Google Ranking Factors: These 11 Matter the Most

For example, using advanced analytics can help you figure out which pages are the common exit points for visitors. Typically, when there is a high percentage of visitors exit the same page, it means that the information on that page was not what they were looking for. This can often have a negative effect on your site overall bounce rate.

LSI keywords aren’t paramount to get higher Google search rankings but they’re pretty important. To better describe them, we’ll say these keywords are closely related to the main keyword you’re trying to cover. It’ll tell you if you need to reduce/increase font size, improve loading times, alter the UI, and so forth. Improving this factor alone will boost your search rankings tremendously. For example, most top-ranking results for “how to write a press release” are how-to blog posts. It’s why 90% of the top-ranking results for “air fryer” are blog posts and not sales pages.

You can update the sitemap to show any changes, like adding new location pages or making small changes to old ones. You can either make the sitemap file by hand in XML format or use an app that makes sitemaps, such as Lucidchart. Adding an independent entry for each location-specific page will help make sure that they are crawled and indexed correctly. Lazy loading is another technique that speeds up the first-page load by delaying the loading of pictures and videos until they are displayed on the user’s screen.

Future-Proofing Your SEO Strategy

• Google may also display ads and extra elements known as SERP (search engine results page) features.
• If a page or blog no longer applies or is no longer relevant, don’t keep it thinking you’ll boost your rankings.
• At the end of the day, both of these giant platforms are free to use, so why wouldn’t you take the time to effectively add all the information that you need to make maximum results.
• Custom Google Analytics SEO dashboard offer a streamlined way to monitor the metrics that matter most to your SEO strategy.
• By using its Auto-Linking feature, you can build internal links on your choice of keywords.

You can also strategically use keywords in the title of your image as well as the caption or description. Research shows 40% of visitors will abandon websites if the page takes longer than 3 seconds to load. Evergreen keywords, on the other hand, stay relevant throughout the year. Basically, anything you’ve done to manipulate the algorithm will likely come back and affect your rankings at some point. If Google detects that you’ve used black hat techniques to manipulate the algorithm, they may enforce a manual penalty that will cause your rankings to drop dramatically. This shift in ranking has resulted in a decrease of 1.2K in traffic.

Listings with images and videos receive more clicks, calls, and direction requests, making it a crucial factor for Google Maps visibility. Keywords are the words and phrases people type into Google when searching for businesses like yours. If multiple competitors are using a category you haven’t added, it may be worth including to expand the pool of people seeing your business online. If you’re still not certain, try looking at your competitors and the categories they’re using.

Achieving a high PageSpeed score is crucial for optimizing user experience and SEO performance. Another important aspect of on-page SEO is improving the structure of your web pages by using descriptive URLs that include relevant keywords. Clear and concise URLs not only help search engines understand the content but also make it easier for users to remember and share links. By incorporating these keywords strategically throughout your content, you can increase the chances of appearing in search results.

These metrics focus on site performance, including how quickly a page loads and how stable the page is while loading. To assess Core Web Vitals, you can use Google’s PageSpeed Insights or integrate the Core Web Vitals data directly into the Google search console dashboard. Analyzing organic vs. paid traffic in Google Analytics helps you make smarter budget decisions. By comparing the performance of these channels, you can identify areas where organic search is already driving strong results, allowing you to reduce PPC spending for those keywords. Conversely, for keywords with high conversion potential but low organic visibility, increasing PPC efforts can bridge the gap.

Free SEO Tools

The editorial team did not participate in the creation of this guide. Gizmodo may earn a commission when you buy through links on the site. This article, for instance, is well over 3,000 words but it’s filled with information on how to rank higher on Google. To get a better overview of what you should do, you can refer to Semrush’s SEO Writing Assistant. Analyze your page with it and it’ll tell you what you did good and wrong.

Make your page easy to read

So, if you’re looking to improve SEO performance, SEM performance or just your overall user experience, increasing your website speed is a great place to start. As you develop your keyword strategy, you’ll want to do a fair amount of research. Tools like Google’s Keyword Planner are a great way to SEO Anomaly identify relevant keywords with good search volume. It can be a complicated puzzle, but it’s one you’ll need to solve to make the most of your keyword strategy.

Make sure your sentences are short and concise, and that you use uncomplicated words. Visitor engagement is another critical search engine ranking factor. According to Backlinko, Google pays close attention to engagement on your page. It considers how much time searchers spend on your page to understand where you should rank. Voice search is becoming more popular among internet users worldwide.