Search engine optimization, or SEO is a process of improving the visibility of websites in organic search results by submitting to different search engines. Although Google indeed uses more than 200 factors to determine how a website ranks in search results, not all of these factors are equally important.
Search engine optimization (SEO) ranking factors are rules or standards that search engines use to determine how pages will be ranked on the SERPs. To get your website to rank high in search engine’s organic results and receive traffic, you need to follow these rules. Google makes a lot of changes to its search engine ranking algorithms each year. Their goal is to create the best, most relevant search results while maintaining their users’ satisfaction.
In this article, we’ll explain 10 factors that affect search engine optimization and how well a website ranks in search engine results.
SEO Optimized Website
This is the most important point in search engine optimization. If search engines cannot crawl your website, then you should not expect to rank well.
The way search engines work is usually broken into three main stages:
- Discovery.
- Crawling and Indexing.
- Ranking.
During the discovery stage, they find all web pages that are publicly accessible. And during crawling, the search engine extracts the information it needs and adds it to its index, so that this data can be used by ranking algorithms during their rankings.
You should ensure that during this process, search engine bots can access your website without any blocking and help them complete their tasks as fast as possible.
Website Security (HTTPS)
Search engines give more credibility to websites that use best practices for security. Secure websites that use HTTPS have a competitive advantage over non-secure sites.
If other things are equal—for instance, if two websites have the same amount of original content and similar domain names but one is secured with HTTPS while the other is not—the secure website will rank higher by Google’s algorithm.
If you have not yet made your website secure by using the HTTPS protocol, now is a good time to get on it.
Domain Authority
Search engines prefer to show the most relevant results in a search and one way they measure relevance is by assessing the authority of a website.
A domain’s authority is based on three factors:
Domain age: The older a domain is, the better its rank tends to be. The average age of the pages on Google’s first page is 3 years. New websites may be able to achieve high rankings if they get enough traffic, however, it will take time for them to rise in the search engines compared with established sites.
Domain status: Domains must be free of Google penalties to rank.
Domain reputation: A domain with a good reputation is more likely to rank well in search results than one that has no reputation at all.
Mobile Friendly Website
A recent study revealed that Google’s search algorithm penalizes websites that are not optimally designed for viewing on mobile devices. If a website is not optimized for mobiles, it will not show up in mobile search results and that means no chance of attracting any traffic from this growing segment.
Of all searches on Google each month, more than 60% are made using a mobile device.
Webpage Speed
For years, Google has used site speed as a factor in its search engine rankings. Faster websites are also good for people visiting your site, who may be more inclined to spend time there. Studies show that slow-loading websites are likely to lose customers.
These steps will make your website faster:
- Upgrade your website with the latest version.
- Use a caching plugin.
- Update your WordPress site to the latest version of PHP.
- Use VPS hosting instead of shared.
- Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN).
- Reduce the file size of your images.
- Compress your HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
Content Quality
Quality content is the most important ranking factor for search engine optimization.
Any piece of content that is published on your website should be unique and not duplicated from other websites. It will not penalize your website for this, but it won’t give you any bonus points either. But, if you publish duplicate content or don’t have any unique content of your own, it will be difficult for Google to determine which version is more relevant and this may lead to a decrease in rankings.
Search engines want to show trustworthy content in their search results, not untrusted or irrelevant material.
On-Page SEO
In addition to helping search engines identify trustworthy web pages, page structure also helps them make sense of content. This is On-Page (SEO) Search Engine Optimization—a set of techniques you can use while writing and publishing your website or blog’s content.
Below are some of the On-Page (SEO) Search engine optimization techniques:
Page Title
The page title is the most significant factor in on-page Search engine optimization. Search engines use the title tag to help them understand your page, and it’s one of the first things users see when they search. To get the most from your titles, you need to make sure that they include keywords that both users and search engines value.
People use search engines to find information on topics they are interested in; when you include keywords in your title, search engines can associate your content with specific terms and increase the chances that users will see it. It increases the likelihood that people will click on your search result since it closely matches their query.
Headings and Subheadings
A well-optimized page structure includes headings, subheadings, and other formatting elements. Headings help search engines index your content and make it easier for users to understand. It is also important to include keywords and phrases in your headings that are recognizable by users.
Most pages have one major heading (H1) and multiple subheadings of lower rank (H2 or H3).
Internal Link Structure
Internal links are hypertext links that lead to other pages on the same website. Every page on your website should have at least one link pointing to another page. Internal links should be relevant to the content, and they should appear in the body of a web page.
Image and Media Optimization
Search engines index not only written content but also video, audio, and images. The problem is that crawlers cannot interpret non-text elements accurately. It is thus crucial that they be optimized for Search Engine Optimization.
- For images, it is a good idea to optimize the filename and also provide an ALT text.
- You can add a video schema to your site’s videos.
Related Keywords in Content
One other factor that can affect where your website appears in the Search results is whether you use relevant keywords in your content. This is called content marketing in Search Engine Optimization.
The right keywords in your content will make it more relevant to what users are searching for.
In addition to using your main keywords in the titles and headings, you should also use semantically related keywords in your content. Semantically related keywords are words or phrases that have a common definition.
Website User Experience
One of the signals used by Google’s search algorithm is RankBrain, which uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to rank websites based on user experience.
User experience is based on CTR (clickthrough rate), Bounce rate dwell time, etc. One of the most important things for any website is to increase its CTR (clickthrough rate), which is the percentage of visits that result in a click, and decrease the Bounce rate.
Brand reputation
While backlinks are an important part of Search engine optimization and we will talk about them below, this ranking factor is all about having a good brand reputation.
Having a large community of people talking and mentioning your brand in the online world can be an effective way to promote your business. You should do everything you can to promote your brand online, whether it’s through Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter—or by posting on popular forums in your industry. Getting people to search for and talk about your brand name in Google results in strong signals that can be picked up by the ranking algorithms.
Mentioning your business in blogs and newsgroups, for example, is a great way to get recognized without explicitly asking for backlinks.
Links from Trusted Websites
Backlinks are a measure of how useful and popular a website is. The more backlinks pointing to a certain page on the internet, the higher that page ranks in search engine results.
That’s a very simplified way of describing how Google ranking used to work back in the early days.
Over the years, people took advantage of this—building hundreds of links to their websites. As a result, the quality of Google’s search results was diminishing. To improve the quality of their search results and protect their reputation, Google adjusted its algorithm so that it now accounts for backlinks differently.
Links are still a crucial ranking factor for search engines, but the focus has shifted from the quantity of links to quality and relevance.
Conclusion
The search engine algorithms are constantly changing, and you have to keep up with those changes if you want your site’s content to appear where it is most visible. They gather and analyze feedback from their users, data analytics, and machine learning to adjust the search engine ranking factors.
While Google’s algorithms are constantly being updated, the basic ranking factors have remained consistent. Publish useful content, make your website easy to navigate, and get other websites to link back to yours.
Websites that follow these Search engine optimization rules tend to rank highly on search engines and are more likely to thrive over the long term. Shortcuts and tricks can give a website short-term success, but if the search engine algorithms identify these patterns, they will work to penalize them.
