Google Ranking Factors: The 3 That Really Matter
A solid SEO foundation is key to achieving long-term success in search engine optimization. This involves mastering foundational practices, advanced techniques, and ongoing analysis to ensure your website is fast, user-friendly, and easy to navigate. Poor website structure can hinder your SEO efforts, so prioritize creating a technically sound site with an excellent user experience (UX).
- You can check which pages have a poor score and which pages need improvement.
- Once duplicates are identified, merge them into a single, optimized listing to consolidate authority and avoid confusing potential customers.
- So, by creating content that maintains user trust and drives engagement, you can significantly improve your SEO ranking.
- Losing such backlinks can impact your website’s authority and credibility in the eyes of Google.
Not only do they play a big role in local SEO, but consumers consult online reviews more than ever before. 86% of consumers read reviews of local businesses and 57% of consumers say they will only use a business if it has 4 or more stars. Each year, local SEO company Whitespark polls a bunch of local SEO experts and puts together the Local Search Ranking Factors survey.
#10: Turn Your Old Posts into Infographics
In general, you likely want to wait a few weeks to assess whether your work had beneficial effects in Google Search results. To simplify event tracking, Analytify offers a powerful Event Tracking Addon. This addon seamlessly integrates with GA4, allowing you to monitor and analyze key events directly from your WordPress dashboard. With this tool, you can gain actionable insights without complex setups, ensuring your SEO efforts are fully aligned with user behavior. Analytify enhances your analytics experience by offering a fully customizable dashboard tailored to your specific needs.
Focus on High-Quality, Valuable Content
This algorithm tries to reverse engineer the Google algorithm and determine how reputability Google thinks a given website is. Domain authority is a metric that Google used to use a few years ago to rate the reputability of a website. Google stopped posting this number and it’s page-specific counterpart—page authority—a while back, but in one shape or another, it’s still clearly part of their algorithm. We should strive to work as authentic business owners, providing massive value to our audience. Word of mouth marketing is the best form of marketing a business can have.
Even as the most dominant internet search engine, Google continually rocks the boat to disrupt the SEO industry, improve search results and to stay ahead of its own competition. This is because the moment a user does not get the answer they are looking for, they may quite possibly use another search engine. A search algorithm is a process or set of rules used by search engines to determine the significance of a web page. Algorithms are used to filter, digest and evaluate web pages to ensure search results match a user’s search query. We will never know all of Google’s ranking factors, but people do know many of them according to what Google has showcased to you and what you find through empirical practice. Not only do most people learn about local businesses online, but 84% of Google users conduct local searches on a regular basis (think “hvac repair near me”).
Local SEO is focused on optimizing your online presence to attract customers in your local area. For example, keywords that start with “what…” are normally informational, while search terms that start with “buy…” are normally transactional. If your page has a high bounce rate, well, this ain’t a good signal to Google and as a result, you will rank poorly for the keyword that the page is targeting. Tracking your Google keyword rankings is vital if you want to determine if your SEO efforts are heading in the right direction. Enter your domain below to identify find your top traffic driving keywords.
If you’re finding that one of your target keywords is performing particularly well, then this is a good indicator that you should create more content around the topic. By determining the keywords that are pulling in the most traffic, and the ones that aren’t, you’ll be able to identify areas of your SEO strategy that need adjusting. When you refresh old content, simply slapping a newer date on the post won’t do much for Google’s algorithm.
The SEO Anomaly Q&A section on your GBP allows potential customers to ask questions about your business directly in search results. Once those questions are asked, you or other customers are free to answer those questions. By using keywords in a natural way that fits the flow of your content, you can help Google understand the relevance of your page without sacrificing readability. Keywords are crucial for helping Google understand what your content is about, but they need to be used carefully. Gone are the days of keyword stuffing—now, it’s all about strategic, natural placement. Consistency not only keeps your audience engaged but also encourages Google’s crawlers to return to your site more often, helping your rankings improve.
After identifying some low-hanging fruit, update the content, adding new images or videos, or changing the title and meta description. Also, try promoting the refreshed content on social media or in your email newsletter. WordStream is a versatile SEO tool designed to simplify keyword research and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising campaigns. It’s an ideal choice for businesses of all sizes, offering valuable insights into keyword performance and competition to help you optimize your search marketing strategies.