There are a lot of ranking factors that Google uses to rank websites. It needs to be clarified to know which ones are significant.
Any SEO should be aware of the most crucial ranking criteria listed below. This way, you can build your SEO strategy accordingly.
Page Speed
Page speed is one of Google’s algorithm’s most important ranking factors. It impacts your SEO, your site’s user experience, and your conversion rate, all of which contribute to where you sit on the SERPs.
To get a sense of how page speed affects your SEO.
The page speed metric is based on your page’s number of HTTP requests. The more HTTP requests a page makes, the longer it takes to load. To reduce the number of HTTP requests, you can improve the size of images on your page and reduce scripts, such as CSS or JS.
However, it’s important to note that page speed is only a tiny part of the overall performance of a website. There are many other things to consider, such as plugins, image size, caching, cache validating, server response time, server response codes, TTFB, render rates, static content, code minification, redirects and more.
Page speed is an essential factor for a website’s ranking, as it directly indicates how fast it can provide a good user experience to searchers. It also helps a site’s bounce rate and dwell time, two of the most critical factors for search engine optimization.
Mobile-Friendliness
Since more than half of all web searches are performed from mobile devices, your website must be optimized for mobile-friendly viewing. It will improve your user experience, one of Google’s ranking factors for SEO.
If your website is mobile-friendly, you can avoid losing potential customers to competitors who offer a more pleasant browsing experience for smartphones and tablets. Similarly, Google captures user behavior, such as clicking “back” on a non-mobile-friendly site, and may eventually penalize those sites.
Using a responsive design for your website means that all pages on the site adjust to display seamlessly on any device with an internet connection. You can test your site with tools like the mobile emulator and a Responsive Web Design testing tool to ensure it’s optimized for mobile and desktop users.
A good mobile-friendly site also includes a clear call-to-action button large enough for a mobile user to click. Whether the button is a phone number or a phrase that guides them to the next page, these CTAs will help drive conversions for your business.
It’s also important to remember that voice search is increasingly becoming popular for people to access the Internet. To optimize your content for these types of searches, include phrases and keywords relevant to voice search queries.
Internal Linking
Often overlooked, internal linking is one of the most fundamental SEO strategies. It helps search bots crawl your website and tells them which pages are most important to your users.
Ideally, a website has a logical hierarchy, or pyramid structure, most often represented by your home page at the top. This pyramid leads visitors progressively through your site, with related sub-pages below.
It’s a great way to keep your site content organized and easy for users to navigate. In addition, it also communicates to Google that you have a valuable website with important information that’s useful to your customers.
Internal links point from one page on your domain to another. They provide paths for search spiders to discover new content, increase visitors’ time on your site, and create a robust network of related pages.
A vital component of this strategy is optimizing the anchor text for your internal links. It includes using keywords that describe the content on your target page.
Many tools can help you with this process. One of the most helpful is Google’s Search Console, which allows you to run a link report. This report shows the pages on your website with the most internal links.
Domain Authority
Domain authority (DA) is one of the most important factors when analyzing your website’s search engine ranking. It is a metric developed by Moz, which estimates how likely a site will appear in the first results of Google’s SERPs.
This score is given on a scale of one to 100, with higher numbers indicating that your site is more likely to rank in the top positions. Increasing is not an easy metric, but it can significantly affect your organic traffic.
Another essential factor to keep in mind is that DA scores are relative. It means that they can be influenced by changes to the backlink profiles of other websites, such as a significant boost in the number of links or even a drop in a competitor’s DA.
As such, it is essential to monitor your DA to understand how well your site is doing and whether any gaps need to be filled to improve your rankings. Reviewing your competitors’ DA can also help you identify areas for improvement and the strategies you should employ to raise your website’s authority.
More than having a high DA, you must create great content to attract organic traffic. This content must be relevant, original and valuable for the target audience. It should also be optimized for SEO, which will help you earn more DA in the long run.
