If you are a content developer, then I bet, you must have stumbled upon the great SEO chanting, ‘Don’t write for search engines but for your readers’. Personally, there is no point in developing a sterling content if it doesn’t get the proper exposure it needs.
From web hosting to back linking to choose a good web hosting networking, SEO experts try every possible technique to rank their content on the first page of Search Engine Result Page (SERP). They burn the midnight oil to make sure that the website is SEO friendly.
Already started feeling nervous? Fret now, we have seven amazing factors that can help you that can affect your website search engine ranking. Have a look.
1. CONTENT
A unique content is the gateway by which your company interacts with your customers. Therefore, if your content is not engaging enough, your customers will fly away. Especially, after the update of Google’s Panda algorithm, your Search Engine ranking depends greatly on the quality of your content.
For keeping them glued to your website, you will have to provide your user with an engaging, valuable, passionate and a relevant content. Remember, no one looks for medicines in a shoe store.
2. ON-PAGE OPTIMIZATION
The content pages need to be optimized for Search Engines. The keyword is the main factor by which a Search Engine determines whether a page is relevant to a search term or not. Therefore, your content should contain relevant keywords within a permissible density, not too much (keyword stuffing) or less. Apart from the content body, your keyword should be included in your URL, in the title tag and your page’s image alt-texts. Surely, it helps a Search Engine to find your page.
3. BACKLINKS
Backlinks or Inbound Links (IBL’s) are the links that point to your site from other sites. In SEO world, backlinks are a key factor in determining the popularity and usability of any website but, not every backlink is worthy, so don’t be happy with the number of backlinks your site gains, it’s only about quaity backlinks that matter in search rank. As per Search Engine, backlinks that come from other high authority websites in the same niche are counted as QUALITY backlinks.
4. SOCIAL SIGNALS/SOCIAL BUZZ
Social signals play a great role in Search Engine ranking. When a content gets shared on Facebook or Tweeted and re-Tweeted on Twitter, the Search Engine treats that content as useful and popular and pull it up to a better ranking position. The Moz study also reveals that the quality and quantity of Social Network shares play a great role in Search Engine ranking. Though this is not a proof of Search Engine ranking methodology, but these characteristics have been seen on various higher ranking websites.
5. CHOOSE A SMART HOSTING SERVICE
If your website is like your shop, which carries your identity on the web then the web hosting services act as the developed land on which your shop is built. A web hosting service keeps, serves and maintains your website files and make it available via the World Wide Web. Technically, there are three kinds of web hosting services:
1. Dedicated Hosting
2. Shared Hosting and
3. VPS hosting(Virtual Private Server hosting)
All of them are available in both Windows and Linux variant. Selecting a good hosting for a website is the utmost factor for Search Engine ranking as it involves with other factors such as page loading time, website availability, etc. and in this niche Linux VPS hosting is the best bet than shared and dedicated hosting as it provides the freedom of owning a private server at a very low price.
Consequently, webmasters tend to choose a local VPS web hosting for better good results as the physical location of the VPS hosting server is also important for Search Engine ranking. If your hosting server is located in the US, then the Search Engine will assume that the website caters for US internet users, this will also be reflected in the search results. Geotagging can be helpful in this case.
Lastly, this list doesn’t cover the whole story. If you think that we missed something, please do share your views with us.
6. USER SIGNALS/SITE USABILITY
Statistically, web users return to those websites which are rich in valuable information. A good, responsive design for all screen sizes is also a factor of good user experience. A search engine considers user engagement matrix which includes how much time users spend on your site, the number of new users, number of returning users, etc. Apart from these, Search Engine also considers click-through rate, bounce rate to determine the usability of a website and rank it accordingly or penalize it.
7. WEBSITE SHOULD BE EASY TO NAVIGATE
Usually, online readers are less patient. Therefore, if they have to dig really deep to find the next page, they will fly away. To make sure you don’t drive your audience away, you will have to make your website navigation as simple as it can be to keep visitors happy. To make this happen, try to make a clear and concise design for your website navigation for offering a hassle-free reach to every single corner of your website. This will not only help your users to find all your pages smoothly, but, it will also help Search Engines to find and index all your pages quickly.
