You run a business and you’re investing all your time and effort into building your reputation and your success. Chances you have missed one thing is Google and your business didn’t pay off for all your efforts.
Regardless of what your business is, you need to prove to Google that you are an authority on your subject matter or an expert in your area – and you have to do this in a way that Google understands.
Google Ranking
Google ranking, a term that came into living in the mid-2000s. It means the rank of how Google search engine optimizes your website. Rankings are mainly based on keywords and links but might vary by region. Ranking can be increased by improving content such as relevance and uniqueness.
Understanding how Google ranks websites and using those principles to strategically improve your own website is what it takes you to climb the ranks and be at the top of the search engine results page (SERP).
Discovering What Makes Google Love Your Website
Google has never publicly disclosed its ranking factors and does not really give out its secret sauce. However, by listening carefully, you will understand what Google experts and marketers have to say.
What they are certain of is that Google’s algorithm evaluates a site’s quality by considering topical relevance, trustworthiness, usability, and other factors.
Speed of Page Loading, of Course.
In a recent study, it was found that 40% percent of users abandon websites that take more than 4 seconds to load. It is clear that the website speed affects the user experience but not only that. Since Google’s July 2018 Algorithm Speed Update, this fact has fully taken effect. This included the speed of the website when viewed on a desktop computer or a mobile phone. The optimal user experience should’ve always been an important issue to consider and if you want to increase your visibility, you have no choice but to add it as a key step in your optimization checklist.
Google calls these official ranking factors page experience signals. They include:
- Core Web Vitals (Page Speed)
- Mobile Friendliness
- Safe Browsing (Virus-free links)
- Intrusive Interstitial (No aggressive popups)
Intent and Content
Yes, content is king but content without value is spam. Before you do content creation, ask yourself: How is my content better than the content that is already ranking for my keyword? Because if your content does not satisfy the user in a superior way to existing content, why would Google even rank it higher? Despite Google’s hints and guidelines about how they evaluate the content, it typically includes a blend of utility, trust, authority, and user experience You must gain familiarity with their E-A-T system (emphasizing expertise, authority, and trustworthiness) so you be able to assess quality content that has become The Thing within the past few years.
You should create content with intent because creating value begins with understanding intent. You should understand your users in a way you guess what they want.
What is “intent” content? This is content that:
- Completely satisfies a user’s search query
- Offers supporting evidence by providing quality supplemental content that supports the main content
- Answers additional related questions to the user’s search query
- Is authoritative (in other words, gives the user a reason to trust the information)
If you provide relevant and useful content, you will be their last click (when people search for a keyword—and they find you— If you were to provide such good information, they have no need to go back and click any other result.)
Backlinks
We’ve talked about how publishing amazing and relevant content is great. But for your content to be seen, you can’t just take the publish and cross fingers approach. That is because your content dissolves in an ocean of content of all types and people will need that one hook to take it out of that ocean. This is where the role backlinks come. In general, links help us find content quickly. We have a hard time recognizing a website if it has no links to it ever.
In the “ranking game,” links are among the most powerful factors. In search results, a site with more backlinks has a better chance of ranking higher. This is because the more backlinks a page has, the more valuable it is. This also helps get free organic traffic. However, Google doesn’t “count” all links the same. How you link is just as important as what you link to. It’s widely believed that Google may pass more weight through topically relevant links only. You should link to your most topically related content and when possible, try to link within your main content.
Keywords: Smarter not Harder
Ranking and Keywords have a love affair that we all know well. Starting out, you might have selected the keywords you want to rank for. But are they the right keywords that will help you rank?
During this stage of keyword research, people tend to make the following mistakes:
- Choosing keywords that aren’t specific enough(too broad)
- Choosing keywords with too much competition
- Keywords that are not relevant to their business
- Trying to rank for a single keyword at a time
Instead, avoid numbers 1 and 2 and list out multiple keywords with high search volume that are relevant to your business. The secret is picking the right keywords to target and build content around. You could hire an SEO expert or if you’re somehow familiar with SEO, you can use the Google keyword planner.
It’s Not About Doing All of The Google Rankings Factors, It’s About Mixing and Prioritizing.
While we write this blog, the webmaster community is constantly testing, comparing, and monitoring to understand how Google really tends to rank websites because Google guidelines are in constant update.
Google ranking factors are a vague outline of what you have to keep in mind. Every Google Search optimization strategy will indeed vary from location to location that’s why you need to benchmark your business against other competitors in your industry.
Remember, there is a unique recipe for every project. While the ingredients might be the same, the priority and weight might differ. So, it’s all up to you.
