25+ of the most important SEO factors to Consider
On-page factors
The way your page is optimized has the most profound effect on its rankings. Here are the page optimization factors that can affect its search visibility:
- Keyword in the title tag. The title meta tag is one of the strongest relevancy signals for a search engine. The tag itself is meant to give the accurate description of the pages content. Search engines use it to display the main title of a search result. Including a keyword in it will indicate to search engine what to rank the page for.
Ideally, the keyword should be placed at the start of the title tag. Pages optimized this way will rank better than those with keyword closer to the title’s tag end. - Keyword in meta description tag. The importance of the meta description tag today is often discussed in SEO circles. It is nonetheless still a relevancy signal. It is also crucial for gaining user clicks from search results pages. Including the keyword in it makes it more relevant to a search engine and a searcher.
- Keyword in h3 tag. h3 tag is yet another relevance factor, serving as a description of the pages content. In spite of an ongoing discussion about its importance, it is still a good practice to include your keyword in a unique h3 tag on a page.
- Using keywords in the pages. Up until recently, stuffing your page with keywords was a definite way to increase its rankings for a particular keyword. That’s not the case anymore. Using the keyword in the copy still sends a relevancy signal of what the content is about. How you place it, however, has changed drastically and it now penisalised by search engines.
- The length of the content. These days searchers want to be educated and won’t satisfy with basic information. Google, therefore, looks for authoritative and informative content to rank first. And it’s common sense that the longer your content is, the greater the chance that you can cover more aspects of your topic. 300 words is recommended.
- Duplicate content. Not all factors can influence your rankings in a positive way. Having similar content across various pages of your site can actually hurt your rankings. Avoid duplicating content and write original copy for each page.
- Canonical tag. Sometimes, however, having two URLs with similar content is unavoidable. One of the ways from preventing this from becoming a duplicate content issue is by using a canonical tag on your site. This tag does one simple thing; it tells Google that one URL is equivalent of another, clearly stating that in spite of two pages having the same content, they are in fact one.
- Image Optimization. Not only text that can be optimized on a page but other media too. Images, for instance, can send the search engine relevancy signals through their alt text, caption, and description.
- Content Updates. Google algorithm prefers freshly updated content. It does not mean that you have to edit your pages all the time. For commercial pages, such as product descriptions Google recognizes the fact that they are not as time sensitive as blog posts covering recent events. It is wise however to include some strategy to update certain types of content once every 12 months.
- Outbound links. Linking to authoritative pages sends trust signals to the search engine. Think, the reason why you would send a user to another site is if you wanted them to learn more of the subject. This can be a huge trust factor for Google and SEO. However, can significantly diminish the page rank, hurting its search visibility. Outbound links can affect your rankings but use them in moderation.
- Internal links. Interlinking pages on your site can pass their strength between pages.
- Keyword in URL. Including the keyword in the URL or slug, is said to send another relevancy signal to Google. Have a focused Keyword include it in the title, description and content.
Site factors:
There are certain site-wide factors that can affect your site’s search visibility as well:
- Sitemap. A sitemap encourages search engine to index all pages on your site. It is the simplest and most efficient way to tell Google all pages within website.
- Domain trust. Trust matters. Websites Google trust should rank higher. But how do you build that trust? Time and Relevance to the page subject, building trust factors of your domain will certainly pay off.
- Server location. SEO’s say that a server’s location helps to boost rankings for that particular country or region.
- Mobile optimized site. 46% of searchers used mobile exclusively to research. This number increased exponentially in the last 12 months. It would be no surprise then that having a mobile optimized site would affect website ranking.
- Google Search Console integration. Having your site verified at Google Webmasters Tools will help with your sites indexing. Submit your sitemap after posting.
Off Page factors:
Ranking your pages, Google also looks at factors outside of your site.
- The number of linking domains. The number of domains linking to you is one of the most important ranking factors.
- The number of linking pages. There might be some links from a particular domain to your site; their number is a ranking factor. However, it is better to have more links from individual domains rather than from a single domain.
- Domain Authority of linking page. Not all pages are equal. Links to pages with higher domain authority will be a bigger factor than those on low authority domains. Therefore, you should strive to build links with high authority domains.
- Link relevancy. Links from pages related to your page topic will carry more relevancy for search engines.
- Authority of linking domain. Authority is a domain is a ranking factor.
- Links from a homepage. SEOs believe that links from a home page of a linking domain carry more strength than those on one of its pages.
- A number of do follow vs. nofollow links. Google officially stated that they don’t count nofollow links (link with rel=nofollow attribute attached), the number of your do follow links should affect your rankings.
- The diversity of link types. The types of links you build to your site matters too. Too many links of one type may be a spam indicator and impact your rankings.
- Related links. It is said that links within the content of the page are worth more than links in a sidebar.
- Link anchor. Anchor text of a link is a strong ranking factor.
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