Every year Google changes its ranking strategies based on various factors which no one knows.
In 2014, the sites with “HTTPS” were more preferable by Google
In 2015, the sites which are mobile compatible, Google started ranking those sites
In 2016, Google introduced “RankBrain” which started studying your content
In 2017, again Google wanted to rank those sites which are more secure “HTTPS”
In 2018-19, Mobile optimization sites with good speed and user engagements are the ranking factors
All of the above, the high-quality content always dominates all ranking factors.
Even though you are fulfilling all the requirements suggested by Google and the content is not good quality then it’s very difficult to rank those sites.
Google always wants a good user experience. Whenever someone searching for some information Google, he/she should get more relevant and accurate information’s. Overall the user experience must be good.
In the Technical SEO term, user experience is directly proportional to the bouncing rate. Less bouncing rate is always good for any sites, which means users are coming to your website and spending some time.
Publish High-Quality Content
In the SEO world, there is provoke “Content is King” but actually it’s not true. The content, which creates good user experiences, is the king.
Even though you wrote very high-quality content but there is no good user experience, Google considers it as poor quality content.
When you are developing content, try to provide solutions that people are looking for, never confuse them.
The good content writer always understands the user’s problem and develops such content that creates good user experiences.
There is an SEO Technique called “Skyscraper” which developed by the site owner “Backlinkco”, it means the search for your niche keyword and sees which sites come top of search engine. Explore the top sites and understand their contents. And write better content, publish it on your website and ask people to read it.
If people find the content is good then they will share with others.
Always focus on building user-friendly content than high-quality English written articles.
Build Mobile Optimized Website
Usage of smartphones has significantly grown during the last decade and it will continue to grow in the future as well.
Google’s recent survey says, more than 2 billion people are always connected via smartphones and it became a part of life.
Starting from reading magazines, watching movies and serials, ordering foods, online shopping, taking photos, recording videos, etc everything is now possible in today’s smartphones.
Due to this growing market of mobile usages, Google prefers mobile-optimized websites to provide better user experiences.
There are many websites, who can say if your website is mobile optimized or not.
There are hundreds of website to evaluate website mobile optimizations.
Secure Your Website (HTTPS)
Data theft is the bigger issue now days. People are smart and they don’t prefer to do any transactions on non-secure websites.
Google understand it and ensure all the ranking websites are secured (HTTPS).
Early days Google used to show “Not Secure” message with a triangle on website URL but now it shows “Not Secure” message with a circle inside “I”.
When you search any keywords on Google, you will only see all the ranking websites have “HTTPS”.
Better User Experience
Google loves those websites which loved by users.
Better user experience is directly proportional to better ranking. User experiences are not only designing good-looking websites rather providing contents that solve users problems.
When you or your content development team, writes content on a certain topic, its always required to think if that content is going to provide enough information which users are looking for.
Your goal should be to create more engagement when someone visits your websites.
Google give more preferences to rank websites with good user engagements.
Here are a few points, which you must not ignore;
- Develop Solution Based Content with Examples
- Content should be written in easily understandable English language
- Write Short Paragraphs
- Use Headings and Sub-Headings
- Use Info-Graphics
- Use Videos
- Provide Quick Response of Users Queries
You need to ensure that people love your content and to achieve that you need to understand user’s behaviors.
Website Speed Optimization
Slow websites praised neither by people nor by Google.
One of the critical ranking factors is Website Speed. This also comes under user experience. If your website loads very slow then people may not wait for that long.
Google never rank slow loading websites. Look at the top ranking websites for any keywords, you will never find slow loading websites.
These are small clues which you need to understand.
Out of many, there is a website called GTXmatrix, which will check your website speed and suggest you the improvisation required areas.
I have analyzed two websites i.e. https://ambulanceseo.com and https://www.amazon.in/ here.
You can visit this website https://gtmetrix.com and check your website speed today.
If your website speed is below average, its time to optimize it.
On-Page Optimization
On-Page Optimization holds 50% of the SEO work. It’s the process of organizing the content in such a way that Google understands the context of the topic and ranks the keywords accordingly.
It’s very important to understand the components of On-Page Optimizations before doing it.
Metatag
It includes the Title tag, Website URL and Description of the webpage when someone searches on Google, these are the information’s shows up on SERP.
Meta Tag optimization is very crucial for a website because it defines your website based on these data.
- Meta Title Tag Should be within 50-60 characters
- Meta Description should be within 150-160 characters
- Meta URL: Make it as short as possible, don’t use long url’s
Schema
It helps Google to understand your website framework and internal components of the page. The schema also helps in displaying rich snippets in search results.
For WordPress websites, there are plugins which make the job easier else you have to write codes manually.
Header Tag
According to SEO Content writing guidelines, you should always write small paragraphs with headings and sub-headings.
Using header tags make the topic more visible and you can add more targeted keywords in the header tags.
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Image Optimization
If your content has many images, don’t forget to tag them with appropriate keywords.
Image optimization helps Google understand the content and it ranks those images on Google Image Search.
For WordPress websites, it’s very easy, just you need to edit the image and type the keyword.
For HTML /PHP Sites, you can use this code
Internal Link Building
Internal linking of pages helps users and Google to find all of your website internal pages. When Google spider crawls your website and read one page, if that page has internal linking to other pages, the spider also visits those pages and index it.
Internal Links basically helps to create more engagements and quick indexing
Wikipedia is one of the best examples of internal indexing.
Creating OutBound Links
Like internal links, sometimes we need to create outbound links, which points to other websites. Outbound links help to understand the website niche and category.
It’s now part of on-page optimization and it good to have at least 1-2 high authority outbound links per page.
Build Relevant and High Authority Backlinks
No matters how good your content is, unless you build high authority relevant links, Google will never rank your website.
Building thousand links won’t help in ranking rather build few high-quality backlinks.
As per Google, your backlinks should be niche relevant, which means, if your website is related to the sports niche, then you must build backlinks from sports-related websites.
Building irrelevant backlinks may not be helpful rather harmful.
The best way of creating backlinks are using Guest Posting and Skyscraper Technique. This process is not easy but you will get high-quality backlinks.
Summary
All the discussed ranking factors help to rank a website. These are the signal you need to understand and act upon it asap.
Fast loading and well-optimized websites are more preferable. Along with that, your content must be user-friendly.
Don’t create irrelevant backlinks, build only niche relevant backlinks which have more impact than others. Guest Posting and SkyScrapper are the two best methods of creating high-quality backlinks.
You can also look at this article https://ambulanceseo.com/how-to-rank-a-brand-new-website-on-google/