Technology

What are the ranking factors in SEO?

Ranking Factors

To begin with, this is probably the question amongst marketers. According to statistics, an average of 5 to 6 billion searches happening on Google every day. Google accounts for 79% of global search traffic annually. However, With all that traffic over internet the need of hour is to channelize marketing efforts and leave no stone unturned to make your products/services discoverable over search queries. Here are few ranking factors listed below. 

What are the ranking factors in SEO?

Google algorithms keep fluctuating with shifting trends. As Andrey Lipattsev, a senior executive from Google says that high quality content and link building fuel SEO. Hence, Attaining a higher rank over your competitors includes few aspects like:

  • Elaborate SEO audit:

This is the first step to chart your SEO roadmap. Begin with a SEO audit to understand possible bottlenecks you would need to work on. Ideally, a SEO audit should answer to questions:

  • Are your web pages optimized for appropriate keywords?
  • Have you structured your website URL for it to be crawled by search engines?
  • Did you include quality content with standard links?
  • Have you placed SEO title tags and meta descriptions?
  • Do your images include alt tags?

Tools like SEMrush can help you obtain all the required information with regard to your website audit.

Siteaudit

  • Getting mobile-friendly:

Studies say that mobile users account to nearly 3.7 billion users. 49.7% of global searches are happening on mobile devices.

This shows that mobile compatibility and responsiveness is inevitable and if your websites are not mobile-friendly, you may be seriously lagging in terms of competition. So you would necessarily need to focus more into the mobile-first approach. Develop web pages which are optimized for mobiles specifically and also consider developing state-of-the-art mobile applications for your business.

  • Rank brain optimization:

Google’s Rank brain algorithm reacts based on customer responsiveness. Rank brain quantifies user reactions after they find the search results.

rank brain

Image via Backlink.io

In a nutshell, optimizing web pages based on Rank brain will help augment your target audience. Also, it helps you improving user satisfaction which in turn boosts your search ranking results. The more the click-through rate, the better the ranking on Rank brain.

A lagging website could probably cost you a lot by shooing away potential traffic. In brief, Users are hungry for relevant information and impatient at the same time. Maintaining an optimal page speed is pivotal by keeping a hold on your browser cache and image optimization techniques. Google Speed updates stresses on the need to focus on the page loading time. To add on, Google prioritizes and also boosts the ranking of faster loading websites.

  • Understanding local SEO:

According to a study by Bright Local, 97% of users look for information from their local areas. Your local SEO strategy will begin with a Google My Business Page which will include working hours, address, listing and also contact information. However, your local SEO strategy will also need optimization based on relevant long-tail keywords to improve rankings.

Wrap Up:

To summarize, Obtaining the “ideal ranking factors” over SERP is a systematic procedure which doesn’t happen overnight. Thus, it requires consistent updates and also demands marketers to be on their toes to improve based on trending customer expectations.

So have you begun charting your SEO approach yet?

Other Resources:

There are few resources provided by several companies for important ranking factors. SEMRush ranking factors was published after a study by SEMrush. Another resource found as general yet important 9 Important Ranking factors. Backlinko’s 200 ranking factor is also popular study about search engine’s ranking factors.