Understanding the connection between web design and search engine optimization is crucial. Web design determines the experience of your customers. At the same time, it helps search engines to better understand your website and rank it higher. That’s why we want to explore the impact web design has on SEO.
Website structure improves crawlability and indexation
When discussing web design, we must consider more than just the website’s aesthetics. Website structure includes the correct position of elements and the structure and hierarchy of pages. It’s important to design a well-structured website if you wish to improve Google rankings. That substantially improves the crawlability and indexation of the pages.
Improved user experience reduces the bounce rate
Reduce your bounce rate by improving the web design and user experience.
Let’s consider how many websites there are today. Each website has a unique design, aiming to provide value to its clients.
However, some websites fail to do so. Users who visit a website that doesn’t deliver a smooth customer experience will quickly leave the page. This increases the page’s bounce rate, and that hurts your search rankings. If you use web design to make the user experience better, that will also benefit your SEO.
Understanding these SEO basics is crucial to help your small business grow. It’ll help you better understand the impact web design has on SEO and how you can use that to your advantage.
Good web design improves the loading speed
Another way to reduce the bounce rate through web design is to ensure the website loads quickly. A well-designed website won’t be overcrowded with unnecessary bells and whistles. Often we see websites that use too many sliders, pop-ups, or ads that slow down the page speed.
Your web design should be crisp and clean. It should focus only on customer value. Once you accomplish that, the pages should load faster. There are also a number of technical solutions to a page that’s too slow, like condensing CSS, caching, and other things your web designer is familiar with.
The importance of mobile-friendly web design
It is no secret that Google values mobile-friendly websites since more than half of all searches are done from phones. If your website isn’t responsive to mobile devices, you have less chance of competing well against other websites: Google will tend to rank them higher.
Even if customers find your website, they may still be discouraged by the lack of responsiveness. That can also affect the bounce rate and your overall SEO ranking. In other words, don’t overlook the importance of mobile-friendly web design to ranking well on search engines..
Social media in web design
Add social media share buttons on your website to help the visitors share your content.
An underused social media technique in web design is adding social media “share buttons” on your website. Sharing website content on social media is very important. Allowing users to more easily share your content can improve the visibility of your website and provide more organic traffic.
If you add “share” social media buttons in addition to the more common “follow” buttons on your website, you’re making it possible for your clients to share content on their social media profiles. See the floating share buttons on the left side if this blog for an example of this technique in practice. By improving website visibility through this strategy, you may also improve your search engine ranking.
Internal link optimization
Link building is one of the most important SEO strategies you can use. When it comes to internal links, they can play a big part in the website’s aesthetics. Just think of a web page stuffed with links so much that they distract the user from the flow of information on your page. Too many links will have users quickly switching pages, which is not a good practice. We also recommend having your links open in a new browser tab instead of permanently directing users away from your page.
Properly placed links will add value to your users and connect pages on your website. Both parts are essential for on-page SEO. You want to address key parts of your website holistically and make sure that they all contribute to search engine ratings.
Website accessibility
Another essential element of web design is website accessibility. It’s important that you allow all users to equally experience your website. Those who suffer from various disabilities may not be able to perceive traditional web design like everyone else.
Website accessibility is now a standard in quality web design. You want to ensure that all pages are equally accessible to all of your customers. This not only improves the customer experience but also may increase search ratings.
In some countries, your business might even be legally prosecuted if it’s not accessible. Some claim that website accessibility is as crucial as responsiveness to mobile devices. It’s one of the Google ranking factors.
Web design consistency
Link building is an essential element of web design that greatly impacts SEO.
A website is just a part of your business. It is one platform that works together with other elements to create a brand image. You should show consistency across all website pages and across other business materials like brochures and stationery.
If each page is designed in a different style, that can cause confusion. What you want is to create a familiar feeling for your customers. No matter what page they visit, they should be able to predict where each element is. Web design should make your customers feel at home.
Websites that follow the practice of consistent web design will create a personal connection with your customers. That can affect their brand image and indirectly positively affect SEO.
