Little is known about the index Google uses to rank their sites according and the sheer magnitude of the ranking factors is very intimidating especially for beginners. Some factors are a must have while others might not make much of a difference. Many that you don’t have influence directly and may be the reason behind your ever slugging site. For SEO Company high ranking should be first priority when it comes to online venture – you need to be ahead of others. Google mission is to organize information across the world and make it universally accessible and useful. This means that for your site to succeed in this ever-growing industry you have to keep up with their updates.
The list below is a combination of my own personal experience, experimentation, reliable sources and case studies from sites that are ranking best with a 4 star rating. The main factors include links, back brain and content.
Keywords – include keywords in your title tag to increase your SEO ranking; it makes your SEO signal stronger. Remember that keywords on the beginning of a title tag perform better than those keywords at the end. Although it doesn’t make any difference, keywords on the Meta description tag are equally important. Including your keywords on the H1 tag is a good practice and a relevance factor that acts as a description of the pages content. Do not stuff your page with keywords as it may affect your search ranking. Keyword density is used by Google to determine the topic of a webpage. Also, including LSI keywords in title pages and content will help Google discern synonyms and rank your site better- you don’t want to miss on that. Make sure you place your keywords on the first 100 words of your content and keep them in the same order.
Content – your content needs to align with the Google’s mission to rank well. How accessible and useful it is should be your main objective. To achieve this knowledge about page optimization, SEO rules and basics are highly important. Some SEO rules are proven; some are speculations while others are controversial. Google algorithm prefers freshly updated content, so update at least once in every 12 months. Avoid duplicating content and write original copies for each page as having similar content across your site can hurt your rankings. Use a canonical tag to differentiate URLs with similar content to tell Google that one URL is equal to the other. Lastly, make sure that the length of your content is long enough, authoritative and informative to ensure that you cover all aspects of your topic. If you don’t have a content manager hire one- your site’s content is your site’s life.
Links – linking to authoritative pages sends trust signals to the search engines as it will enable the user to go to the other site and learn more. However, too many outbound links can diminish the page ranking which will alternatively hurt its search visibility. Interlinking your pages to pass strength between them. Focus on increasing your contextual links as links on the content matter more than links on the side bar. Highlight your links with a different color and font. Do not have diverse links as too many links maybe a spam indicator and affect your ranking negatively. If your site has a low authority, link to high authority pages to promote your domain.
Competitive Analysis – Always remember that; ranking is a competition, you only climb to the top by outdoing others. Doing SEO competitive analysis will give you an insight and ability to create a baseline that will enable you to track the progress of your rankings and background information to analyze your competitors. Competitive analysis will give you a clear picture of where you stand in relation to others and generate ideas on how to lead the pack. Keep track of your competitors smallest moves that can mean a big difference to make sure that you remain competitive and win. It’s of critical importance to analyze why your competition may be gaining on you and what you can do to pull ahead. Some of the most important and effective analysis include; Back link analysis, Traffic analysis, Keyword ranking analysis, Online brand presence analysis, Website domain history analysis, Content analysis, Website architecture analysis, Visitor demographic break down analysis, Social links analysis, Conversion tracking analysis, Social signals analysis and Structured data analysis.
Web Loading Speed – This year Google will be updating the page speed ranking factor to specifically look at the page speed of your mobile pages when it comes to the mobile-friendly algorithm. This means that Google’s main goal is to make page loading speed to be not only desktop dependent but also mobile dependent. Optimize your loading speed, you don’t what your visitors to get impatient and leave before you have a chance to tell them how great you are. A site with web pages that load fast leads to good UX (also known as user experience) and a substantial UX results to higher conversion rates. on the contrary, a website page that loads too slow is penalized by search engines and can affect your ranking, may it be on a desktop or mobile devices. Google compares your website against your opponents on a particular segment and rewards yours if it’s the fastest. However, be cautious that marks aren’t given separately: it considers the country, network, or device.
Other relevant factors include ;user experience, speed, site map and location and domain factors that include- ensuring exact domain match, keywords in domain, keyword in sub domain, domain age, domain registration date, domain renewal date and domain history.
