6 Most Important SEO Ranking Factors You Need to Know
We all want traffic to our website. Because more traffic means more leads and more conversions.
And one of the most effective ways to get website traffic is to boost your local ranking by doing local search engine optimization (SEO).
But doing SEO can be a lot of work, especially when you are not trained and an expert in this field.
Don’t lose hope, there are still ways on how to easily boosts your local SEO. And that is by knowing the different SEO ranking factors.
To get you started, here is a guide to all the most important local SEO ranking factors. These will help you dominate search results and attract more traffic to your website.
SEO Ranking Factors You Need To KNow
1. Mobile-friendliness
Did you know that more people are using mobile phones, than desktops in searching the web?
But this is not just the reason why you should make your website mobile-friendly. Google prioritizes websites that are mobile optimized. So if your website is not, your ranking is at risk.
Here are the things that you need to consider when making your website mobile-friendly:
- automatic resizing to fit any device
- using font sizes that are readable on small screens
- easy to navigate and access menus
- content is not hidden by interstitial ads
Google also started its mobile-first index. This means it will rank websites that are mobile-optimized first than those who are not.
2. Website Speed (Desktop and Mobile)
A fast loading website provides a good user experience. And this is what Google loves.
And it is not enough that your website speed works on desktops. It should also load fast when on mobile.
Mobile page speed is the current focus of Google’s algorithm since 2018. And if it doesn’t load fast on mobile, you might even get penalized.
If you want to know how your page speed is when on mobile, you may check Google’s mobile testing tool.
3. Secured and highly-accessible website
You need to make your website accessible especially for Google bots who crawl and catalog your website in their search result.
You need to make your URL visible to bots so when they visit your URL and see your content, they will easily understand what your website is all about. The secret to this is by helping out the bots figure out what your website is about.
In doing this, you need a robots.text file.
This file will tell Google bots the places on where to look and not to look for your website content.
You also need a sitemap.
If your website is in WordPress, you can easily run Yoast SEO. If not, there are other online sitemap generators on the internet that you can check out. Like this one:
Another SEO ranking factor that you need is enabled SSL. It does not only protect your site from possible hacks, but it also boosts your website’s SEO.
4. Optimized keywords
Google’s algorithm relies heavily on keywords. So if you want to rank on the first page of Google’s search result, you need to incorporate your keywords on your content.
But you need to be careful. Because Google hates duplicated content.
Your content should always be fresh and original.
Also, if you are having a hard time using your keywords over and over again on your content. You can use LSI or latent semantic indexing keywords. These are keywords that you can replace with your main keywords. They are not synonyms, instead, they are keywords that can be associated with your original keywords.
You can find your LSI keyword by typing your original keyword on the search box. Then, scroll down to see some recommended searches related to that keyword.
5. Accurate Business Information
If your business is focused on local areas, it is important that you have accurate business information listed on your website and everywhere on the internet. So make sure that your name, address and phone (NAP) on social media, Google My Business, and other places, like Yelp are complete and accurate. Like this one.
6. Domain name and age
If your website has been on the internet for a long long time and has been doing SEO, you are already at an advantage. Because 60% of the sites that belong to Google search ranking are 3 years old and more.
Also, if your domain name matches exactly what you offer, it can help you boost ranking. Google favours website with exact-match domains that are relevant, valuable and offers high-quality content.
These are just some of the easy to do SEO ranking factors that you can do now with your website to ensure that you are ranking.
Can you think of any other factors that can contribute to your SEO ranking? Let us know in the comments below.
If you need help with making your website mobile responsive or run fast, we have a dedicated website developer that can help you.
When it comes to SEO, we also have a dedicated digital strategist that can help you get started. Just contact us at info@dgstrategists.com or click here to get a FREE quote on all our services.
May you rank first in Google and in all search engine.
The Digital Strategist Team