SEO requirements are constantly changing, which makes it hard to keep up with the latest developments. But if you want your business’s website to go from unseen to the top of the Google search results, you should know the critical factors for guaranteed search engine optimization results.
Your site’s organic presence is a must if you want to generate leads and improve online sales. After all, the results on the first page of Google get over 28.5 percent of clicks. Plus, Google is the dominant search engine with over 3.5 billion searches a day. Therefore, It’s no surprise that you want to rank high on its search results.
The million-dollar question is: what Google ranking factors should you implement on your site? Here are the five most critical elements that will help improve your rankings.
Secure and Accessible Website
Unsurprisingly, the first ranking factor has something to do with the URL you use. Together with the domain name, the URL is the one that Google bots crawl to understand your website.
Google needs to visit a URL and look at a page to understand what the content is about. So, one of the most important search engine optimization techniques that you should observe is ensuring that bots can find you. This can be done by:
- Using a well-coded website builder to create your site.
- Installing a robots.txt file telling Google where it can and cannot look for information on your site.
- Creating a sitemap that contains a list of all pages on your site.
The hypertext transfer protocol secure (HTTPS) is not a critical factor in page indexing, but it is important for Google. It is vital for user security, so enable SSL on your site if you haven’t done so.
High-Quality Content
Google will rank your site higher if it has fresh quality content for users. The search engine pays special attention to this wite element. No matter how optimized your website is, if the content is not valuable, then you cannot achieve high rankings.
So, what is quality content for Google?
Uniqueness and quality of information
Google prefers unique and informative content. Experts providing guaranteed SEO services can help you create posts that will properly answer questions from readers, provide value, and are original.
But remember, duplicate content will harm your site’s rankings. Google may not index and rank the pages with similar content. Plus, the continual publication of duplicate content may trigger Google to slow down or even stop crawling your site.
Freshness
You must keep content on your website updated. Having regular updates and including recent information send a positive signal to Google.
The freshness of your content plays a critical role, especially when you cover topics around industry trends and news. Google is big on pages that contain the latest information.
Length
Content length may impact where your site will rank on search results. Some people consider 1,890 words (the average word count of articles on Google’s first pages) are optimal. But actually, there is no hard rule on this aspect to stick with.
According to experts at Ardor, a company that offers guaranteed search engine optimization services, it’s better to create content that offers depth and covers the topic. This is because Google has a preference for pages that contain full answers to reader questions and have detailed solutions.
Organization and structure
Content organization and structure are critical for quality. They help make it easy for your site visitors to read your content and find solutions to their pain points. Make use of headings and subheadings (H1, H2, H3, and so on) to sort your content.
Using HTML tags, including number lists and bullets, also helps in the further organization of content. This is critical because Google will pick the lists and show them as featured snippets under different keywords.
Backlinks
Once you have your content sorted, the next thing to look at is the backlinks. These links are a vital component in the Google ranking mix and offer Google bots a way to find your site for indexing.
Inbound or backlinks are like digital votes of confidence for your site. Google correlates all the votes and checks if your site deserves a position in the top 10 positions.
Backlinks from high authority sites boost your chances of ranking higher on the search results. Gaining these links gives a signal to Google that content posted on your site is trustworthy because different websites vouch for it.
Website Load Speed
Core Web Vitals and current user experience signals are now part of Google’s new ranking algorithm. A component of these reports is the website loading speed.
Web Vitals are factors that Google considers critical for improving a user’s experience on your website. These factors include responsiveness, speed, and how fast elements, such as images and fonts, load.
The goal is not to compete with other sites in terms of load time. Instead, you should pay attention to how fast your pages load for your readers. Improving this aspect to offer the best experience for your users is one sure-fire way of achieving guaranteed SEO rankings.
Social Signals
People sharing your content on their social networks is another good sign to Google that your site is valuable. However, Google does not officially count social shares as a ranking factor. In some way, it does not consider links you get from Facebook or Twitter as coming from authoritative sites.
But there’s no denying that some of the highest-ranking pages on Google have many shares. This may be due to the fact that:
- Social shares generate more traffic to the page.
- More shares make it easier to build backlinks to your content.
That said, getting more social shares is critical for achieving guaranteed search engine optimization results, but indirectly. You also need to make sure that your content is easy to share for readers who want to recommend it to their networks.
Conclusion
SEO doesn’t stop in the technicalities. When organic traffic lands on your page, you need to convert them. So, get in touch with a team of professionals who can provide complete and guaranteed search engine optimization services to help your business generate potential leads, convert them to actual customers, and boost sales.
Do you want to learn more tips on how to improve your online presence? Make sure you check our other articles!