If your website is optimized for Google, you will get more people visiting your website which could mean new customers and sales. If your site lacks SEO, people searching for your products and services won’t see your website in search results.
Every website needs SEO to be found on Google.
What are Google’s top SEO ranking factors?
There are hundreds of factors Google looks at when crawling your website. Our list below shows the most important, all of which you can easily do yourself.
Page Speed (including Mobile)
All of your pages must load quickly, especially when viewed on a mobile device.
Secure and Easy to Access
The top SEO ranking factor is having the right kind of URL. Your page URLs should be easy for Google’s bots to reach and crawl. According to Google, having HTTPS is considered a “light-weight ranking factor” which makes for a more secure browsing experience for users.
Mobile Friendly
Responsive design means one website for all devices. Trends have shown that more people are visiting your website with a phone or tablet than desktop. Make sure the user experience on mobile is a good one.
Optimized Content
Your page content – titles, tags, and text – needs to include keywords and keyword phrases for your niche. This will help Google understand what you do and when you should appear in search results.
Your content should be unique, not copied. If you copy content word for word from another site or a published article, that’s duplicate content and can have a negative impact on your site rank.
User Experience
Google’s algorithm is designed to respond the same way your human visitors would respond. If your website makes sense for human visitors, it will also make sense for Google’s algorithm.
Sit down and visit your website like a visitor. How long did it take for a page to load? Does your site feel jumbled? Are you able to navigate from page to page easily? Is your site easy to use on a mobile device?
Authority Links
Google does look at links to help determine how authoritative and relevant your content is. This includes your inbound, outbound, and internal links. When you add a link to text on your website, make sure the text is descriptive (not “click here”).
Social Media Links and Shares
Getting more social shares does help your search engine rankings. Always be linking to your website from your social media posts.
The easiest way to win at SEO is to create great content that your website visitors will love. Focus on your audience and their user experience. If your website makes sense for human visitors, it will also make sense for Google’s algorithm.
