SEO Ranking Facts You Should Know About – Ranking high on the search engine results pages (SERPs) entails dedication, careful research, and patient execution of strategies. Almost every day, search engines make changes to their algorithms to improve their crawling and indexing of websites and provide more relevant results to users.
You can help search engines get to know the quality of your website and the services you offer through best practices in search engine optimization (SEO). Search engines have their criteria for ranking a website higher than another, and it pays off to know any algorithm updates.
Here are the top SEO ranking facts that can help you plan your next campaign:
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Links Are Still Essential
Search engines prefer websites with quality links. These links can be internal links or external links. Internal links are those hyperlinks that point to other pages inside your website. Make sure that your web pages are interconnected.
On the other hand, external links are hypertext that mentions other websites and leads users to their pages. If you mention or link to other websites, then they have backlinks from you.
Similarly, if these websites link to your website, you have backlinks from them. As said by Digital Authority Partners, backlinks can help build your online brand dominance. Search engines such as Google will notice your website even more if you have backlinks from high-authority websites.
Sitemaps Have Become Search Engines’ Compass
Without a sitemap, search engines take longer to crawl your site and index your pages. With a sitemap, they can identify which pages are important to you and which are not. Also, a sitemap guides crawlers through your web structure.
It is advisable to have a simple site structure with fewer layers so that crawlers can index your pages faster. If you have a well-organized sitemap, you earn your way to search engines’ approval.
You can resubmit your sitemap via Google Search Console. You can also run your sitemap through other validating sites to check whether you have broken links or too many redirects.
Content with E-A-T Is King
Gone are the days when you had to publish lots of content just to get noticed by search engines. The trend nowadays to rank high on SERPs is to apply E-A-T in content writing.
E-A-T stands for expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. The EAT principle means that your content must be well-researched and contain quality information. It should engage readers so that they stay on your website for a long time and check other pages.
You can add a byline to your articles. If you create your own content for your website, you can mention how your experience makes you credible for the information you share. Applying the E-A-T principle entails familiarity with your niche and knowledge of your topics.
Page Load Time Must Only Be One Second
If you want to beat your competitors, then match their websites’ load time. You should notice that those who rank high on SERPs have swift load time. A user just has to blink, and all the web pages have loaded.
People are so busy nowadays that waiting for your website to load completely is a waste of time. They will abandon your website and look for another similar website with swift page load time.
Improve the page load time of your website by enabling compression. You can use software to make your files smaller. Your website will load faster if it has smaller files to load.
Mobile Usability Is Now the Name of the Game
More and more people, especially younger ones, use smartphones most of the time. They make purchases using their smartphones. Anything they can do on a laptop or desktop they can also do using a smartphone.
The best way to reach out to your target market is to make your website mobile-friendly. Work with your website builder to enhance the design and features of your site. Make sure that it works well with any screen size so that you will not have a problem with consistency.
Mobile usability is also associated with having a website that has a responsive design. Make sure that users can navigate your website smoothly and that your web pages are responsive.
If your website is mobile-friendly and the “Buy Now” call-to-action is strategically placed on the upper right side, then you are on your way to achieving higher ranks on SERPs. Having a mobile-friendly design will work wonders for your business as well as for your pursuit of dominating search engine results.
Final Words
Knowing what search engines value as important in assessing each website’s quality is key to ranking high in search results. If you are diligent in applying these strategies one by one, you can climb the highest spot faster. Offer a quality user experience and unique content so that you can improve your online presence and build an online community that shares values with your company.
SEO is all about improving your website so that search engines notice it and recommend it to users every time they type keywords in the search bar. Contact a digital marketing expert such as Digital Authority Partners if you need help with improving your online presence and ranking high on SERPs.