The 12 Most Important SEO Ranking Factors

Tram Ho

There are more than 200 SEO ranking factors that help search engines determine which sites to display in search results. If you want your website to get top positions on the SERPs (search engine results page), you need to optimize SEO for your website to respond well to these factors.

Fortunately, not all 200 ranking factors are equal. Some ranking factors are more important than others. When you plan your SEO strategy, pay particular attention to these 12 factors as it affects rankings most.

Before I dive into the top SEO ranking factors, it’s important to note that these factors can and will change with Google’s new ranking algorithms.

Search engine and Google ranking algorithm are constantly changing. Some factors become more important or less important, and some factors are introduced further or removed. It is important to keep up to date with the latest ranking factors and regularly use SEO tools to improve your website.

Now, see how to help improve SEO rankings by optimizing your website to meet the 12 key SEO ranking factors below.

The top 12 SEO ranking factors

Here are the top 12 SEO ranking factors (not ranked in order of importance).

content

1 1. High quality content 2 2. Backlink 3 3. Optimized content 4 4. Proper target keywords 5 5. Secure website 6 6. Ability to crawl 7 7. Friendly with mobile devices 8 8. Download speed page 9 9. User engagement 10 10. Structured data 11 11. Consistent business listings 12 12. Domain operating time 13 Connections Comment

1. High quality content

Another way to increase user engagement on your site and attract search engines is to constantly publish high quality content on your site. Content is one of the most important SEO ranking factors. Search engines want to deliver the best possible results, so they give top rankings to well-researched, in-depth and carefully constructed content sites.

New content attracts search crawlers and increases search visibility while providing you with something valuable to share with others, so focus on making good content first. .

2. Backlink

Backlink is another signal to search engines that a website is trustworthy and authoritative. The quantity and quality of the links pointing to your site is an SEO factor that has a significant impact on the website’s search rankings.

Besides content, backlinks are often considered the second most important SEO ranking factor. If you want your site to rank, you need to plan on building high quality backlinks to your site through activities like article sharing, link acquisition, and link building strategies. other links.

Backlinks are Pagerank’s foundation, the foundation of Google’s ranking algorithm. Many people argue that PageRank is an old algorithm that is no longer in use but Google employee Gary Illyes has confirmed that PageRank is still in use in 2018:

Independent research also confirms the relationship between backlinks and natural traffic

backlink versus search traffic As you can see in the chart, the greater the number of backlinks, the more traffic through organic search is. This is proof that backlinks are still very important

3. Content is optimized

To attract search engines to your content, you also need to consider the on-page SEO factors. On-page SEO is the process of optimizing each individual page on your site for a target keyword. By optimizing your content for a specific keyword, you tell search engines what this page is about and what it should rank for.

Assign a unique keyword to each page on your site. (Never assign the same keyword to multiple pages on your page as this can be confusing for search engines.) Then, optimize the content for on-site SEO best practices.

4. Keyword target right

Content creation strategy by performing keyword research to let you know which keywords to target and topics to cover. Keyword research is the process of identifying popular keywords that can drive traffic to your site.

Read more articles: How to research keywords (Keyword Research) with Keyword Tool 2020

Consider how Google ranks keywords to help you choose the best keywords for your content.

Target long tail keywords (long tail keyword). As voice search is becoming increasingly popular, many people search for long phrases and questions. Complain this type of search by looking for long tail keywords (keywords with three or more words) in addition to shorter general keywords for targeting in your content. Understand the purpose of keyword search. The purpose of a search is why someone searches (that is, because they want to learn, buy, or navigate to something). Google raises the rankings for pages with content that is relevant to the purpose of the keyword, so make sure you understand how different keyword types map to different content types, in different parts of the buying funnel. goods. Terms target in the competitive range of your website. Some keywords are extremely competitive and will be difficult to rank for. Focus on keywords that are within the competitive scope of your website. seo ranking factors keyword strategy

5. Website security

Until 2014, Google discussed site security as a ranking factor. Now, that is one of the most important Google ranking factors on this list. Website security refers to the use of HTTPS encryption. Websites with HTTPS encryption have an SSL certificate that creates a secure connection between the site and the user. It adds a layer of security that protects the exchange of information between users and the site.

