If your content is not ranking on Google’s first page against the target keywords, no one will notice your website.
Ranking in Google’s top results is the key to achieving excellence in your online business. Therefore, you should consider some important SEO factors that can boost the likelihood of ranking.
On the contrary, if you ignore these significant factors, the chances of ranking your site on the first page are lowered.
If you consider following some SEO tactics, you will pave the way to ranking well for your target keywords. Let’s dive into the guide for learning about SEO factors that affect the ranking of your website on SERP.
1. Exceptional Content
You have probably read somewhere that content is supreme ruler. It is undoubtedly the king of Google ranking metrics.
Google will rank your content higher in its search engine results if you craft innovative, fresh, and beneficial content for people. In simple, Google loves to rank content that focuses on users’ search queries.
The more user-friendly your content is, the higher your ranking will be.
In addition, Google also pays minute attention to the quality of your articles. You cannot really expect higher ranks if your content is not relevant and impeccable, no matter how well-optimized your website is.
How does Google define content quality?
- Uniqueness
If you write fresh and valuable content, Google will give it the topmost priority. Accordingly, you should write pieces that cover readers’ search intent.
On the other hand, if you post plagiarized content, it will negatively impact your SEO. As a result, Google will not rank your page.
Furthermore, Google will decrease the crawling rate of your website if you consistently publish duplicate material.
What to do instead?
When developing content, make sure it is 100% original, unique and superior to what is already out there on the internet.
Once you finish the content, you should check its plagiarism report. You can use a reliable plagiarism checker tool to check your article’s authenticity.
Plus, make sure that your content is free from all writing flaws.
- Length
Content length is one of the most debatable topics that hundreds of thousands of people often ask. They ask about the ideal length of an article.
Some of them consider it a ranking factor, and others do not think so. Whatever the truth is, content length is an undeniable factor of any copy.
Remember, your content should cover all the queries of your readers comprehensively.
Try to write concise content and break the lengthy content into smaller, manageable chunks.
i. Focus On Meta Title And Description Length
Make sure that your title and description’s length should not exceed 60 and 160 characters. Otherwise, Google will truncate all the exceeding characters. Try to write a brief and comprehensive meta title and description.
Both elements are the first things readers go through and decide whether your content is worth reading or not. Hence, you have to write them professionally.
How do you keep track of these two elements’ lengths?
This is where an online word counter comes into play. It helps you to compute characters with or (with or without spaces), words, sentences, and even pages.
A letter counter assists you in staying within the writing limits. All you need to do is copy-paste the written title and description in its input section. It instantly shows you the exact results.
Also, you can type words in it; it counts characters and words as you type. A letter count online tool can be used to trim the already written title. In this way, you can fine-tune your written titles and descriptions.
The grammar check feature of this helping tool enables you to make your content flawless. To add more, it does not cost a single penny. In a nutshell, using a word counter help you to bind yourself to a particular word limit.
- Freshness
Another strategy to maximize the quality of your material is to keep it updated. You give a solid message to the search engine by consistently updating your blogs and adding the latest material.
It’s amazing!
Content freshness is necessary if your niche is the news and current affairs. Google tends to prioritize pages that deliver the most up-to-date information on such topics. For this, you have to keep yourself attached to a plethora of news channels.
Whenever you find a new piece of information related to your already posted article, you can add it. It will give a strong message to Google that you are an expert in your field.
Likewise, if you are a marketer, you have to include the latest approaches related to marketing and studies.
Google Trends is an easy approach to discovering the most up-to-date information to keep your content fresh and up to the mark.
- Structure And Organization
Imagine you have written top-notch content but forgot to organize it. How will the readers react?
Will they love to read your article and easily find the answers to their queries?
Absolutely not!
They will instantly leave your page and search for a better article.
So, you have to focus on structuring and organizing your posts. It would be best to break down the entire content and include headings and subheadings in your content to make it more appealing.
Plus, include the images relevant to the content. In this way, you can increase your article’s readability. Additionally, it will also improve the user experience of your website.
Related: 9 On-page SEO Factors That Drop Website Rankings
2. Page Loading Speed
For years, page speed has been listed as one of the most important SEO ranking elements. Google aims to improve its users’ web experience; therefore, fast-loading web pages will help them do so.
In July 2018, Google revealed a search engine algorithm upgrade focusing on mobile page speed, which began to affect sites. Google may penalize your site if it does not load quickly on mobile devices.
How to determine my site’s speed on mobile?
You can leverage Google’s mobile testing tool to check the site’s speed. Remember, the faster your site’s page loading speed, the better user experience you will earn.
3. User Experience
In times like these, Google has benefited from artificial intelligence to better rank websites. This procedure is referred to as RankBrain. There are multiple metrics included in this phase. There are:
- Dwell Time
Dwell time deals with the time user spends on your site, from landing on your site to leaving it.
- Click-Through Rate
The click-through rate is the specific percentage of people who click on your site to gain information.
