Introduction
Every digital business these days is striving hard to attain that top position in the SERP. Why not? That first page or top position ranking is precious, as it defines your business’s credibility, brings in the terrific traffic, and swiftly helps in upscaling your sales lead conversion rates.
If you are not ranking on the first page of SERP then you are losing your business to the competitors. They say, “ 97% of people don’t move beyond the first page of Google. While 55% of all clicks are done on the first three organic results”.
Google has drastically changed in the past ten years. Today, for Google, ranking is much more than just keyword optimization & placement.
The search engine with its smart and AI-run processes is focusing on other factors as well – like mobile-first indexing, the responsiveness of a website, conviction behind the use of keywords in the content, and many other hundreds of factors which we would discuss in length below.
The reason why Google has not released a consolidated list of its preferred ranking factors is to stop spammers from swindling the search results.
There are around 200 factors that Google makes a clear note of before planning to give your website a good rank in its SERP. Here we will make you meet the most important ones that you can easily take charge of and can easily monitor, and re-optimize in your SEO ranking tracking phase.
So if you have web pages and content inscribed with a sufficient volume of keywords but have a website that’s far from being responsive, don’t think your efforts for ranking SEO practices is in the right direction — because search engine ranking is much more than SEO ranking for keywords.
If you are a digital business that’s particular about keywords ranking or getting high ranking in SEO game plan, this article has stored all the important and Google’s compatible SEO ranking factors.
Most Important SEO Ranking Factors That You Need To Emphasize On
By knowing and understanding what factors affects your positions in the SERP, you will have an easy time in:
- Auditing your website
- Reoptimizing your content and web pages
- Making every possible effort to rank your website in top searches
So, the following are important factors that are ideal for ranking SEO efforts in 2020.
1. Content is and will be the jack of all trades
To rank yourself higher in the SERP, focusing on the quality of the content is pivotal. Your brand should focus on generating content that:
- Provides real value to the audience
- Should host engaging visual elements throughout
- Cover in-depth information about the respective subject or topic
- Has proper placement of user-centric search terms
1.1. What about the length of the content?
Google hasn’t put direct highlights on what should be the exact length of the content to gain the top rankings. But as we have closely watched the ranking trends, the search engines give great preference and top search position to the content that are – comprehensive, resourceful, and longer in length. However, on measuring the top websites, we found their content to be 2000 words long.
The reason why everyone is waving at long content is that it brings:
- Great engagement
- Links
- And social signals
1.2. How to get top SEO ranking for keywords in content?
To make your content rank better, you can try optimizing keyword targeting in your every content with the semantic search terms. You will see these semantic search terms at the bottom of the page with the heading “searches related to “your topic name”. Suppose you have searched for email marketing in Google, you will see semantic search terms at the bottom of the page with name “searches related to email marketing”.
Your website should load at a horse speed
In the above, as we told you Google is not anymore going crazy about “keywords and only keywords”. The genius search engine is routing towards other important factors as well, like – your website speed. To get top ranking in the SEO game plan, you need to make sure that your website is loading at lightning speed.
They say slow and steady wins the race, but that’s not the case here. Google loves ranking websites that take dedicated efforts in making its website as effortless as possible for the end-users. If you aren’t bothered about your website’s loading speed, why would Google care to rank you in the top searches?
Look around your website for the elements that are heavy and take up huge space, either delete them, replace them or compress them.
Do you have authoritative links that search engines want – internal links to backlinks?
Google takes backlinks as a great ranking factor. If some third-party, authoritative and trustworthy sites are using links directing to your website, Google will consider you as a reputed website that provides valuable and genuine content to the readers. Backlinks will put a positive stamp on your keywords ranking efforts.
To attract backlinks from quality websites, you need to produce great content and run a massive outreach campaign for it.
Whereas, when you do internal linking, doing this will help in indexing your website better. By producing internal linking throughout the content, you will make it easy for the search engines to identify the relationships between your different web pages and the context of those pages.
Focus on building a smart and consolidated link building strategy to get the desired keywords ranking and brand outreach.
Updating old content with the new SERP features
Search engines rank content or website that walks parallel with newest and updated algorithms and SERP features.
Even if you are ranking high in the SERP but if your content isn’t updated with the newest techniques, don’t think you will still keep on holding that spot.
Google with its freshness algorithm, rolled out in 2010 is giving more preference to the content that is updated as per the current algorithm or is continuously bringing updates to its content. So you have quite a task to edit and modify the old web pages or content to keep continuing hanging on that top spot. Impact in the SERP happens overnight, so it may happen that a competitor may tap a spot ahead of you within a few days.
In your SEO ranking tracking to-do list, mark updating the old articles or content as necessary.
Is your website compatible over the mobile screen?
Google made it clear with its mobile-first indexing approach that the website’s ranking will be priorly dependent on how it appears over the mobile screens. If your website is just a desktop version, no matter how hard you try with other SEO efforts, you will have a hard time acing that top ranking.
Google with its mobile-first approach wants to prioritize the user experience over mobility solutions. Thus, you need to massively work on a mobile version of your website to keep playing hard for that high ranking in the SEO game plan.
Are you closely monitoring your bounce rates?
Bounce rate is not a direct ranking factor though, but if we see, it indirectly supports rankings. Since the bounce rate clarifies when the page is not delivering according to the users’ expectations, there you have a bigger scope to rectify the areas of the pages that are causing users to repel. A nor too little or too high bounce rate is a good sign.
Make sure to carefully track your bounce rate during your SEO ranking tracking.
