Ranking factors are the criteria applied by Search engines when evaluating pages to decide which pages to show on SERP(Search Engine Results Page) and in which order. Ranking factors can relate to technical implementation, website content, backlink profile, or many other elements.

Google is using more than 100 factors before deciding which websites to show on top of SERP, but not all ranking factors are equal. Google is making a lot of changes to its ranking algorithms and factors every year to improve the quality of its search results. If you want to create helpful content for your audience, you should refer to these ranking factors to improve your SEO and overall marketing strategy.

Here is the list of important Google ranking factors that can make or break your website’s position in the SERPs. If you are a business that wants Google to send you more relevant traffic or give a high ranking on SERP, then you have to work out these SEO factors.

Content Quality and Relevance

Digital marketing doesn’t exist without engaging and relevant content. Quality content is indubitably the most important SEO ranking factor. Every image, banner ad, blog post, infographic, or long-tail article is content for your website. Even Google prioritizes high-quality articles as over-bloated clickbait with too many unnecessary keywords. If you’re investing in SEO content that will increase your website traffic and you’ll see tremendous ROI(Return On Investment) on your content marketing efforts.

Backlinks

After content, the second most important Google ranking factor is quality backlinks. It influences the quality and quantity of your website. Inbound links or backlinks will continue to be one of the leading SEO factors if you want to rank well on search engines. Establishing backlinks with high authoritative websites plays an important part in Google’s algorithm. The pages with quality backlinks are more likely to get good organic search engine rankings.

Keyword Optimization

Besides creating quality content and getting high-authority backlinks, one of the most obvious ranking factors is the use of relevant keywords on your website. Keyword optimization is the act of researching, analyzing, and selecting the best and most relevant keywords to get qualified traffic from SERP.  When it comes to SEO, the success of your organic search efforts relies on how effective you are at researching, discovering, analyzing, and selecting the right keywords for your website. You can make your website keyword optimized by adding your main keyword in URL, title, meta description, headings, image alt text, and content.

Site Loading Speed

Loading speed is very important for any website. How quickly your website loads is an important factor in getting your site to rank in search results. Google uses site speed in its algorithm to rank high-speed sites over slow-loading sites. ‍If you have a slow site, your customers are not going to enjoy browsing and they’ll bounce and you’ll lose your valuable website traffic. PageSpeed Insights is a great online tool provided by Google which is used to identify web performance issues on sites.

Mobile Optimized Friendly Website

As a search engine, Google wants to deliver the best result for the search queries, and by checking a website for its mobile-friendliness, it can be guaranteed that the mobile searcher can fully access the information on the page. If you don’t have a mobile-friendly website, your customers will be having a negative perception of your business and leave your website, which hurts your SEO ranking. You can reach out to most of your target market by having a mobile Optimised friendly website.

User Experience

Nowadays customer experience demands a lot more than product pictures and descriptions. You’ll need videos, infographics, and other quality content to create the kind of experience that people enjoy and return for. Creating a fantastic customer experience is a good thing in and of itself and being able to demonstrate to Google that you’re giving your site visitors what they want helps boost your SEO for website ranking.

Technical SEO

If there is an issue with the technical part of your website then your SEO efforts will not generate the expected results. Technical SEO refers to improving the technical aspects of a website that help search engine spiders crawl and index your site more effectively. Technical SEO includes many factors like redirects, sitemap, robot.txt file, 404 error, security, and many more.

Knowing how to prioritize SEO efforts in practice requires knowledge of Google’s algorithm and ranking factors. Applying these key ranking factors across your site will help you to push your site up in the search results. You can contact Swayam Infotech to develop an SEO strategy for your website and schedule a meeting for a detailed discussion. We create the best SEO strategies for our clients using the above key factors that will complement your business goals.