Google Search Engine Ranking Factors
The difficulty of attracting customers is
known to every entrepreneur, especially today with various adverts
annoying us at every step. Marketing experts have come up with hundreds
of tricks that are working in the media, on the radio or TV. Traditional
advertisement can be used on the Internet too, albeit, less
effectively. People tend to visit websites that somehow relate to their
interests. Therefore number of ad banners is not as important as
website’s positions in search results.
As proved by Alexa statistics and other
reliable sources, Google.com has been considered the most popular search
engine for many years, taking first place in the popular search engine
rating for August with its 1,100,000,000 unique monthly visitors. Bing
and its 350,000,000 visitors/month take the second place and Yahoo, used
by average number of 300,000,000 persons per month takes the third
place. The leadership is indisputable, because the rating took both
global traffic and U.S. traffic into account.
Top positions in Google are the main goal
of every webmaster. And there has been no better website promotion
method invented than SEO. Relatively cheap, this method proved to be lot
more effective than advertisement. The concept of Search Engine
Optimization is too wide to be narrowed down to a simple rules list.
Moreover, Google is constantly perfecting the website ranking
algorithms, prompting SEO experts to work on new methods. Nevertheless
it is possible to single out basic SEO success factors that are still
relevant in 2015.
On-Page SEO factors
1. Domain-level.
Search engines are negative about large
subdomain number. With correct optimization a website on one basic
domain has more chances to take leading positions in Google SERP. Also
it’s easier to build up weight and improve off-page factors on the basic
domain. Experienced SEOs will help create correct subdomain and
SEO-URLs structure that will include optimum keywords.
2. Meta tags.
Meta tags are the search engine’s guiding
lines that allow Google to obtain the main info on the website. During
internal optimization SEO-expert makes relevant tags for the website:
- Title. You can see Title text when moving cursor to the tag of the website opened in the browser. The title must reflect the web-page’s content, feature keywords and have no commas. Maximum Title length for is 54 symbols without spaces (65 symbols with spaces).
- Description. It’s a description of the page that the user sees in Google search results. Maximum symbols — 250. Description must contain keywords. If the Description is absent, the search engines generate it automatically using the text on the website.
- Keywords. Meta tag, that provide the system with information about website’s content. SEOs use special tools to select keywords and base their selection on the Google data.
3. Sitemap.
Sitemap helps Google search bots to index the website. Only SEO experts can make a correct Sitemap.xml file.
4. Robots.txt.
Robots.txt contains rules for the search
engines. It can block separate pages, archive folders and folders with
user data from the indexing. One extra symbol may prevent the entire
website from getting indexed, so only experts should work with
Robots.txt. Incorrectly written Robots.txt file has frequently impeded
position growth.
5. Duplicated pages.
The presence of duplicated pages can
render all website optimization works null. Google is very critical
about this aspect, so the experts check the exclusivity of web-pages in
the beginning of the SEO-campaign.
6. SSL certificates.
First of all, SSL certificates are
obligatory for e-commerce websites. SSL certificate doesn’t affect the
search engine ranking itself, but it increases trust. As a rule, Google
ranks safe websites higher.
7. Content.
Google content requirements get stricter
with each year. It concerns not only text, but graphics as well.
Content must be unique and relevant to the web-page’s subject. Content
copying will inevitably result in website getting filtered and loss of
positions. Correct use of keywords in texts, titles and Alt media
content attributes guarantees high positions.
8. Internal links.
An irregularly distributed static weight
obtained via visited links. Generally most of side web-sources refer to
the home page. With SEO-expert’s help you can create a proper internal
links structure to distribute the static weight between all web-pages.
9. Web-pages loading speed
Fast loading speed doesn’t influence the
position growth, but definitely improves the behavioral factors. High
usability level attracts more users, improves CTR index, Google trust
rank and lowers the bounce rate. To make it happen, experts optimize
text/HTML code and media content ratio that slows the web-pages loading.
10. Mobile rendering.
A relatively new SEO-factor that Google
takes into consideration during website ranking. Due to the fact that
most users browse website through portable devices (smartphone, tablet),
it would be a wise decision to make a website’s mobile version.
11. Bounce rate.
A percentage of visitors who usually view
only one page of the website and then resume browsing. Websites with
high bounce rate have several internal optimization problems: slow
loading speed, non-optimized media content, complicated navigation,
misuse of java-elements, etc.
Bounce rate can’t be considered an
SEO-factor analysis model due to the lots of cases of false bounce rate
i.e. user obtaining necessary information (contact data, pricing, etc.)
and leaves at once.
Off-Page SEO factors
1. Link authority features.
CTR (click-through rate) and trust indexes
are of a great importance for Google and heavily depend on the majority
of other SEO-factors. The more users click the link, the higher
website’s positions grow. Professional SEOs will instruct you how to
improve website’s visibility and attract more visitors.
2. Link building.
Backlinks number is one of the most
important website promotion websites. Google takes into account both
quality and quantity. Using backlinks incorrectly and misusing the
method may result in vindictive damages issued by search engine. SEO
company experts suggest using link building as productively as possible
by placing links on the trustworthy websites in the following ratio:
- 50% — anchor
- 40% — non-anchor
- 10% — branded links
3. Social signals.
Communication with users via social
networks helps increase website attendance and positions growth. Social
Media Marketing is specialized in brand promotion on popular websites.
SEOs recommend to create accounts and groups on Facebook, Twitter,
Google+, LinkedIn and place social networks widgets on the website. As a
rule SMM-managers are entrusted with networking, regularly making
publications from the brand’s name, making updates, attracting
subscribers and launching PR-campaigns.
4. Geotargeting.
There is no point in promoting your
website on the territory where your product and services are
unavailable. Google is incredibly user-oriented, so its search results
are adjusted depending on the country, region or city. Getting
Registration in Google Maps and placing widgets on the website is
obviously advantageous for local SEO.
SEO-campaigns
The SEO-campaign’s success is estimated
via web-analysis. Statistics reports help the webmaster to trace the
positions change and adjust their strategy. Website visibility
a.k.a the percentage of times the website is targeted in Google SERP
can be improved by all of the abovementioned factors. The effectiveness
of the promotion can be calculated by comparing current visibility
percentage with the previous ones.