- Bounce Rate
When a person clicks on your site and instantly goes back and visits another site, it is called bounce rate.
When a person lands on your site and quickly turns around, Google thinks your written content is irrelevant to his needs. Likewise, when multiple people do this, Google considers your content not user-friendly. It will be very difficult for you to rank your site in this condition.
What to do in that situation?
You should revisit your content and make some crucial amendments as per users’ needs.
When people stay on your site for a long time, Google thinks that your content is of supreme quality that is highly relevant to users’ queries.
4. Backlinks
The backlink is one of the most crucial ranking factors. Due to its importance, Google crawler locates your site for indexing. You can say that content and backlinks run at the same pace.
Without having any backlinks, you cannot drive traffic to your site.
Accordingly, backlinks have great significance for your site’s SEO. How?
Gaining backlinks from a high authority site will help you rank your site higher. It sends a crystal clear message to Google that your content is well-crafted as multiple sites vouch for it.
5. Domain Authority
You need to consider another Google ranking factor, Domain Authority (DA).
It is a search engine ranking parameter that indicates how competent your site is on a particular topic and how well it may rank.
The greater your domain authority, the more likely you will rank on Google. You can now increase the authority of your website with a different method.
You should begin by obtaining high-quality backlinks. However, having many backlinks does not always imply higher ranks.
This is where you will need to generate great industry-specific content.
6. Keyword Optimization
In addition to crafting tailor-made content and getting backlinks from high authority sites, keyword optimization is an undeniable ranking factor.
As keywords are the search terms users type to get results; thus, it is necessary that your site must have the keywords people use to achieve results.
Follow these tips to make sure that your content is well-optimized:
- Meta Title
Include the primary keyword in your meta title.
- Meta Description
Incorporate primary and secondary keywords in the description section so that readers realize that your content is worth reading.
- Anchor Text
Google focuses on anchor text to figure out what your page is about; hence, you can put your keyword in it.
Place keywords in H1 and H2
If you want to improve your content’s SEO, you should include keywords in headings and subheadings. It will help you to stick readers to your site.
- Do Not Stuff Keywords
If you think that keyword optimization means filling your page with unlimited keywords, you are incorrect.
Instead, you should avoid keyword stuffing and adjust target keywords in a natural flow. It would be best to use synonyms of your target keywords.
7. Social Shares
People will share your content on social media if it best-fits to users’ needs. It means that your content is valuable. Although Google suggests that gaining social shares is not a ranking point because links from Facebook and Instagram do not compete with other authoritative sites’ links.
But when you analyze the top pages of the first page, you will find that they gain the bulk of social share. You can say that more social shares enable these pages to generate more traffic and build backlinks.
In simple words, gaining social shares will indirectly help you bring traffic to your site.
Six Practical Tips For Writing An SEO-Friendly Article
These six tips will help you write a well-knit article that catapults your site to Google’s first page. Let’s begin!
I. Identify The Right Keywords
First things first!
Before diving directly into the writing phase, start by doing keyword research. You have to know what users are searching for. You can check the average searches of the users against a particular keyword every single month.
Analyze whether the trend is increasing or decreasing. Now check keyword difficulty. It would be best if you target low competition keywords.
Most importantly, the keywords you are targeting should match your niche. You can leverage reliable keyword finder tools such as Ahref, SEMrush, KWFinder, etc.
II. Outline Your Topic
Before outlining your topic, you should analyze current topic pages related to your topic. It will help you decide the word count and other writing parameters.
Outlining your topic clearly will help you write top-level content that resonates with your audience.
III. Start Writing
Now begin writing the content. Include all the necessary points in your article. Do not be concerned about making mistakes. As it is your first draft, you can write freely.
- Write A Compelling Headline
If you write an eye-grabbing headline, you will get a chance that your article will be read and shared by people.
Clickable headlines will bring in more traffic and conversions to your site.
- Include Subheadings To Break The Content
Formatting is an essential part of content writing. Reading an article with a single massive paragraph will give readers a headache.
People skim the content and read headings and subheadings to get the central idea. Hence, it would be best to incorporate H1, H2, and even H3 in your content in order to break.
- Use Bullet Points
As stated earlier, people do not read the entire content. Instead, they skim the content and decide whether it is worth reading or not. Thus, you have to show your readers that your written content includes the best information.
What else is better than incorporating bullet points in your content?
IV. Add Images
Our brain tends to understand and respond to visual content compared to textual content. That’s why using images in your material can maximize user engagement.
V. Add A Strong Call-To-Action
Remember, you have to save the best and most compelling thing for the last portion – call-to-action.
You can include a clear call-to-action in the form of a question, request to provide feedback, share your article, purchase your product, and a lot more.
VI. Proofread And Publish It
Finally, it’s time to give a finishing touch to your article. Erase all the typos, grammatical, and punctuation mistakes from the content and make it error-free.
Now, publish your content. Best of luck!
