According to moz.com, SEO is „the practice of increasing both the quality and quantity of website traffic, as well as exposure to your brand, through non-paid (also known as “organic”) search engine results “.
What you should know about this process is that it’s complex, influenced by several factors that are associated with the website’s functionality as well as search engine algorithms (which change when you least expect them to).
Unfortunately, it is not enough to have a website or simply publish content on it, especially when Google makes it harder with regular broad core algorithm updates (1). Seeing as a high ranking is not easy to achieve as search engines have a complex process for this specific task, it would be best to learn how to achieve long lasting results. After all, these are the ones that matter. Nevertheless, because there are so many different ranking factors to consider and reaching the top should be done while following a regular growth pattern, high rankings are achieved over time.
What are the Main Variables that Influence the SEO process?
Getting your website to rank high is something that can be done only if you pay attention to these 5 essential ranking factors that should always be considered when trying to get a website to reach the top of SERPs:
1. Website architecture – according to hubspot.com (2), even though this is something that many webmasters don’t pay attention to at first, the way your website is organized can directly impact the way search engines index your web pages. That is why there is a need for subdirectories as well as slugs, which are also known as clear strings of text at the end of URLs.
2. Domain security – you want your website to have „https “instead of „http“at the beginning of your URL because this is how Google is indexing websites. The „s “is obviously from the word „secure “. To have a secure website, you need an SSL certificate, which has the purpose of securing the domain.
3. Inbound links – due to the fact that trust is a major factor when it comes to the way that Google perceives website, you want more websites to link to a page from your own website. This is how you show the search engine giant that others trust your site so much that they link to it.
4. The intent of keywords – even though everyone knows that keywords are incredibly important to search engines, this does not mean that by simply including them into a text a few times will help your website rank high. There are many great SEO tools available on the market which can help you get an idea about what are the most relevant keywords for your business. A great article that you can read on this topic is “Importance of Keywords Selection and How to do Proper Keywords Research” (3). What you need to do is use the relevant keywords, but also provide the information that is associated with it or more specifically, what kind of details the web user is looking for. A professional SEO audit report made for your website will identify the best keywords for your business in terms if converging visitors into real customers.
5. Mobile user experience – according to searchenginejournal.com (4) due to the fact that there are so many mobile users, Google has made some major changes that focus on this factor starting with 2016. A website must have a mobile-friendly version as well to rank high on SERPs. The content on this version should be as responsive and identical to what users are able to see on the desktop version of the site.
A Website Must be up to date for the SEO Strategy to Work
There are just so many factors that need to be properly optimized so that the chosen SEO approach would deliver the desired results. Without this part, chances are that a competitor’s website will rank higher, which is exactly what you would like to avoid. There is enough room for all relevant websites on search engine pages, but the top is reserved for the best ones. Here’s what you should focus on:
- Design – the design should focus on offering the visitor access to the information they are looking for; For example: if there are too many elements on a page, the content is all over the place with no specific order – these are examples of issues that can affect a website‘s ranking.
- Page responsiveness – when clicking or tapping on a button or link, action should be taken immediately. It does not matter if you want to go at the end of the page or visit another webpage. The elements that are linked to other pages or anchored to areas of the same page should be active.
- Interactive interface – there should be different options available so that the web user can go back, skip to the part they are interested in, gain access to galleries, videos and so on.\
- Speed – the longer a visitor waits for a page to load, the higher the risk that they will leave and visit another website that loads quickly.
- Relevant content – the content published on a page should be relevant to the topic at hand and match user intent based on the keywords it includes.
- Metadata – Google (5) says „page-level meta tags are a great way for webmasters to provide search engines with information about their sites.“
The main focus of the search engine is to ensure that the websites which are ranked at the top of search engine results pages are the ones that offer the most value to web users, which is exactly why all of these factors are so significant.
Conclusion:
On-site analysis, content check, backlinks history, initial rankings, keywords’ level of competitiveness, market assessments – all these variables must be closely analyzed in order to set up the proper SEO strategy and deliver the best possible outcome for the client. A comprehensive SEO quote from a professional online marketing agency will give you a full overview about how well your website is optimized and what to do further to unleash its full potential.
All of this information must be considered first, as every single website is different and has various areas in which it could use improvement. SEO is a complex process, as well as the variables behind it, make sure that the strategy you implement from a search engine optimization point of view is what will offer the desired results.
Sources:
- https://www.newsmaker.com.au/news/375645/all-there-is-to-know-about-the-2019-google-algorithm-update#.Xcu3GFczZPZ
- https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/google-ranking-algorithm-infographic
- https://bestcmsplugins.com/importance-of-keywords-selection/
- https://www.searchenginejournal.com/4-important-ranking-factors-according-seo-industry-studies/184619/#close
- https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/7451184?hl=en
Author Bio:
Dr. Ion G. Tudorache is a specialized SEO strategist, with 13 years of experience in the SEO industry. He is the co-founder of Gamit SEO, an online marketing agency and white label SEO provider.
