One of the best ways to generate free traffic to your website is to gain high search engine rankings for specific keywords related to your site. This is easier said than done because it takes time to achieve high rankings particularly if you’re in a competitive niche plus the search engines constantly change their ranking formulas. Ranking strategies used previously to increase your site’s rankings may no longer work.
Why do search engines constantly change their ranking formulas?
When a person does a search for a specific keyword and doesn’t get the desired results they’ll get frustrated and conclude using that specific search engine is worthless. That’s why Google and Bing are constantly competing with each other to return the most targeted results to their users.
What are the top 10 search engine ranking factors?
Google and Bing will never reveal ALL the factors included in ranking websites however here are the main 10 major factors for gaining successful rankings. Keep in mind you need a balance of these factors as using only one will not achieve success.
1. Quality content
Content is why the Net was created. If you offer content that solves people’s problems there will always be a demand for quality information. Recently Google penalized websites containing low quality content so always make sure it’s unique and offers value to your readers.
Do your keyword research before writing any content. Look for keywords that receive a large amount of daily number of searches so you’re sure people are using these keywords to find information. Search engines won’t find your website if it doesn’t contain keywords people are searching on. Use Google’s free keyword research tool to begin your research.
2. Website architecture
Search engines find your content by “crawling” your web pages therefore design your site in such a way that it is easy for search engines to go from one page to the other. You can achieve this by creating an HTML sitemap and an XML sitemap. Avoid using too much flash, images and javascript because search engines can’t index the content contained in them.
3. HTML code
HTML code is what websites are built upon and search engines place great significance on the title, description and keywords meta tags (only the first 2 really matter) contained in your HTML code.
Title meta tag
Place your main keyword at the beginning and use it only once. The length should be no longer than 70 characters if you want it to appear at the top of the browser window. It can be longer however only some of it will appear.
Description meta tag
Write a captivating description of your web page that includes your main keyword because the description will appear in the search engines and determine if a person will click through to your website.
Header tags
These tags are not as significant as the meta tags however they can help boost your rankings a little.They provide a logical structure to your web pages. For example you may want to place a main headline (H1 tag) at the top of your page. This tells the search engines this text should be more prominent than the rest of the content. Sub headlines can include H2, H3 tags.
4. Site speed
How fast your site loads is another important ranking factor because slow loading pages only frustrate website visitors. To improve the download speed of your site reduce the amount of images, javascript, video on web pages and avoid using tables. Instead use HTML and CSS to code your pages.
5. Link Building
The quantity and quality of links pointing to your website will determine how high and how fast your site will rank. For instance a link from CNN is much more valuable than getting a link from a lesser known site because it’s extremely popular and already has 1000s of incoming links pointing to it.
When building links to your site make sure they are related and come from a variety of web properties. Avoid artificial link building schemes (like subscribing to blog or link networks) as Google can detect unnatural links and may penalize your site by lowering it’s rankiings.
6. Social Media
Social signals are also an important factor for ranking websites in the search engines. For example if many people share your content using social media search engines recognize these signals as a vote of confidence in your website. Whenever you write new content make sure you share it on Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter and Google+
7. Domain age
Search engines give greater authority to older domain names because it means you are serious about establishing a web presence and are not a “fly-by-night” business. Established websites tend to rank higher than new ones because they have built-up their reputation by adding new content and building inks from related sites.
8. Relevance
It’s easier to gain high rankings in a specific niche than a general one. This is because Google and other search engines wish to return the most relevant results to their visitors. If your website contains general, diverse or unrelated topics it will only confuse readers.
Your goal should be to become the authority in your niche so your site becomes the “go-to” place on the Web for information. A tightly focused theme has a better chance of attaining high search engine rankings than a loosely created one.
9. Fresh Content
Search engines love fresh content because it’s a sign that you are maintaining your website and dooesn’t contain outdated or stale content that only clogs up the result pages. Also search engine crawlers and spiders will visit your pages more often when your content is published in regular intervals.
10. Bounce Rate
This refers to the amount of time visitors remain on your web pages. If your website lacks valuable content or is poorly designed people will leave within a few seconds On the other hand if your site is attractive, contains great content and contains links to more in-depth content your visitors will stay longer.
**Note: Google and other major search engines constantly change their ranking formulas. For instance at the time of writing this article Google announced it was penalizing blog and link networks.
If you consistently implement the top 10 ranking factors mentioned above and don’t try to artificially inflate your search engine rankings, you’ll notice a steady increase in rankings, visitors and sales.
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Hello,
I like this blog thanks
i think content is the only ‘king’ and ofcourse the backlinks
Good work, great text! 🙂