SEO requirements keep changing, and it can be hard to keep up with the latest developments. But if you want your site to get traffic, you have to be in the know. Well-optimized sites get more and more traffic over time, and that means more leads and sales. Also here, Without SEO, searchers might won’t be able to find your site, and all your hard work will be for nothing too.
In this guide, we’re going to share the essential SEO ranking factors you need to dominate search. By the end of this post, you’ll have a well-optimized site that brings you more business.
So What Are actually the Most Important SEO Ranking Factors?
- A Secure and Accessible Website
- Page Speed (Including Mobile Page Speed)
- Mobile Friendliness
- Domain Age, URL, and Authority
- Optimized Content
- Technical SEO
- User Experience (RankBrain)
- Links
- Social Signals
- Real Business Information
Before we begin starting into the details of each ranking factor, let’s take a quick look at the basics of how search engine rankings work.
Many people wonder how Search engines rankings work, so before we get into the actual search engine ranking factors, let’s get started by answering some of the basic questions most people have about SEO.
What is “Ranking” in SEO?
As you may also know that, SEO stands for search engine optimization, where simply means making the web pages better for search engine ranking, but how exactly does that work?
The purpose of the page
So here the Expertise, authority, and trustworthiness – not just from the site and the page content, but expertise from the individual creator of the content too.
Content quality and amount
Website info and info about the content creator
Website reputation and content creator reputation
These go into its ranking algorithm and help to determine SEO ranking. Based on the rating guidelines above, Search engines show searchers the most relevant, high-quality results related to what they’re looking for. The most relevant are shown first, with the rest being shown over successive pages.
What is On-Page SEO and Off-Page SEO?
Two terms you’ll hear mentioned tons once talking regarding SEO ranking factors are on-page SEO and off-page SEO.
On-page SEO refers to factors on your own web site that you simply will optimize like the underlying code and therefore the content.
Off-page SEO refers to actions taken outside of your website to have an effect on your site’s trustiness and authority by building the proper inward links and social signals.
Both varieties are enclosed within the prime SEO ranking factors.
Now let’s look in detail at the top Search engines ranking factors for 2019.
1. A Secure and Accessible Website
Unsurprisingly, the first of our SEO ranking factors has to do with having the right kind of URL.
Specifically, that’s a URL that Search engines’ bots can easily reach and crawl.
A robots.txt file that tells Search engines where it can and can’t look for your site information
A sitemap, which lists all your pages. If you’re running a WordPress site, you can set up a sitemap via Yoast SEO. If not, then you can use an online sitemap generator.
HTTPS isn’t a factor in deciding whether or not to index a page, but Search engines’ own John Mueller has tweeted that it’s a “light-weight ranking factor” and that “having
HTTPS is nice for users.” We at OptinMonster agree. ?
2. Page Speed (Including Mobile Page Speed)
Page speed has been cited together of the most SEO ranking factors for years.
Search engines want to improve users’ experience of the web, and fast-loading web pages will definitely do that. Search engines announced a search engine algorithm update focused on the mobile page
speed that may begin to have an effect on sites from July 2018.
If your site doesn’t load fast on mobile devices, then it could be penalized.
Use Search engines’ mobile testing tool to see how your site stacks up. And, if you’re using WordPress, check out these tips for speeding up a WordPress site from WPBeginner.
3. Mobile Friendliness
While we’re on the topic of mobile, mobile-friendliness is another major SEO ranking factor.
More people use mobile devices than desktops to access the web, and that’s one reason there’ve been changes in how Search engines rank search results.
Search engines’ mobile-first index is now a reality, which means it’s drawing its results from mobile-optimized sites first, rather than sites geared to desktop computers.
If your website isn’t mobile-optimized you risk moving into the cold, in SEO terms at least.
4. Domain Age, URL, and Authority
Did you know that nearly 60% of the sites that have a top ten Search engines search ranking are three years old or more?
Data from associate degree Ahrefs study of 2 million pages suggests that only a few sites but a year recent reach that ranking.
So if you’ve had your site for a while, and have optimized it using the tips in this article, that’s already an advantage. In some cases, the domain name matters. Though Search engines have penalized exact-match domains (those where the target keyword is in the URL), that penalty is generally for spammy sites with thin content.
When it involves computer program ranking factors, authority matters.
As you’ll see, that’s usually a combination of great content (see the next tip) and off-page SEO signals like inbound links and social shares.