Website navigation affects user experience
Another web design element that significantly affects user experience is website navigation. Visitors should be able to quickly navigate your website without too many issues or questions. Just like with other elements, web navigation should also be consistent across all pages, including your blog.
The idea is to help users have a smooth experience and find all the information they need as quickly as possible. Website navigation also has an impact on SEO. It’s a part of website structure, and it helps search engines to better understand your website.
The impact web design has on SEO – explained!
We hope that you now understand the impact web design has on SEO and that you see how important the connection between the two really is. Ensure your web design is always straightforward and aligned with the latest trends and your business goals. Remember to introduce new changes to your website from time to time. It is crucial to provide a fresh experience to your customers and ensure a high-ranking position. A good way to assure fresh content is to have a blog, for example.
About the Author
Marcus Johnson is a seasoned web designer specializing in visually appealing and user-friendly web design. He wants to share his knowledge of web design and SEO with the help of his passion for writing.
I get a lot of questions about online reviews, both from clients and others. Often I’m asked whether online reviews matter at all. Sometimes people wonder if customers are likely to write reviews for them. And whether review readers trust them. And if asking for reviews can hurt them. Or whether asking for reviews might encourage negative reviews.
I thought it was time to put together kind of an FAQ about some of the most frequent online review questions I hear.
How important are reviews for my small business?
Reviews can be very important for a local small business. Three important reasons are:
People do read reviews.
Not only do they read them, but they trust them.
Reviews can be an important search ranking signal, helping move you up (or down) in search results.
Do customers really read reviews?
Moz recently conducted a study that revealed a full 96% read reviews, at least occasionally. In fact, more than half of people read online reviews at least weekly! If half of your potential customers are reading your reviews, obviously that makes your reviews pretty important.
From the Moz study of online review behavior.
Do people trust reviews?
Do online reviews matter if people don’t trust them? I’ve been asked that by some skeptical business owners. But people do trust them! 86% of people consider reviews at least somewhat important when considering a business. And fully a third of consumers consider reviews to be the single most important factor when deciding whether to patronize a business. Another study showed that 58% of customers would pay more or travel further to deal with a company with good reviews.
A survey by Website Builder found that 97% of consumers say the online reviews they read influence their purchasing decisions and 84% trust online reviews as much as recommendations from friends and family.
How many reviews do I need?
Opinions on this are all over the map. Some sources say you need at least five reviews to show up. Others say you need at least 100 reviews to be trusted. But a lot depends on the size of your company and your scope.
A national eCommerce brand needs more reviews than a local store or business. My advice is to check your competitors that are showing up on the first page or two of Google and target more reviews than they have.
Most sites that collect reviews display your average star rating. Almost all are on a scale of 1 to 5 stars. The sweet spot seems to be somewhere between 4.2 and 4.8 stars. That’s because some consumers are suspicious of a straight five-star rating, thinking that perhaps the business is supporting fake reviews. In fact, Yelp found that more than 70% of people would avoid a business if they thought the business had fake reviews or was offering compensation for good reviews. On the other hand, anything less than 3 stars is probably no giving anyone much confidence in your business.
What percentage of customers write reviews?
Moz found that only 14% of customers never write reviews. In fact, more than 40% write reviews at least once a month. So don’t be shy about asking your customers to write reviews for you. Many of them will be happy to do so.
Website Builder found that 5-10% of customers typically write reviews. Presumably those are customers who’ve not been explicitly asked to write a review. Other studies have found that up to 72% of customers will write a review if they are asked to do so.
How can I get more online reviews for my small business?
If online reviews matter for your business, you obviously want more of them. And the good news is that If asked, more than half of your customers will usually write a review.
The top reason customers don’t review your business is because they forget to, not because they don’t want to. So it’s a good idea to follow up if they haven’t written a requested review within a week .
But don’t try to game the system. Half of consumers lose trust if it looks like owners or employees are reviewing their own business. And many review sites use semantic analysis to identify such self-serving reviews and weed them out.
