There are about 200 signals that Google considers when ranking your pages. And, that’s good reason to be dumbstruck! SEO is certainly a roller coaster ride and there’s lots to do to push your website up by one rank. One wrong move and swish, you’ll find all the efforts give way like a stack of cards. On yes, it can be that tricky and thanks to Google algorithms, the game just got tougher.
A someone from outside the SEO industry, we’ve always wondered what those signals are which Google looks out for when ranking websites. And, knowing them certainly makes website owners more conscious of what should go out on their website and what to steer clear from. So, here’s a quick look at the 5 signals that Google looks out for when ranking your pages.
5 Signals that Google looks out for when ranking pages
1. Domain Factors
These include factors like your domain’s age, registration length, presence of the main keyword of your business in the domain name, domain history, previous penalization, etc.
2. Page Level Factors
At page level, Google looks for factors such as presence of keywords in your Title Tags, presence of keywords in Description Tags, Frequency of Keywords in the website, content length, page loading speed, presence of duplicate content, page optimization, How recently content was updated, outbound link quality, quality of content, grammar and spellings, number of internal links, etc.
3. Site Level Factors
These factors include quality of content and the value it provides, trust rank, optimization of contact us page, site updates, site architecture, breadcrumbs navigation, etc.
4. Backlink Factors
These factors include linking domain age, Alt Tags for images, authority of linked domains, guest posts, diversity in te types of links, relevancy of links, backlink age, etc.
5. User Interaction
This is yet another important factor that Google looks out for. It includes factors such as bounce rate, repeat traffic, direct traffic, click through rates (CTR), comments and interactions on the website, etc.
While there are many other factors such as algorithm adherence, social signals, brand signals, on-page performance, off-page performance, etc., these are 5 of the most important ones.
So, when looking for affordable SEO services, you may want to discuss how the internet advertising company in question, will be measuring performance of your website on these grounds. If they’ve got tools to track these SEO ranking parameters, you’ve got your finger on the right place and you should definitely avail the company’s services.
Which of the Google ranking signals do you consider to be the most important? Share your thoughts and experiences with me in the comments below.