Search engine optimization (SEO) is a widely famous marketing strategy that allows many businesses, small and enormous alike, to appear when their target audience is looking for them. This is often done through the use of SEO strategies to enhance the website’s ranking. Google is the biggest player in the search engine industry. Most SEO tactics are done to satisfy the wants of Google’s algorithm. A high Google ranking is one of the foremost important targets by marketing strategists. SEO marketers are aiming to rank on Google’s first page and possibly on the highest results of the first-page result.
Google has evolved and made multiple updates over the past few years. The search engine giant developed its algorithm using specific signals and indicators to determine which of them should rank higher. Businesses wouldn’t want to fall behind lower Google pages since nobody will dig that deep. If the user’s queries have already been answered by the first page, there is no point in going to other results pages.
Components That Have an Effect on A Website’s Google Ranking
Domain Trust
A trusted domain is defined as the domain that a system trusts in the authentication of the users. This means that if a user or application is authenticated by a trusted domain, other domains that trust the authenticating domain will accept it too.
The main domain has a two-way trust relationship to the subordinate domain. This scenario is best explained when a specific area domain trusts domain A, which will make the system also trust all the other domains that are trusted by domain A.
User-Experience
If a user types an issue and gets presented with an online site that holds the answers to that query, the user would click it. However, an issue may arise once she clicks the link but the page loads very slowly. The increasing short span of users would mean that the user will leave the page and transfer to a website that has a faster loading page. Google wants its users to always have a great user experience which is why an online site with many loading problems must be fixed.
On-Page Details
The title tag refers to the “title” that’s found on a SERP. The Meta tags are the detail that’s seen just below the title tags. Headers are utilized for breaking down the content within a page. Each subtopic features a header. There is a minimum of one header that must contain the target keyword. The URL should also contain the keyword to further assist Google in seeing the web page’s relevancy to a question.
Content and Image Optimization
Content must be optimized with the target keywords in order that it’ll have a high chance of getting a top ranking. Aside from content, the image has to be optimized. Images have the facility to send Google-specific relevance signals which is beneficial for the website’s chances to rank higher in the SERP.
Backlinking
Backlinking is among the top identifiers in helping an online site rank high on SERPs. Previously, Yahoo was the leading company when it involved search engines. Unfortunately, cheating marketers tried to cheat the system. They placed keywords to an online page even though it isn’t relevant to the content. This led to a nasty user-experience on Yahoo’s platform. Google made changes to use backlinking to figure out the website’s worthiness and obtain a high Google ranking.
Here’s an example of how backlinking helps a website:
An authority website called searchpages.com links to website answerstoquery.com, Google will determine that searchpages.com trusts answerstoquery.com. If additional websites namely searchresults.com and beststrategies.com link to answerstoquery.com, it is an indicator for Google that answerstoquery.com is trustworthy. Nonetheless, not all links are the same. Google features better regard to backlinks coming from high authority domains.
If answerstoquery.com receives 500 backlinks that do not mean it’d rank above searchpages.com. If searchpages.com receives 200 backlinks with 100 of those links coming from websites just like the Forbes, Tech Crunch, or Huffington Post, searchpages.com will have a better chance of getting a high ranking compared to answerstoquery.com.
Google’s algorithm consistently updates as time goes on. Businesses and marketers must be able to quickly adapt to the changes to ensure that their websites remain on top. Having a high Google ranking would likely bring more targeted leads, which means higher chances to increase revenue.