Which review site is best for a local small business?
People tend to read (and write!) more reviews on Google than anywhere else. Online reviews matter the most on Google as a result. So that’s where you should focus mostly. But not entirely, because other review sites get a fair amount of exposure, too.
Should I ask only for Google reviews?
Absolutely not.
When someone receives a word of mouth referral to you, they almost always look you up online before reaching out to you. Your Google Knowledge Card ought to show up, and your website, of course.
But other sites will show up too, like Facebook, Yelp, Better Business Bureau, YellowPages, Judy’s Book, and others. When they do, you want gold review stars there. The gold color makes the review stars very noticeable, and the more good review stars people see on other sites for you, the more likely they are to trust you.
I’ve seen reports that 90% of people are influenced to at least a a moderate by owner responses to reviews. Also, a survey shows that 63% of consumers will update their negative review or low-star rating once an owner responds to resolve their complaint.
What if I get a bad online review?
An occasional negative review is inevitable. Admittedly, they’re disappointing to see, and you can’t be blamed for wanting to get rid of it. In most cases, you probably shouldn’t try. If it’s clearly a bogus review left by a competitor to hurt you or it seems the reviewer intended the review for another business entirely, then you might seek removal.
But a legitimate negative review is an opportunity for you. First it may alert you to something you can improve about your business. and second, it gives you an opportunity to respond — and you should do that quickly. Expressing appreciation for the feedback and demonstrating a willingness to fix whatever went wrong may get the reviewer to revise their review. Even if not, it will reassure readers of your good intentions.
On the flip side, a defensive tone in a review response is likely to make things worse. So always stay positive.
Are reviews only good for search traffic?
No! They’re a great way to find out what consumers think you’re doing right and where you can improve.
That only works if you read them, of course. But you should be doing that anyway so you can respond to them.
Treating all reviews as constructive criticism is key to benefiting from them in terms of how you run your business. And when you respond with appreciation for the constructive feedback, that a less than perfectly positive review create a positive impression in anyone reading it.
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There’s no magic bullet to improving your visibility or ranking on Google. No single technique switches you from not found to dominating the search results. Google rankings depend on a combination of many things, but some are more important than others. Here are the top 10 ways you can improve your Google rankings:
Write great content
Optimize that content
Improve your authority with backlinks
Improve user experience
Use H1 and H2 heading tags
Optimize your images
Improve your page speed
Optimize for voice search
Fix technical issues
Local SEO
How to improve your Google rankings: the details
A list of items to address is fine, but what do all those things mean? And how do you do them? Let’s explore them here.
1. Write great content
Each page or blog post on your website has a goal of encouraging the reader to take an action. That might be to buy a product, to call to ask questions, to subscribe to your newsletter, or something else.
But each user comes to your page or blog post with their own intent. They may be looking for an explanation of something, do-it-yourself instructions, or to see if you sell something or offer a service they need. Failure to address that user intent will reduce your conversions and hurt your search rankings.
Your content needs to be laser-focused on pretty much a single concept. if you try to cover too many things on one page, that page will not be “all about” any of them.
Speaking of focus, it’s important to concentrate on benefits rather than features. A page that describes all of the features of your product or service is not nearly as effective a marketing tool as a page that describes the benefits your reader will derive from it. Here’s a handy tool to help you understand how customer-focused your content is.
Helpful and informative content that is too difficult to read won’t accomplish its goal. It’ll drive visitors away. Be careful to make sure your reading level is no higher than the 8th-grade level. That doesn’t mean you need to dumb it down. But try not to use too many long, multi-syllabic words. Keep your sentences relatively short (fewer than 20 words). And break up your paragraphs to avoid using the impression that your content is too dense.
Keywords potential customers search with need to be the focus of your content.
2. Optimize that content
If you’re writing material you want to show up in searches, you need to think about how people will search for it. Those search phrases are keywords, and your article needs to maintain a focus on those keywords throughout.
