Top Google Ranking Factors to Boost Your Traffic in 2021

The requirements for SEO keep changing, and keeping up with them can be a challenge. But if you want your Google rankings to go from unnoticed to the top, you have to know what you’re doing.

The traffic to well-optimized sites increases with time, which leads to more sales and leads. Without SEO, searchers won’t locate your website, and all your hard work will be for zero.

This article discusses what SEO is and how it affects your ranking and how you can use this information to dominate search engines.

In the end, your website will be well-optimized and bring you more business.

Most Powerful SEO Ranking Factors 

Content Quality 

High-ranking content consists of in-depth articles that cover a wide range of topics. Content should provide real value to the user and include engaging visual content to complement the written content.

Always remember that quality defeats quantity every time. Instead of focusing on word count, focus on value.

Content-Length

It is difficult to determine the optimal word count for an article because it varies by subject. However, we have noticed that generally, longer, more comprehensive content tends to rank higher. According to Niel Patel’s research, top Google search positions are correlated to content length.

Google’s semantic search can help you target keywords in your articles. In Google search results, you can find semantic queries in the “related search” results.

As an example, a search for “content marketing” reveals the following related searches. When writing an informative article on content marketing, you can use these semantic queries to identify related keywords.

Backlinks

Google’s search algorithm still considers backlinks to be one of the most crucial ranking factors. Your chances of ranking well for top keywords are better if you have links from multiple high-authority domains. Recent updates, including Penguin 4.0, have concentrated on the backlink profiles of online marketers since those with low-quality backlink profiles were washed and filtered out.

Niche Expertise

Midway through 2017, Google started giving preference to sites with niche expertise. A niche expert has at least ten authoritative pages all cantered on the same “nucleus” key phrase. CRM software, for example, would be the core keyword for a CRM company that offers industry landing pages targeting CRM software for small businesses, CRM software for real estate, and CRM software for manufacturing; and FAQ landing pages featuring CRM software pricing, CRM software advantages, and best CRM software for 2021. The texture of the nucleus keyword across all website web pages creates a variety of magnetism: the website attracts traffic from Google searches containing the nucleus keyword.

Internal Links

In 2017, Google placed greater emphasis on this factor, which is often discussed alongside hubs. If internal links are uniting the pages with the same keyword in their headline tags, the higher the website will rank for that key phrase. An article on 100 different aspects of a subject and a link to that article from every article would be a powerful way to strengthen the credibility and ranking potential of the authoritative page.

Page-Level Factors

The title tag still plays an essential role in on-page SEO, even though it is not as important as it once was. Headline tags that begin with a keyword tend to work better than those at the end of the tag.

Keyword in description tag: Meta descriptions aren’t used as ranking signals directly by Google. However, your description tag can affect the click-through rate, which is a key ranking factor.

Keyword shows in H1 Tag: H1 tags are a second title tag. Along with your headline tag, Google manages your H1 tag as a secondary relevancy signal, according to results from one relationship study.

Site and page speed

If you could ask search engines what they think about websites that take forever to load, they’d agree. That’s the reason a website that loads fast and seamlessly is a core component of technical SEO.

If your pages take too long to load, you’ll probably see your bounce rate skyrocket, which hurts your ranking. Speed is an important ranking factor because of users’ expectations of a painless browsing experience. When analyzing your website for SEO improvements, always keep this in mind.

You can test your website speed with many tools available on the market. You should check out GTmetrix or Google Page Speed Insights. It is free, easy, and provides valuable insight into site speed that allows easy optimization.

Usability on mobile

In crawling websites, Google prioritizes mobile-friendly websites. As a result, search engines typically use a mobile version of a website when evaluating a page.

It doesn’t matter how good your desktop version of your website is; if it isn’t optimized for mobile, your search engine ranking will suffer. Be sure that your web pages are accessible across different types of devices, not just desktops, by previewing them.

You can do this before you hit the publish button in the majority of content management systems. Another option is to use a tool such as Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test, which provides similar information.

Meta description

Meta descriptions are short descriptions that reside in the HTML code of your website. Although it doesn’t look on the screen itself, it’s displayed in search results.

Google sometimes uses the Meta description to pull a featured results snippet, even though it isn’t a significant ranking factor. Additionally, it provides searchers with more information about a page, increasing the chance of clicking on it. This is why you should still include the Meta description on your SEO checklist and make sure it accurately summarizes the content on the page.

Technical SEO

As we said earlier, optimizing content for search engine rankings begins with getting the code right. If you’re more of a writer than a “techie,” this can be intimidating.

No matter if you aren’t a coder, you can still take control of the following aspects:

• Page titles are the first place where Google looks to determine which content is relevant to a search.
• Using header tags, start with your title at h1 and then use h2 or h3 for subheads.
• Aim to include your keyword phrase in your Meta description while at the same time enticing readers.
• At around 160 characters, keep your Meta descriptions short and catchy.
• Use keyword phrases in the alt tags of images to illustrate how they relate to the main content.
• Screen readers can also make your website more accessible to visually impaired people by including alt tags.
• Structure your content, so Google knows what kind of content it’s producing with schema mark-up.