Whenever you search for something on Google, do you venture to the second page? As a top Manchester digital marketing agency, we’d presume the answer is most definitely no. Typically, a lot of questions are answered on the first page of Google, therefore it often feels like there is never a need to go further afield.
The higher your page ranking, the more eyes that will be on it. Therefore, as a website, the aim is to rank as high as possible in the search engine ranking positions (SERPs) as you will garner more views.
There are a few Google ranking factors that are important to consider when creating content, so you can determine which of these factors will affect your SEO strategy. These are all important to consider when making content as these will inform your decisions, the way you write and the way you rank.
External factors
External factors are important Google ranking factors to consider. An external factor, put simply, includes things such as brand mentions, social proof and social media profiles, as well as external links. Note: Instances like brand mentions, reviews and social proof aren’t usually part of an SEO strategy, but linking can be when intentional link-building services occur.
Social proof:
Social proof, such as reviews, are vastly important Google ranking factor. If people are interacting with your site, this will be recognised by Google as content, which is important due to its ability to help audiences and therefore will help you to rank higher.
External links:
Another external factor which is crucial leverage to boost your rankings on Google is external linking. External linking is a page not on your own website linking to your site. A good amount of external linking gives your website authority, as various links back to a specific page suggest that it has a credible voice.
Google assumes that a good quantity of natural links indicates a website has high-quality content on that website.
It is important not to link superfluously, however, as there is no objective rule for the number of external links a website should have. Therefore, it’s important that the links pointing back to your website are of good quality. Ensuring both reasonable quantity and exceptional quality will help to boost your rankings on Google.
Internal factors
Internal factors are also important search engine ranking factors to consider. An internal factor is a factor that you control directly on your website which ultimately affects your ranking in SERPs. Internal ranking can either be on-page ranking factors (things you can do on a particular web page) or on-site ranking factors (things you do to your whole website).
Internal factors to consider are things such as quality content, design aesthetics, usability, site performance for example page speed, and internal linking structures. Considering all these factors and implementing them into your website in an optimised way will ensure that your page will perform higher on SERPs.
Quality content:
Google explicitly states that ‘helpful, reliable information that’s primarily created to benefit people, not to gain search engine rankings, [appears] in the top Search results.’ Therefore, it is of paramount importance that your quality is catered to the user, rather than your own company.
At Custard, we pride ourselves on delivering proven digital marketing strategies to clients across a wide range of industries and SEO blog content is just one of our specialities. Therefore, if you’d like more information on how you can outsource your business’s SEO and create user-friendly content, don’t hesitate to get in touch with our SEO content writing agency today.
Quality content ensures that your company can provide engaging information and content that is sure to grab the interest of your reader, therefore this will help you rank higher on SERPs.
Site performance:
Slow webpage speeds can be extremely frustrating for website users and Google, by extension; therefore, it is important to ensure that your website meets the minimum speed required. If you’re wondering what the minimum speed for websites is, unfortunately, this constantly changes. However, Google has some advice about site performance which is a good mark to follow.
Site performance, which includes page speed and internal linking structures are good Google ranking factors to consider for SERPs because they offer users an enjoyable experience on your site. These are particularly important components of technical SEO.
Considering internal factors like the above ensures that your website will perform better on SERPs.
Page-level factors
Finally, page-level factors are also important search engine ranking factors to consider if you are wanting to boost your ranking on search engines. Page-level factors are simply elements on each webpage that you can optimise. This could include, but is not limited to content, content structure, writing style, use of media (eg. images and videos), headings, and structured data.
Considering these Google ranking factors are good to ensure that you rank higher in SERPs because by implementing these factors, you can audit your SEO and ensure the best optimisation possible (or, you can let our Manchester SEO agency do it for you!).
Content:
Content is important to ensure that you can optimise your page as much as possible. It is important to optimise content as this is also where keywords can be made use of in your differing tags such as H1 and H2 tags.
It is important to utilise your content in a way which incorporates keywords. Specifically, you shouldn’t just ensure to leverage the keywords in your content, but you should also ensure that your keywords are at the start of your meta titles. This is because, according to Moz, meta titles that start with keywords typically perform better than keywords that are implemented at the end of a tag.
Use of media:
Various forms of media, for example, images and videos can act as a quality content signal. This is because having visual prompts means that the site users can stay engaged for longer.
The longer a user stays on a website, the more credible your website is. This signals to Google that this content is valuable and therefore worth pursuing. As your content gets more engagement and therefore value, the higher these pages will rank on SERPs.
Considering leveraging external factors, internal factors and page-level factors will, in turn, allow you to decide which of these factors will affect your SEO strategy. Through doing this, your content becomes engaging, unique and high-quality – three things which will be sure to point to Google that you have a high-ranking website and boost your site ranking, ultimately resulting in SERP-cess.