You want to have your keyword phrases (or close variations on them) in headings and subheadings, in paragraph text, in link text, and even in image filenames and alternate text.
It can be a powerful technique to link to other resources within your website to expand on what you’re writing about. Search engines also recognize outbound links to authoritative material as providing additional value to your readers. That can help improve your Google rankings.
Continued growth in backlinks shows that people continue to find your information useful.
Your website’s authority, based on the number and quality of links from other websites, is a critical ranking factor at Google. Inbound links need to be both authoritative and relevant to your site or web page.
If you’re a local or service-area business, local links have high relevance, even if they’re from businesses quite different from yours. And citations which list your NAP (name, address, and phone) — and often a link — on local search engines, directories, maps, and mobile apps can help improve your Google rankings in local searches. We offer affordable local search citation management services to our clients.
Google released a major algorithm change last year, called the Page Experience update. If users find your website annoying, not only will they leave quickly but it will also reduce your rankings.
Your website needs to be responsive to the device looking at your site, often referred to as being mobile-friendly. That relates not just to the appearance and usability of your site on a phone, but also to the download speed (phones tend to be slower than desktop computers).
Sufficient white space makes your content more approachable and less intimidating than a very dense-looking page. Avoid the TL:DR syndrome. You can also include images with text wrapping around them to make the page appear less dense. Avoid annoying popups that obliterate content or delay the loading of a page. Do whatever you can to make your page friendly and easy to read
5. Use heading tags
Employ subheadings because people tend not to read web pages, but scan them. Subheadings help the reader find and focus their attention on what they need. Identify them as headings or subheadings with heading tags in the code so search engines understand what they are. Words enclosed in heading tags are considered more important by search engines.
6. Optimize images
Images on your pages can be optimized for both speed and keyword placement to improve your Google rankings.
To make sure your images download as quickly as possible, make sure to size them properly before uploading them to your web page. If you upload an image larger than you want it to appear on the page, all of the pixels of that larger image need to download before the browser can shrink it down to size. And all that takes time. Shrinking your images before you upload them can very significantly reduce the number of pixels to download, speeding up your page display.
To optimize your images for keyword phrases, there are a few places to do that.
Use a keyword in the file name of the image. A file name of blue-widgets.jpg is much more helpful to search engines than the file name of IMG418.jpg. If you have multiple words in your file name, separate them with hyphens rather than underscore characters. That’s because search engines understand hyphens (but not necessarily underscores) as separating words.
Describe the image in the alternate text, including a keyword phrase for the page can.
If the image is clickable and links to someplace else, you should give it a title tag. When the user hovers their mouse above the image, the title tag will pop up in a small text box to tell the user where it will send them when they click. You can put keyword phrases in here, too.
7. Improve page speed
Faster pages provide better page experience, which helps your rankings.
Page speed has been getting more attention since the Google Page Experience update in the summer of 2021. How quickly your pages download into a browser translates into a better or worse customer experience. And that’s directly related to how many customers stay on your page waiting for it to load, as opposed to returning to the Google search results and finding someone else.
If most visitors to your website come from their mobile devices (you can find that out in your Google Analytics) then your mobile speed may be more important than your desktop speed. Sadly, mobile download speed is seldom as quick as desktop speed.
Google is looking very carefully at what it refers to as Core Web Vitals. They relate to page speed, ease of interaction, and the visual stability of the page. These can get pretty technical, and most readers will want to defer to their web designer or web programmer for dealing with them.
8. Optimize for voice search
Mobile phones now constitute more than 60% of all searches. And the majority of those mobile searches are done by voice through Google or Siri rather than keyboarding.
Voice searches tend to be different from typed searches. For one thing, they tend to be longer and more conversational. Your web content needs to adapt accordingly.
Technical issues on your site can cause problems for your visitors, but more often they interfere with search engines crawling and indexing your website. And if they can’t crawl or index your site, you can’t show up in search results. Here are a few things that can cause you trouble. Fixing them can improve your Google rankings.
