6 Factors That Affect Your Website's SEO Ranking
Search engines use around 200 SEO ranking factors to evaluate which sites should appear in search results and where they should appear. You must enhance your online presence to cater to these elements if you want to win the top spots on SERPs (search engine results pages). The good news is that not all of the factors are created equal. Some factors are more essential than others when it comes to ranking. When developing your SEO strategies, pay careful attention to these six components that have the most impact on rankings.
Before we go over the top SEO ranking indicators, it's crucial to keep in mind that they can and will change. The ranking algorithms of Google and other search engines are constantly changing. Some elements grow more or less important, while others are added or removed. It's critical to stay current on the latest ranking factors and to run an SEO audit tool on your site on a frequent basis to guarantee that you're following the most current SEO best practices.
Let's take a look at how you may enhance your SEO rankings by customizing your online presence to appeal to 6 key SEO ranking factors.
Site Safety
Google has talked about site security as a ranking factor since 2014. It's now considered one of the most essential Google ranking variables. The use of HTTPS encryption is referred to as site security. SSL certificates create a safe connection between a website and its users on sites that employ HTTPS encryption. It adds an extra degree of security to the information that users and the site exchange. HTTPS encryption notifies search engines that a site is safe, which helps them, direct users, to the most trustworthy sites. If your website's URL starts with HTTP rather than HTTPS, it is not safe and requires an SSL certificate.
Crawlability
If a site isn't found, search engines can't rank it. That's why a site’s crawlability is such a crucial ranking element in SEO. Crawlability is the ability for search engines to crawl a website and analyze its content marketing in order to establish what the page is about and how it should rank. If you want Google to rank your site, you must allow search engines to crawl it successfully. Create a sitemap and send it to the search engines. To see how many pages Google has scanned on your site, go to Google Search Console and check your index status. Use robots.txt to tell search engines which pages they should visit and which they should skip.
Responsiveness to Mobile Devices
The term "mobile-friendliness" relates to how a website appears and functions when viewed on a mobile device. Mobile-friendly websites offer a positive user experience by employing a responsive design that changes the information to fit any screen size. Mobile-friendliness is crucial to both search engines and consumers since more queries are made on mobile devices than on desktops (52.2 percent of internet traffic comes from mobile devices, and the number is growing). Submit your site to Google's Mobile-Friendly Test to see if it's responsive. It will alert you if there are any issues with the mobile version of your site.
Page Loading Time
Page load speed is another SEO ranking element that has to do with user experience. Sites that take a long time to load create a poor user experience. Because search engines understand that customers want answers as soon as possible, they prefer to display sites that load rapidly. This is especially true for mobile sites since Google recently declared that load speed would be a ranking factor for mobile searches as part of its Speed Update. To verify that your site loads quickly, use a site speed checker. If your site is slow, consider using website caching, compressing data, lowering the number of redirects, and other techniques to improve load time.
High-Quality Content
Another strategy to increase user engagement and appeal to search engines is to generate high-quality material on a regular basis. One of the most essential SEO ranking elements is content marketing. Because search engines aim to produce the greatest possible results, they favor sites with well-researched, in-depth, and well-crafted material. Fresh content attracts search crawlers and improves search visibility while also providing you with something useful to offer to your audience, making it a win-win situation for your marketing efforts.
Domain Age
Although the final ranking element is beyond your control, it is worth highlighting. The age of your domain, or how old your website is, is frequently used as ranking criteria. While Google does not explicitly indicate that age is a ranking factor, research has shown that older domains rank higher. So, if you're launching a brand-new website, be aware that your SEO efforts will take time to bear fruit. Your site's search rating will increase over time with consistent SEO work, but it won't happen quickly.
It's time to enhance your site now that you know which SEO ranking elements are the most significant. Make sure no technical difficulties are preventing you from ranking, whether you're developing new content or optimizing existing material.