Organic search is of central importance for online shops and websites. Websites that appear in the results of major search engines such as Google are visited by visitors every day without them having specifically had the website in mind or the operators having to do anything about it.
This free traffic to your website is worth its weight in gold and allows numerous aimless internet users to become paying customers. A good Google ranking in the search results is rewarded with higher sales and conversions, which is why search engine optimisation (SEO for short) is becoming increasingly relevant in online marketing. This article is about the most important Google ranking factors and how you can influence them to get your website to rank as well as possible.
What are Google ranking factors?
In SEO, a rating factor is a variable whose characteristics have a direct or indirect influence on a website’s position in the search results.
The Google ranking factors therefore determine the position of your website in the search results. Without knowing which criteria are used to evaluate a website or an online shop, SEO is very difficult and inefficient. For instance, just like understanding the importance of SEO factors is crucial for improving your website’s ranking, knowing the right steps to access a site, such as the Stay Casino with their Staycasino no deposit bonus, is equally important for users seeking a seamless experience. The more ranking factors you know, the better, faster, and more effectively you can improve your Google ranking.
How to improve your Google ranking – the 10 most important factors
More than 200 factors are incorporated into Google’s algorithm. We have listed below the ten most relevant and most influential ones. This list is based primarily on hints from Google employees and our own experience in the field of search engine optimisation.
1. Keywords
- Keyword URLs: If a URL contains the focus keyword, the search engine will consider it relevant for the corresponding search query. Therefore, try to place your central keyword at the beginning of the URL and avoid multiple entries.
- Keyword density: It is important that you do not place your keywords unnecessarily often, because the world’s largest search engine punishes keyword stuffing with a poor Google ranking. As often as necessary, as little as possible is the motto. Use the keyword only as often as it is relevant for a particular text!
- Highlighting keywords: You can highlight keywords within a text using HTML mark-ups such as bold, italics, font size or underlining. This symbolises a certain relevance of the presented term.
- Placing keywords correctly: Placing your keywords in certain positions is essential: in the H1 heading and in the title tag. The latter defines the title of your website and is an important content element. In the headings, the keywords also signal relevance and make it much easier for Google to grasp your website content. If you use graphical elements, it is also advisable to mention the keyword in the alt attribute. However, this requires a connection between image and text!
- Types of keywords: A distinction is made between long-tail and short-tail keywords. Find out which ones are suitable for your content and website in our article on keyword research.
2. Structured content
This generally refers to the organisation of information on your website. Structural elements such as enumerations, tables or numbering can be used to present a lot of information in a tidy way. This not only makes the website more user-friendly, but also helps the search engine to better understand the content of the website and thus increase the Google ranking.
3. Text length
Search engines benefit from longer content because they can better understand and classify content with more text. There is a demonstrable correlation between text length and Google ranking However, it is important not to write the text as long as possible for printing purposes, because the quality of the content must always be given. Long texts are also said to have a higher information content. Search engines recognise when the content of a website is long but the time visitors spend on it is quite short.
4. Unique content
Duplicate content offers no added value for users, which is why Google categorises it as irrelevant. Online shops are particularly prone to duplicate content. To avoid this, it is advisable to write unique product descriptions. It is certainly not easy to write consistently high-quality content, but it is necessary for a good Google ranking.
Content that accurately and comprehensively covers topics offers users a great deal of added value and is rewarded by search engines for it.
5. Readability
Google also evaluates the comprehensibility of texts on websites. On the one hand, a low reading level has a positive effect on the Google ranking, but on the other hand, a high reading level is often a quality feature for your text. With the help of a readability index, you can find out how high the quality of your content is rated. Make every effort to achieve a readability suitable for your target group . This increases the time spent on the site, which ultimately influences your ranking.
6. Security and HTML
A website with an incorrect HTML code is often classified as inferior, which is why it suffers in the Google ranking. It is therefore better to leave the programming to experts to avoid mistakes. Proper encryption of data transmission between clients and servers can also improve your search engine rating. If a website is equipped with SSL (Secure Sockets Layer), it allows an encrypted connection and sends an important security signal to Google. If your website is not yet SSL encrypted, you should take care of this as soon as possible!
7. mobile optimisation and responsive design
More and more websites are being visited from mobile devices, which is why Google has created the ‘mobile-first index’ as a first major measure. To make your website as mobile-friendly as possible, responsive design is often used. In this case, the website repeatedly adapts to the screen size so that mobile navigation and headings are adjusted in size.
If your website is not designed for visitors using mobile devices, the consequences are high bounce rates and thus lower visibility in the search results.
8. Link building
This involves building a link network that signals the relevance of your own content to other websites and, of course, to the search engine. There are three different types of link:
- Internal links: An internal link is used to link individual subpages of a domain. Ideally, they enable visitors to quickly navigate to all relevant information. With the help of anchor texts, you can make navigation even easier for visitors.
- Backlinks aka inbound links: Backlinks are links that lead from other websites to your own website, i.e. inbound links. These are particularly valuable to Google because they can be seen as recommendations from other operators. Getting backlinks is often very tedious because you either have to have a particularly high status through valuable articles to be mentioned. Or you have to approach other website operators and ask them to link to your site. You can find more information about off-page optimisation in another blog post.
- Outbound links: These are links that you link from your website to other online presences. With these links, you are primarily helping other websites, but in the long run you can also benefit from the ‘favours’ and in return receive precious backlinks from these websites. However, avoid inserting dead links or too many links, as this is distracting for visitors and detracts from your own content.
9. Pagespeed
This scenario is probably familiar to you: You are looking for a solution to a problem, click on a suggested website and after a few seconds you are annoyed because the content of the page is not loading directly. You cancel the search and try again with another website. This phenomenon is fatal for your Google ranking and also scares away your visitors. To increase loading speed, we recommend hosting the website on faster servers and compressing images to the size recommended by Google.
10. Time on site
The length of stay expresses how long a visitor stays on your website. To do this, the search behaviour is observed, in particular, to see whether the user comes to your site from the search results and how long they then stay on the site. If the user searches for a term, clicks on the link and does not return to the search engine (or does not return quickly), this is considered a good sign. The user has received the information they requested and Google can make your website more accessible to other users by giving it a higher Google ranking.
Conclusion
Now you have a comprehensive insight into the ten most relevant factors for Google ranking. Search engine optimisation is a lengthy process that requires a lot of continuous work and effort. Whether you work with experts or not, you should always adhere to the above factors. Here you will find them all listed again:
- Correctly placed keywords
- Structured content
- Texts of a suitable length
- Unique content
- Readability adapted to the target group
- Secure SSL encryption and flawless HTML code
- Mobile provision
- A good link network
- Fast loading speed
- A high retention time