Broken links are those that result in a “404 Page Not Found” error. those may be links to discontinued pages on your website or to pages on an external site that have been changed, moved, or deleted. An occasional broken link is pretty normal, but if your website has too many of them that can be a problem.
Server errors occur when the web hosting server is unable to display the requested page. When monitoring tools are reporting server errors that you can’t replicate manually, that usually means there’s nothing wrong with your website. Instead, the web server was too slow. Shared web servers can have many websites on them, and if they’re overloaded they can slow down or be unable to deliver a web page. If that’s happening to you, it’s time to ask your web hosting company to move you to a less crowded or faster server. If that doesn’t work, you may need to change your web hosting provider.
When a page moves to a new URL or is deleted, it’s important to properly redirect that URL to its new location or the closest matching page on your site. Redirect chains occur when page A has been redirected the page B, but then page B redirects to another page C. These can slow down search engine spiders and cause some pages on your website to be overlooked.
Duplicate content can get you filtered out of search results.
If the search engines think that multiple pages on your website contain essentially duplicate content, some of those pages are unlikely to show up in search results. Pages that have relatively thin content often trigger the duplicate content flag. These are pages where the unique content on the page is relatively small compared to all of the common content that exists on many pages (headers, footers, logos, and so forth). The remedy for that is to expand the content on those pages so they are clearly different from one another.
Page titles and meta tag issues are quite common. Duplicate page titles and meta description tags interfere with one another in search engine indexing. Missing page titles and descriptions are probably even worse. We also see page titles and descriptions that are either too short to be effective or too long. It’s good to have a tool that can monitor your website and alert you to any of these conditions. We use Moz to detect and report on these for our clients.
10. Local SEO (if appropriate)
If your business has a brick-and-mortar location or serves customers in a geographical area, you’ll benefit from Local SEO. eCommerce sites or those that serve customers nationwide may not need it.
If you do need local SEO, here are the main items that need your attention.
On-page mentions of your service area, whether it’s a whole state, counties, or cities and towns. A separate page itemizing your service area is not very effective in helping your other pages show up in local searches.
A robust Google Business Profile is essential. And when you create it, fill out as much information about your business as it allows.
Structured data markup in accordance with schema.org should be in place on every page with at least your NAP. Expanding it with business hours and other information about your pages helps as well.
Citations are mentions of your business with your NAP and other information. You need to be widely listed on many sites across the web with consistent information about your business. The more local search engines, directories, maps, and mobile apps that list you, the better – as long as the information on them is consistent across the board. You can check how well your citations are doing with our free citation scan.
Local PR is another excellent tool to cement your local presence. If you sponsor local activities and support local charities they may have the opportunity to mention that online. It’s also helpful if your business can receive a mention in a local newspaper article or hyperlocal news website story. And of course if these mentions can include a link back to your website, that’s just icing on the cake.
Final thoughts
If you’re lucky, you may only need to work on a few of the above areas. I encourage you to evaluate your website in each of those areas and focus your attention on the ones most in need of improvement.
As a small business owner, you don’t have to let big business walk all over you. Take advantage of SEO.
Small businesses make up over 99% of the business sector in the United States. Due to the intense competition associated with this statistic, the chances of businesses making it past the one-year mark are very slim if they don’t utilize online marketing and advertising. Even if your customer base is purely local, those current and potential customers rely on online information that either includes you in their customer journey or rules you out in just a few seconds. From making decisions on where to eat for dinner, where to get their dog groomed, or what yoga studio to join, a single Google search can make or break your business. When compounded over time, failure to catch the eye of these potential customers can seriously impact your bottom line, especially if your site is not located on the first page of search engine result pages (SERPs).
If you run a relatively new company, or if you’re in the process of starting one and want to make sure you are set up for success at the start, it’s important to understand why SEO is important for your small business. Keep reading to get an idea of the basics of small business SEO and how it can help you grow your business.
What Is SEO?
