if you need to get your site ranked high up on the search engine results. Always make sure that you have a comprehensive idea of all relevant factors before kickstarting your SEO campaign.
