The Most Important Factors for Search Engine Rankings
The digital sphere continues to change and search engine rankings are hinged upon a pendulum of factors. There are many different aspects that attribute to your website’s search engine ranking, and the following are the ones you should really keep your eye on for 2018 and onwards.
Content-based metrics and page-level keywords: If your page is irrelevant for the customer’s enquiry and fails to answer their intent, you will fail to rank. Most SME businesses utilise a content management system that allows making this easier. Optimising your content is more important than creating the most content.
Long click metrics or dwell time: When you publish your page, you should be questioning whether or not you can certainly guarantee the customer won’t exit the page. You have a greater product knowledge than anyone else and it’s time to show it.
The existence of certified real-world business information: The local pack, Google Maps, the Knowledge Graph and the power of voice search combining to drive traffic is vital, and relies on how trustworthy the information they receive is. You should own and clean your data throughout the internet. Optimisation of location data, as well as WikiData, are imperative, however, they don’t often need approval from compliance or development recourse.
Use of mobile optimised and/or responsive design: This is not only a necessity for a mobile device or tablet, but it’s also becoming far easier to attain buy-in. Brands that don’t utilise mobile websites in 2018 are falling short of utilising digital potential and it is easy to see how much money is lost by not using a mobile site.
Unique, engaging content site-wide: Ensure that there are no duplications of content throughout your website. It prevents cannibalisation and speeds everything up, as well as better utilising the crawl budget. Modern content management systems have the ability to find the issue. It is up to you to fix it.
A mobile-friendly page: Having a mobile-friendly page allows Google to tell businesses what they require to receive the seal of approval when going up in the rankings.
Content uniqueness: You want to have the most unique, concise answer available for your customer’s question, whatever that question may be. Research your customer’s intent and continue to improve the content on your best-performing pages.
Page load speed: A page with a fast load speed usually wins. Google provides a to-do list and compares websites against the others in their industry. However, advancements in the technical side of SEO are continuing and Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) are standard and site speed should be a thing greatly considered by business owners.
Specific Brand Name, URL or domain and the quality of searches: It’s easier for a customer to search Google for pages on your website than to navigate their own way through the pages. Google, therefore, prefers it when the business owner optimises their specific URLs and domain names.
Necessary CTR from Google SERPs for the keyword: Optimising your page for a higher click-through rate is simple, and schema markup is something that is relatively straightforward to implement on a page, allowing Google to have better-looking listings. Google consistently tests meta descriptions and title tags, which were often called a “non-ranking factor” and therefore ignored. However, it is still an important factor for receiving higher click-through rates.