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the process of creating digital content or web pages that are easily found by search engines as they crawl for keywords within the content. They then match these keywords with searches made by their users. Not only does this have to be an accurate match to the user’s query, but it has to be a relevant one. Search engines like Google pride themselves in weeding out low-quality content that users don’t want to see; which means what we might consider little things like old content or poor spelling could be keeping your site from ranking! There are many (admittedly confusing!) ranking factors that go into the special SEO sauce Google likes and rewards sites for implementing by giving them higher SERP ratings.
In the past — and even now — keywords have been a huge focus in SEO practice. Still, it’s become apparent in recent years that Google places a higher value on the reader’s experience after clicking “search” over the keywords found in a piece of content. Make sure every piece you and your team produce, whether it’s a blog post, a landing page, or a product description, is high-quality. Here are some SEO practices that Google “likes”:
Original Content. This seems like a no-brainer, but if they find something that matches word for word on another site, they will pick up on the fact that you’ve either intentionally or unintentionally plagiarized someone else’s content.
Quality connections to other sites via link-building. By obtaining backlinks, you can increase your authority as Google sees other sites referring to your page as a valuable resource.
Quick load. If a site isn’t providing users with a pleasant experience, no one will want to visit it, and Google won’t recommend it!
Keywords are seamlessly included in the content that is purely there to help answer a user’s query. No keyword stuffing!
It’s important to provide the most relevant and comprehensive answer to a question or solution to a problem that your customer is looking for. By consistently producing high-quality content, your site can stand out from the competition both on SERPs and in the customer’s search journey.
Simply put, a business must focus on SEO optimization because competitors are already doing so — and they will continue to do so. In the past, brick-and-mortar locations relied on word-of-mouth, print ads, radio spots, or even local TV commercials to make up the bulk of their advertising. These methods worked because they were meeting their customers where they were. Years ago, potential customers could be reached while they were reading a paper, listening to local radio, or watching local TV; but these marketing methods are fading into the background as most people access all the information and entertainment they want online via websites, podcasts, and social media.
Local SEO brings customers right to your door.
Focusing on SEO helps you meet your customers where they are now. Start by running a competitor analysis to shed light on competitors you were previously unaware of. These businesses either are or could in the future direct potential customers away from your website before they even find the address where you do business! By putting local search optimization in place as you start, you can find gaps where you might want to gather and include reviews, include consistent business hours, offer more robust product and service descriptions, and more! Keeping all of this up-to-date ensures customers see you as a desirable option versus a site that hasn’t been updated in months with out-of-date photos or old reviews.
What Can It Do For Me?
Name a struggle your business currently faces, and you’ll probably find a solution that SEO brings to the table! If your business is new and doesn’t have the credibility other competitors have, putting the work into SEO can yield results over time. You’ll build not only your site’s visibility on SERPs, but also in comparison to other businesses as you surpass them in rankings.
As your rankings improve, your traffic and engagement will increase as well, resulting in a higher conversion rate (the percentage of people who take the desired action, whether that be making a purchase or subscribing to a service). In general, SEO helps your business not only survive but grow over time, whereas other (paid) marketing methods may only yield temporary results.
How Do I Get It?
SEO is probably not as expensive as you fear.
We know it’s hard for small business owners to make sure no aspect of their business gets neglected, but it happens. Either time or budget limitations can limit or even cut SEO from the day-to-day operations of a company. However, ignoring SEO optimization can seriously hinder your business from thriving. If your budget is tight but you have some time to devote to learning and implementing new tactics, look into using a free program, or purchasing an SEO tool that does the heavy lifting for you.
Often, small businesses find themselves in a situation where they’re not able to hire someone full-time but want to bring a professional in to set things up and enable easy maintenance of their SEO campaigns themselves later on. Budgets can limit how long a consultant works on your site, thus limiting the effectiveness of your SEO optimization. To keep cash on hand, consider applying for a small business loan, or a business line of credit that provides the means for hiring SEO professionals for the scope of work you need.
An attractive aspect of SEO is that the upfront investment in hiring, setup, and maintenance isn’t as costly as paid advertising that may or may not work. SEO plays the long game by gaining traffic and visibility organically; which means what’s put in place today can yield results months or even years in the future as you maintain your site and continue to put out great content and resources.
