When it comes to SEO, everyone wants a magic solution. There isn’t one. However, there are a few things you can do to make your website a better candidate in Google’s eyes to start ranking you when people search for terms in your niche. That’s why the team at WebCroppers has put together a helpful guide to show you what factors help search engines rank you.
SEO Ranking Factors: Security (HTTPS)
When people go to a site, they want to know their information is safe and secure. That being said, making the switch to HTTPS will help ensure that Google and other search engines know your site is safe for users to browse. It’s the first step to building trust.
SEO Ranking Factors: Content
On average, the longer articles seem to rank higher. If you know what you’re doing with SEO content, then you can actually get more out of your longer pieces (2000 words and up) than your shorter pieces (300 and below).
Now, when we say longer is better, we mean if you have valuable content within that longer article, then you can beat someone that has a valuable shorter piece. You might have the information they have and some additional bits of knowledge as well. This makes you the authority and search engines will rank you in the number one spot.
SEO Ranking Factors: Keywords
Now, back in the old days of search engines, people would spam one keyword throughout their page and that would land them the top ranking spot. Now, search engines have become very smart and have weeded this strategy out of the picture. For now, the best practice is to use the keyword sparingly throughout the article and in important places, like titles and subtitles. Using similar words and phrases is another good practice.
We will say that it’s getting to the point where Google can understand a page and rank it on a search term without that article even featuring the exact keyword. The best way to prepare yourself is simply to create useful content that people genuinely want to read. The traffic you see will take care of the rest.
SEO Ranking Factors: Traffic
This is one of the most powerful elements for ranking on search engines. Naturally, search engines want to see how many people are coming to your site to determine if your article is “useful,” especially if you’re going after a high-volume keyword or phrase.
There are a number of things you can do to push traffic to your website, from paid advertising to social media.
SEO Ranking Factors: Site speed
Shoppers have a need, a need for speed. The number one thing that companies are focusing on is their site speed. Search engines tend to give favor to faster sites, even when you have two identical pages. You can speed up your site with a few simple tricks.
The first is to optimize your images. You can use a free tool called Optimiza.com to drag and drop your images and the website will automatically reduce the file size (not the image size) of the picture by reducing the quality of the photo slightly. You can change the amount of quality reduction until you’re happy with it.
Another way to speed up the website is to make it as basic as possible. Try to avoid things that require heavy CSS like sliders, CSS transitions, and anything that makes your site move.
You might want to look into your hosting server as well to see what you’re getting for the price. There might be someone out there that can give you faster speeds for less money.
SEO Ranking Factors: Metadata
This is actually the first thing that people see, even before landing on your homepage in most cases. What we recommend for your Meta description is to be as concise and to the point as possible. You want your visitors to be relevant and interested, it doesn’t help you to entice people with pretty words if they just come to your site and it’s not what they expected from the Meta description.
You can read our full guide to writing a Meta description, here.
Of course, if you need professional help with any of these items, you can always contact the pros at WebCroppers for help.