You can check domain authority or page authority with Open website explorer.
Just plug your URL into the onsite search box, and you’ll get a report showing domain authority, page authority, established links, and new links.
5. Optimized Content
We’ve talked a lot about content in this guide to Search engines SEO ranking factors. Well, now That’s because it’s one of the most important search ranking factors (right up there with user experience, links, and RankBrain, which we’ll get to in a while). Now it’s time for us to make a dig down and see what optimizing content for SEO really means.
As we said in our keyword research guide, Search engines’ search algorithm relies on keywords. These are the words and phrases searchers use when they’re looking for information. They’re also the words and phrases that describe the topics your site is speaking or telling about. Ideally, those will match up.
That’s one of the very reasons why it’s so important to use keywords in your content. One negative SEO ranking factor to be aware of is duplicate content. For SEO, fresh, original content is always best. And if you do have content that’s similar, tell Search engines which one should be ranked as most authoritative by using canonical URLs.
Understanding Search Intent for Content Optimization
Search intent is also important when optimizing content. So now That means understanding what people are truly looking for when they type in search keywords.
For example, let’s say you’ve identified “Florida real estate” as a keyword you want to rank for. You might think that writing content for people looking for real estate in Florida is a good idea. But if the people searching for that term are realtors looking to sell too, then your content won’t meet their needs, and your page won’t rank. Sometimes, it’s clear what people are looking for. For example, if they use the word “compare”, they’re likely trying to make a decision about buying a product. And if they use the word “buy”, then they’re looking to make a purchase.
6. Technical SEO
We said earlier that getting the code right is one aspect of optimizing content for better search engine rankings. Here are some of the aspects you need to look at:
Use keyword phrases in page titles, which is where Search engines first look to determine which content is relevant to which search. You’ll see the page title as the first line of a search result entry.
Use header tags to show content hierarchy. If your title is formatted as h1, then use h2 or h3 for subheads.
Create a meta description that both entices readers and includes your keyword phrase. Keep meta descriptions short and grabby – you have right around 160 characters to convince searchers that this is the post they want.
Use keyword phrases in image alt tags to show how the images are relevant to the main content. Search engines also have an image search, which is another way for people to find your content.
Where it’s appropriate, use schema markup to tell Search engines what kind of content you’re producing. This can also help your content appear in rich card entries other than answer boxes.
7. User Experience (RankBrain)
For a while now, Search engines been using artificial intelligence to better rank web pages. It calls that signal RankBrain. This includes other signals that affect your search engine ranking. These are:
Clickthrough rate – the percentage of people who click to visit your site after an entry comes up in search results
Bounce rate, especially post sticking – the number of people who bounce away again, which basically means your site didn’t give them what they wanted
Dwell time – how long they stay on your site after they’ve arrived.
rank is one of the main SEO ranking factors in 2018. Thus when in contrast, if people click through to your web page and stick around for a while, that tells Search engines your content is relevant to their search. So when you optimize titles, descriptions, and content to get the clicks and deliver value on the other end, you can boost your search engine ranking.
8. Links
As we said at the start, the web is built on links, so naturally, links are a crucial SEO ranking signal. There are three kinds of links to think about:
Inbound links
Outbound links
Internal links
Search engines use inbound links as one way to help determine how authoritative and relevant your content is.
The best case scenario is where an authoritative site includes a relevant link to your site in a relevant piece of their content. So, if the Content Marketing Institute includes a link to your content marketing resource, that’ll be perceived better than if a random person with a low-quality site links to it.
Finally, linking to your own content can help tie pages together for both Search engines and your visitors, making each page more valuable. If you have an authoritative page and link to another page on your site, that helps visitors find the other page and passes on some of that authority. That will help that second page boost its search engine ranking.
9. Social Signals
When people share your content on social networks, that’s another sign that it’s valuable. Cognitive SEO‘s study of 23 million shares found a definitive link between social shares and search engine ranking. Search engines’ official word is that social shares are not a direct ranking factor. You can also be talking on Links from Twitter or Facebook aren’t counted the same as links from other authoritative websites.
10. Real Business Information
This tip is truly one of the very important for businesses targeting particular local areas. Where also the presence or absence of business information is one of the most crucial local SEO ranking factors.
Hello, I’ve been a creative designer and writer since 2015. I’ve also been lucky enough to work for the many reputed companies where I manage the Designs and Content.
