Did you know that Google has over 200 ranking factors? This can make it seem overwhelming to choose the best ones to optimise your SEO ranking. However, they’re not all equal, and Google does prioritise some ranking factors over others. The key to doing well with SEO rankings is knowing which ones to focus on, and which ones to pay less attention to.
Ranking Factor One: Content
While content has been important for a while, it’s about to explode. This can be both good and bad for your business. On the one hand, you can focus on this area for your ranking, but you’ll also have more competition from other business’s vying for the same ranking spots. However, content is slowly shifting away from specific keywords and more toward naturally-written, comprehensive content. You can get the most out of your site’s content by:
- Thinning and targeting your content
- Cover fewer topics, but cover them in more in-depth detail
- Become an authority on your topic
Ranking Factor Two: Mobile-First Website and Experience
In 2016, Google started to shift its focus toward mobile-first indexing. This means that Google will look at mobile-friendly sites before it looks at and ranks desktop driven sites. You want to make sure that every aspect of your page’s content responds quickly and efficiently to every mobile platform, and that it is the same content you have on your desktop driven site. You can optimise the Mobile-First mindset by:
- Add and verify your website’s mobile-first version with Google Search Console.
- Ensure that both your desktop-driven and your mobile-first website have the same structured markup using Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool.
- Double check your website’s Googlebot mobile accessibility with the Txt Testing Tool.
- Finally, fix any page errors and things that are slowing your page down by using the auditing tool that is available on PageSpeed Insights.
Ranking Factor Three: Backlinks
Backlinks can help you obtain good SEO rankings, but only if you do them well. You want them to come from several different domains that are considered to be a high authority. You’re creating content people want, and once you’ve created it, you have to relentlessly promote said content. Google reads the backlink’s anchor text and considers it more relevant, ranking it higher. You can optimize backlinking by:
- If you have high-authority partners, ask them for backlinks.
- Get rid of lower-quality or spammy backlinks on your site or ones that lead to your site.
- Carefully monitor your backlinks, how many your site has, and their quality levels.
Choosing the most important SEO ranking factors can help you to narrow your focus down to the top few, so you don’t spread yourself thin trying to hit all 200 of them. By selecting a few and doing them well, you stand to gain high SEO rankings for your business.