Empower your local SEO with schema optimization
By undergoing a wide schema code optimization process, you can easily empower your local SEO game.
By using a schema markup code it gets easy for the search engines to know every specific data better, data like phone numbers, addresses, reviews, and so on.
When you infuse the correct schema code, you are better able to tell Google where your business is located. It’s good when you are trying hard for the local SEO ranking.
2. Use multimedia with useful title tags & descriptions
Sure everyone loves watching a wide variety of colorful multimedia throughout the content. But what if we tell you that Google doesn’t rank multimedia like images, videos, or audios. So to make your multimedia and visuals understandable to the search crawlers, make sure to:
-
- Title them with relevant words and keywords.
- Tag them with the user’s searched search terms.
- Put a concise description defining what your audio, video, image is all about — to help crawlers understand their purpose and usefulness for ranking.
3. Be mindful of keywords ranking factors as well
Just because Google isn’t solely relying on keyword optimization doesn’t mean you will forget about this factor at all. Along with other SEO ranking factors, the “SEO ranking for keywords” is still up for consideration. You cannot get rid of keyword optimization as long as search engines are still in working. So the real question is how Google or other search engines expects the placement of the keywords to be – for easy crawling and indexing.
This is how your keywords should be optimized but make sure to not overdo them:
- Put keywords with high volume at the beginning of your title tag
- Mention target keyword in the URL
- Put keywords in the domain name and the meta description tag
- Put keywords in the H1, H2 or H3 tag
However, insert your keyword throughout the content in an organic & natural way. Never overthrow the keywords just for the sake of stuffing them — as it will negatively add to your “ranking SEO game”
Optimize your images for the top search
No matter how hard you work for high ranking in SEO game plan, Google has this obsession of pushing down the sites from the top of SERPs to make a special spot for that “image strips” upon users’ queries.
Along with pushing hard your website element to rank, make sure to optimize your images as well for producing them in the top searches. There you will have higher chances of taking fullest advantage of the search engine’s ranking factors.
4. Make sure you have a website that’s accessible to users
Websites that are difficult to use often struggle with ranking high. If users are finding difficulty in using and accessing your website, the search engine will outrank your website.
Right from the beginning, maintain a website that’s easy to navigate for users as well as the search crawlers. If you feel your website is giving a tough time in ranking high, you can consider redesigning your website according to the feasibility of the end-users.
Use HTTPS protocol if not yet using
Google made it clear that “security is a top priority for them and webmasters are supposed to use the industry-qualified security standards only like HTTPS encryption, especially on the website where users are required to share their personal data”.
Though following HTTPS protocol is not a part of Google’s ranking factor when you follow all legit procedures, you win a positive spot in the eyes of a search engine- which will ultimately help to meet your high ranking SEO efforts.
Don’t put irrelevant Alt tags
The common reason for putting Alt tags for anyone would be to insert the specific keyword in the image description and hope for it to rank. But if you are making a practice of putting irrelevant and unmatching Alt tags to your image, don’t think Google will ignore you.
Suppose, if you are putting a picture of a flower and naming an Alt Tag to it as “best stone jewelry”, don’t think you will rank, just because you inserted the keyword in the tag. Google now has gained senses in recognizing and matching the image and its tag as well.
Create concise URLs
If your URLs are full of uneasy to read elements, there, web crawlers will have a hard time in fetching your site for the ranking.
Make sure you don’t create a long, wordy URL as it will make it easy for the crawlers to search your website. And as well keep the description of the URL to be readable. The reader should get a clear understanding of the information via URL, that they are expected to get inside the page.
Forex- If a page is about puppy care products, make sure your URL concise that topic, as crawlers will have an easy time in reading and indexing that URL page upon the users’ searches.
On putting up a study, we found out that websites that hosted short URLs, generally between 50-60 characters were performing better in the search result pages.
Which is more – your site’s uptime or downtime?
If your site is prone to downtimes for a few hours or day, that is not the problem. But if your website is experiencing sudden crashes and downtime for weeks, there you will have a hard time ranking high.
Make sure to maintain your site’s uptime regularly and mark this as an important factor to work on, in your SEO ranking tracking checklist.
So these were the important search engine ranking factors that are important to address to stay intact/achieve the topmost ranking in the SERPs.
Let’s now understand how Google’s keywords Ranking in 2020 works
Google couples above mentioned and many other hundreds of factors in its every algorithm to determine which result will be more helpful for the users. Google has its smart algorithm called “RankBrain”, which is a machine learning (AI) based algorithm that does a great job of sorting and improving the search results.
RankBrain keeps on tweaking its algorithm and functions as:
- Based on keywords, this smart AI-based algorithm can anytime, increase or decrease in the importance of elements like content length, domain authority, backlinks and more – so make sure to have optimum use of the keywords.
- It strictly prevents black-hat SEO practices to avoid spammers from manipulating the search results.
Final Thoughts
So this was it, folks. With the above, we have studied all the important ranking factors that can uplift or downgrade your SEO game. If you want to ace the game of rankings and traffic, make sure to follow these above-mentioned Google’s keywords ranking factors well.
Along with these factors, make sure to get consistent with the SEO ranking tracking as well. By timely following Google’s updates and putting the reflection of these updates in your SEO efforts, you will easily triumph in the race of rankings and search engine’s visibility.
If you are striving hard to meet that Google’s top sweet spot, we have our team of SEO connoisseurs to fulfill your every need right from top-ranking to huge brand outreach in the digital world.
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