The Most Important SEO Ranking Factors

What exactly are ranking factors? And how do they affect you? Well, when you perform a search with a keyword, a series of results pop up. Now, these results are ranked in order of their quality and relevance. Most search engine users won’t even look beyond the first few results so it’s vital to stay at the top of the SERPs. Google and other search engines usually aim to give their users the best match for their searches so the first few links are of really high quality.

Google determines this quality by judging several factors of your website. Very few know about the full list of factors, but there are over 200 of them. Now, it’s not possible to keep an eye on the entire list of these factors, but you can keep an eye on a few very important ones. Here’s a brief description of them.

Backlinks Reign Supreme 

Backlinks are one of the most important ranking factors. That’s mostly because they reinforce your authority. After all, if a legitimate and high authority website cites your website and places a link to your content on their page, they believe that the page is of high authority as well. That increases your online reputation and respectability, which in turn is noticed by the Google bots and crawlers. This is one of the best ways to get a high rank on the SERPs. Of course, it goes without saying that your overall link authority would help you rank high on the SERPs.

Content Relevancy 

It’s not enough for you to just write good content; you also need to make them relevant. This means that if the content isn’t connected to a keyword or search term, it wouldn’t rank high on the SERPs. For example, if you’re searching for a way to set up your wi-fi router, a webpage that describes the process in an organized and clear manner, it would rank higher. However, the pages that just use the keywords and don’t describe the process adequately won’t rank high.

Content Length 

There’s a lot being said about the short attention spans of people when they’re online. Not all of it is true. Yes, people do have short attention spans when they’re reading things online. However, when people look for information, they want the most comprehensive and informative content. If the content is about 200 words long, it won’t manage to convey much information.

According to research done by several SEO experts, the average word count of content on the top results is about 1,800 words. Comprehensive articles with 2,000 to 3,000 words garner the most attention. If an article has to contain that much content, it has to be well-researched. This ensures that the quality of the content is good.

Images in Content 

People prefer visual content and creators are recognizing this. Most good quality content online has infographics, videos, and even pictures. Even a single picture is enough to increase the rankings significantly. Other factors include site loading speed, HTTPS, low bounce rate, etc. If you consider these in your website, you’ll see a positive change in your search engine rankings.

The Most Important SEO Ranking Factors

About Nathanael Vanderkolk

Nathanael Vanderkolk is the Director of the Smart SEO Company, a SEO Agency in Sydney, Australia. Smart SEO Sydney has a keen awareness of the latest approaches to online marketing. Follow him on , Facebook and Twitter.
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