Search engines want to direct users to the most trusted websites and encrypt HTTPS to show them that a website is secure. If your website URL starts with HTTP, not HTTPS, your website is insecure and you should add an SSL certificate.

ssl security certificate When you add an SSL certificate on your website url a lock icon appears as shown in the picture

6. Ability to collect data

Search engines cannot rank a website if they cannot find it. That is why the ability to crawl a website is such an important SEO ranking factor. The ability to crawl allows search engines to scan a web page and review its content, so they can determine what that page is about and how it should be ranked.

If you want Google to rank your website, allow search engines to crawl your site properly.

Submit a sitemap for top search engines. Check the status of your index in Google Search Console to review the number of pages Google has crawled on your site. Use the right robots.txt to tell which search engines they should visit and which pages they should ignore. Read more article: How does the Google search engine work?

7. Mobile-friendly

Mobile friendliness refers to how a website works when someone views it on a mobile device. Mobile-friendly websites provide a good user experience by using responsive design to tailor content to fit any screen size. Because more searches are done on mobile devices than on desktops (52.2% of internet traffic comes from mobile devices and the number is growing), mobile-friendliness very important for both search engines and users.

To see if your site is responsive, submit your site to Google Mobile-Friendly Testing. It will report any problems with the mobile version of your site.

test mobile friendly with google My website ( seocity.com.vn ) is friendly to mobile devices when testing Google mobile friendly test

8. Page loading speed

Another SEO ranking factor related to user experience is page load speed. Slow loading sites provide a bad user experience. Search engines know that people want to find answers as quickly as possible, so they like to show web pages that will load quickly for users. This is even more true for mobile websites, as Google claims that download speed becomes a ranking factor for mobile searches.

To ensure that your website loads quickly, use the page speed test. Try Google’s PageSpeed ​​Insights tool.

google test page speed insight Your website gets 72/100 points Google test page speed insight With the score 72/100 I need to optimize the website more to increase the page speed insight score up. Having a score of over 90 means your site is loading very well

9. User participation

Search engines reach users to help determine which pages they should advertise in search rankings. They look at how users interact with the results to determine which page is better and more useful for searchers. Google does this through an artificial intelligence tool called RankBrain. User interaction elements include:

Clickthrough rate (CTR): Percentage of people who click on search engine results when being shown to them. Time on site: The amount of time someone spends on a page after finding it via search Bounce Rate: Percentage of people who quickly leave after only viewing a page on a site they find via search.These metrics help search engines determine whether search results are valuable. with users or not, so optimize both site content and search snippets to increase user engagement.

Use website design and high quality graphics. Use internal links to help users easily navigate through your site. Use meta tags to create catchy titles and descriptions for your search results. Optimize your content for featured snippets in search.

10. Structured data

Another way to tell search engines what the site is about (so that they rank it appropriately) is through the use of structured data. Structured data, or Schema Markup, is a microdata that is added to the backend of a web page to let search engines know how to categorize and interpret content (such as identifying business addresses, titles, and books). mode or other type of information).

Structured data is an SEO ranking factor because it tells search engines what is important about a page. This is also important because structured data can lead to prominent snippets in search, which can increase clickthrough rates and increase rankings.

11. Consistent business listings

Search engines rank the brands they believe to be the most reliable. The more brands that appear online, the more likely the search engines will increase their search visibility. This is why business listings are an important ranking factor.

Business listings, sometimes called citations, are primarily a local SEO ranking factor (Local SEO or SEO Google Map). But all brands should perform basic setup and citation management:

Create a Google My Business page. Set up business records on industry related directories. Ensure that their NAP (business name, address and phone number) is used consistently in their business profile.

12. Uptime of domain name

The final ranking factor may not be something you can control, but it is worth mentioning. The age of the domain, or how old your website is, is often considered a ranking factor. Although Google didn’t specify this as one of its SEO ranking factors, research has found that older domain names tend to rank better.

So, if you launch an entirely new website, know that it will take time for your SEO efforts to flourish. With constant time and SEO work, your website will improve search rankings, but it won’t happen overnight. Normally it will take 6 months for your website to be able to top the search

Conclude

Now that you know which SEO ranking factors are the most important, start your keyword research, content building, backlink building and website optimization tasks.

Read more at: https://seocity.com.vn/blog

Share the news now

Source : Viblo