Google Ranking Factors: Tips for Better Rankings
The term “search engine ranking” describes the order of the search results in the search engine. The ranking is evaluated and determined by so-called ranking factors.
The market leader, “Google,” currently has over 200 ranking factors .
In order to achieve better visibility in the Google search engine, it is essential to optimize the ranking factors.
We would like to explain some of the most important Google ranking factors in this blog post. Here we go!
Google Ranking Factor: Backlinks
Backlinks are incoming links to a website that are linked from another website. It is important to get backlinks from relevant or popular websites. They are to be seen as a kind of trust signal. Relevant links from popular sites have been shown to increase a website’s authority.
Google Ranking Factor: Content
The term “content” describes the entire content of a website. Usually, these are texts, pictures, and videos. Interesting and informative content is helpful for the user, and particularly helpful (well prepared) content is rewarded with rankings by search engines such as Google.
Google Ranking Factor: Keywords
A keyword is a term entered into the search engine. The placement of suitable keywords in the right places plays an important role in the ranking of a website in search engines.
Google Ranking Factor: Page Speed
Page speed is the time from the triggering of a browser command to the complete construction of a website in the browser. The shorter the loading times, the better the user experience for the website visitor . A slow website with sluggish loading times causes many users to leave the website immediately.
This is not only important for the desktop version, but even more so for the loading times of the mobile version. Depending on the data connection, the mobile site in particular should load quickly and provide the necessary information.
Google Ranking Factor: Duplicate Content
Duplicate content refers to the provision of identical content on multiple URLs. Duplicate content is neither beneficial for the user nor for the search engine, it only wastes crawl budget unnecessarily. For this reason, duplicate content should be avoided.
Google ranking factor: H1 heading is missing
Headings, in short and concise form, describe the content of the document. These headings are marked in HTML by heading tags. (H1, H2, H3,… The different numbers describe the importance of each heading. The H1 heading is the most important heading. It should only be used once per HTML document. Likewise, it should not be too long and contain the most important keyword.
Google Ranking Factor: Meta Data (Meta Title & Meta Description)
The meta description is a short description of the content of the respective HTML document. The meta description is displayed in the search results below the title and URL. It has a major impact on site traffic. It must not be too long, otherwise, Google will simply truncate the description. The maximum length should not exceed 160 characters. The meta data only has a limited influence on the Google ranking . Rather, well-written meta data influences the click rate and, thus indirectly, the Google ranking.
Google Ranking Factor: JavaScript
JavaScript is a script language that can be used to implement different functionalities on websites (Google Analytics, etc.). JavaScript was a problem for search engines for a long time. Content generated using Java script was not readable by search engines.
For these reasons, JavaScript files should only be used with care, especially since the loading times of the page can be significantly negatively influenced by JavaScript functionalities.
Google Ranking Factor: Images
Along with text, images are one of the most important visual elements on a website. Images should support the displayed text and are an important building block when optimizing your content.
However, since Google cannot read images when searching, it is absolutely necessary to add so-called ALT texts (ALT attributes) to the individual images in HTML. This can thus be read and evaluated by the search engines.
Large file sizes must be avoided, otherwise, they also result in long loading times.
Google Ranking Factor: User Signals (Social Signals)
Social signals are a fairly reliable indication of relevance. This includes, for example, posts on Facebook, Google+, and Twitter, as well as their interactions. In social networks, people only like, share, and comment on what is convincing. The more often there are links to a certain page, the more interesting, helpful, or entertaining it must be.
In order to increase your visibility on social networks and the traffic from there, you should make it as easy as possible for your visitors. If there are social buttons at the end of an article, texts are shared much more often.
Conclusion Google ranking factors: Optimizing the ranking factors is the icing on the cake.
To improve the search results, the analysis of ranking factors, which indicate the quality of the content and its user-friendliness, is becoming increasingly important for Google.
We would like to support you in achieving better visibility in the search engines for your online shop or website. Simply use our free SEO Quick Check to get a first glimpse into possible SEO measures for your company.
