Google considers over two hundred signals to rank a website. The search giant keeps expanding the list with news signals. These signals will remain decisive in ranking websites in 2020. If your SEO strategies worked well in last year, they will bring good results this year as well. Just stick to the rules, follow the guidelines and work hard to embrace these ranking factors.
In this article, we are listing out seven most important ranking factors (not limited) for websites this year.
Produce Quality Content:
Like always, quality content plays a significant role in website ranking. Content written around high volume keywords and search intent will still important for ranking. Quality content is one that informs, educates and engages audience. Creating random pages just to fill content quote won’t help.
It can even backfire if Google Panda scans it as spam or thin. High quality content has huge engagement quotient. Readers love to read it time and again. It improves time on page and lowers bounce rate. There are several types of content that ignite user experience. User guides, how to topics and long form content are some of them.
A Mobile Friendly Website:
With mobile first indexing, Google prioritized its indexing. Now, it prefers indexing of mobile website pages over desktop website. Websites that don’t load properly on different devices may lose ranking in long run.
For Google, user experience is everything when it comes to ranking. Websites that are not responsive are very prone to end up in cluttered user experience. If you haven’t yet got a responsive website, it’s time to get one.
Google has tweaked its ranking algorithm to benefit mobile responsive websites. In times of mobile first indexing, its eminent to have a websites designed around Google’s mobile first guidelines.
Migrate to HTTPS:
Initially Google went skeptical about HTTPS migration. But gradually he made it an important ranking signal. In 2014, Google first made its official announcement and termed it a ranking signal. Google’s stint with HTTPS continued as in I017 the search giant came in with another announcement. Google confirmed that its Chrome browser would begin to flag sites as “not secure” in the URL bar if they aren’t HTTPS. Suddenly after the announcement, websites without HTTPs started to see a rise in bounce rates if you don’t make the transition.
All this and many other instances showed that essentiality of HTTPS for websites. However, if you don’t have any technical acumen, avoid migrating by yourself. Consult a web developer for the purpose.
Focus on User Experience:
User experience is significant to search rankings. It’s estimated that about 35% of the readers quit website if it’s unattractive and offering cluttered user experience. For search engines, dwell time on the website is an important ranking signal. This is a metric that defines the overall amount of time a user spends on a time before clicking the back button to return to the SERP. While designing a website make sure it takes user experience as utmost priority. This is the only way to secure a position in SERPs.
Optimize Page Speed:
It’s now official. Page speed is now an important Google mobile ranking factor. This is in addition to Google’s mobile first indexing updated that started to prefer mobile page indexing over desktop pages indexing.
Google’s page speed algorithm update says that slow loading websites may see incredible drop rankings and traffic. Google believes that websites that load slowly lead to bad user experience. If a website takes more than three seconds to load, users will more likely to switch to the competitors.
There are many tools available to check your website loading speed. Alongside providing you the average speed, they also recommend you various fixes to find bottlenecks that affect page speed.
On Page Elements:
Want to gain ranking boost? Optimize your on page elements. On page optimization basically takes care of technical aspects of the websites. Finding and fixing on page errors has always been a significant SEO strategy. Just by tweaking Meta tags, amending interlinking and optimizing content copy, you can see up to 45% growth in overall traffic.
You can optimize your on page elements in many ways. You can start with Meta tags. They include title and page description is ideally the information that searchers can see in the SERPs. Many a times Google automatically fetches content from the content page dynamically. While pulling the content, Google makes sure that the content piece is closer to the user’s query.
Obtain Authority Backlinks:
Like always, authority links will remain the most important entity to be utilized for higher rankings. However, while putting efforts for quality backlinks, you should avoid shortcuts. Don’t rely on backlinks acquired from black hat strategies such as link forms, paid links, and links obtained from guest blogging networks.
Instead, you can use other popular methods to boost your backlink count. Write comprehensive case studies. Include in depth details of the client’s pan points, how you identified them and the way you achieved the results. Your clients will be more than happy to share these case studies further with a backlink to your website.
Infographics is another powerful content format that can attract more links. Create a complete view on a certain topic using pictures, numbers and stats. These infographics must be informative and engaging. Republish them on other blogs and share on social media. You should request influencers to include your infographics on their relevant posts with a backlink to your website.
Summary:
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