Your Guide to SEO Ranking and Ranking Factors

Finally, don’t forget to follow us on Facebook and YouTube for more helpful reviews, tutorials, and Google Analytics tips. For more information, check this complete tutorial on how to optimize your robots.txt file for SEO. Your website’s architecture is important from a crawling and indexing perspective.

As our keyword research guide said, Google’s search algorithm relies on keywords. These are the words and phrases searchers use when seeking information. You can check domain authority or page authority with Open Site Explorer. Just plug your URL into the onsite search box, and you’ll get a report showing domain authority, page authority, established links, and new links. When people want to find information, they type or say words related to what they’re looking for.

Understand Google’s Ranking Factors for SEO

By focusing on what the audience is searching for and providing comprehensive, relevant information, you increase the likelihood that search engines will rank your content higher. Instead of using generic file names like IMG1234.jpg, using descriptive names helps search engines understand and rank the image appropriately. Alt text (alternative text) provides a textual description of images, which is essential for search engines to understand the content and context of the image. Image optimization is an important yet often underestimated component of SEO that can significantly enhance a website’s performance and ranking in search engine results.

#13 – Broken Links

And Google has been fighting link spam to try and improve its results. Previously to this, Core Web Vitals (CWVs) had been emphasized as an important ranking factor. E-E-A-T is made up of a series of refining signals that underline everything that Google has been trying to achieve with better user experience and fighting misinformation. E-E-A-T is part of the Google Quality Search Raters Guidelines and not so much a ranking factor, but it is a guideline. In 2018, BERT created waves in the SEO industry as a significant update for Google that was reported to impact about 10% of search queries at the time.

• Therefore, depending on the search query, properly updated content may or may not get a boost in the SERP from Google.
• Google views backlinks (links from other websites to yours) and local citations (mentions of your business name, address, and phone number across the web) as signals of trust and authority.
• Get more tips on mobile-friendly design to improve Google search ranking in our guide to improving your mobile conversion rate.
• Although your activity there does not directly impact rankings, it pays off to be in contact with your audience there as well.
• It’s focused on satisfying user intent rather than just targeting keywords.

Prominence is also based on information that Google has about a business, from across the web, like links, articles, and directories. Google review SEO Anomaly count and review score factor into local search ranking. More reviews and positive ratings can improve your business’ local ranking.