Do you dream of better rankings every day? First, you need to understand factors that contribute to better ranking.
Mobile user experience
There have been major changes on how Google ranks sites. This shift happened in 2016 where mobile-first user experience became the primary factor for ranking. This, therefore, saw mobile optimization go on the rise.
Search metrics opine that all the tops 100 most visible sites have mobile-friendly websites that offer seamless experience to mobile users. More than ever, it is important that your content today is responsive on various mobile platforms. The content has to be identical with that shown on your desktop site.
As a warning for those who are in the process of designing a mobile version of their site, do not roll it out until it is complete. Launching an incomplete or broken mobile version of your site might end up affecting your rankings negatively.
To optimize:
- Add and verify your site with Google Search Console
- Ensure both the desktop and mobile markups match using the Structured Data Testing Tool
- Use txt testing tool to ensure your mobile website is accessible to Google bot.
- Use PageSpeed Insights to test your page speed
Content
Google’s key objective is to offer its users relevant content of high quality that meets their needs. This means Google is keen on the kind of content webmasters provide. Every user that visits your site expects nothing but fresh, original and relevant content.
Google’s algorithm keeps evolving and its intelligence keeps growing. This enables it to be super smart and be able to rank sites according to the quality of their content. This calls for you to keep your content highly relevant, informative and original for you to achieve improved ranking.
To add on quality, employ long tail keywords in your content. Use a Serp keyword tracker to monitor your keywords and see how they are performing so that you can know what improvements to make.
Authoritative backlinks
Along with content, backlinks are SEO catalysts. When your website is associated with authoritative sites via backlinks, it also makes yours more authoritative. Google’s PageRank documents sites with high quality backlinks.
PageRank is basically your link score. Its work is to evaluate both the quantity and quality of links to your website giving each a score between 0 and 10. This is the reason you should avoid link spamming.
Social shares also influence your Google ranking. Apart from promoting your brand, social media is an important asset to your SEO efforts. Users who find relevant information on your social media channels are able to share that link to many other users. These inbound links when shared in plenty improve your credibility and inform search engines that your content is popular. This can boost your brand’s profile to the top of branded searches.
Page speed
Search engines are dedicated to ranking fast and secure sites highly. Page speed affects user experience in many ways because nowadays users want answers fast. Slow loading sites find themselves at the bottom of the ranks.
Users have proved to be savvier and impatient in the recent days. They are likely to spend less than two seconds waiting for a site to load, upon which they move to another one if the first one takes longer. Increasing page speed has to do with eliminating elements that drag your site’s speed.
Security
Google’s Chrome is able to identify secure and insecure sites and let its users know. Secure sites have https at the start of their URLs while non-secure sites lack it.
Technology advancement poses a security risk as many hackers can intrude your activities and get away with crucial information. To ensure your site is secure, hire an expert to install security certificate for your site.
Accessible URLs
Short and accessible URLs enable Google to search and crawl them easily. Google bots find it easy to understand your content or what your site is about when you use crawlable URLs. They use the information to index and rank your site.
Anchor text optimization
As a rule of thumb, anchor texts should be relevant to the page content and the page you are linking them to. Anchors should fit into the context of your discussion. Otherwise, they can be trouble if they’re thrown here and there haphazardly.
To optimize anchors, use them as branded texts, naked URLs or as topic related phrases.
Conclusion
There are a number of factors that affect ranking. The trick is to know which ones affect your ranking the most and optimizing their use. It is no secret that technology is moving and there is a need to adapt to the changing times and adopt new techniques. Only those who move with time will be able to meet new requirements and reap highly.