What Can I Expect?
Once you optimize your site with SEO, results can continue to grow for years.
Set your expectations appropriately. SEO isn’t a quick fix or band-aid to immediately stop the loss of customers when a competitor shows up. If your business is just starting out, devote a sizable portion of your budget to a related company role, or tools for SEO. Positive outcomes from your SEO practices may not show up as quickly as you want them to, but they are much more sustainable than purchasing hundreds of ads on one platform.
Find an SEO checklist and work on it with your consultant or designated in-house digital marketing personnel to ensure you set things up correctly at the beginning and keep everyone on the same page. We cannot stress enough that giving things the appropriate amount of time to yield results is crucial when measuring the success of implementing or re-working your SEO methods. Many business owners get frustrated when they don’t see exponential growth within a few weeks of starting their practices and assume their SEO teams are doing things wrong. This assumption is often very far from the truth! When in doubt, keep the lines of communication open, and adjust your expectations according to the information your teams provide.
Don’t Wait!
Your small business can greatly benefit from SEO implementation by creating high-caliber content, optimizing your site for local searches, and seeking to be a resource for customers – both in person and online. It takes time and dedication, but you will see measurable success over time that can ensure your small business is around for years to come.
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Where you show up in Google search results is determined by an algorithm that evaluates many characteristics of your website. Those characteristics, or ranking factors — both positive and negative — affect how visible you will be in search results.
Google’s ranking algorithm is reported to contain more than 200 SEO ranking factors, each with its own weight or level of importance.
Nobody knows all of the Google ranking factors, but experience gives us a really good sense of which are the most important.
Categories of Google ranking factors
There are three groups of ranking factors that are important to understand.
Technical ranking factors tend to be mostly managed by your web designer. They have to do with your website’s level of performance and what I refer to as Google-friendliness. These are typically site-wide factors rather than factors relating to individual pages on your site.
On-page ranking factors are typically controlled by you and relate directly to the content of your web pages and keyword optimization.
Off-page ranking factors are things you have somewhat less control over because they’re not on your website. These typically relate to your authority or importance on the web, based largely on backlinks.
Here is what I considered to be the top 10 positive Google ranking factors today. This list isn’t in any kind of priority order for a couple of reasons. First, it would be pretentious to claim that I know which of these factors are more important than which others. Secondly, good SEO is a function of many small techniques that support each other. No one of them is critically essential to good rankings — it’s the sum total of all of them that matters.
Mobile phones now account for more than half of all searches done. As a result, it’s essential that your website be mobile-friendly. I typically recommend ensuring your website is “responsive” which means that its display varies depending upon the device connecting to your site. That ensures that the same information is available regardless of the platform your visitor may be using.
2) Security (SSL and HTTPS)
Whether or not your website is secure is a ranking factor at Google. Beyond that, many browsers will show a “Not Secure” warning in the address bar when someone arrives on your website. Some website plug-ins actually display a warning page instead of the page on your site, encouraging people not to visit your site. Many people mistake the “not secure” warning as meeting your website is dangerous or may load viruses on your computer. The result is a certain portion of the people trying to visit your site abandoning it, costing you business.
To be secure you need to arrange to have an SSL certificate and your URL needs to begin with HTTPS instead of the insecure HTTP.
High-quality content is essential. It has a big effect on whether people stay to read it or bounce away (which Google sees as a negative ranking factor. Readability is a critical part of quality content. Another is customer focus; it’s important to focus on what’s in it for your reader/customer. That means focusing on benefits to the customer rather than features of your product or service.
Keyword relevance is also essential here. Your page has to show search engines that it’s all about your target keywords. That means having your keywords and related words and phrases in your content enough to make sure Google easily understands what your page is all about. But avoid keyword stuffing as that detracts from the quality of your content.
5) Headings and meta tags
Having keywords in headings and sub-headings gives them some extra weight with search engines and helps readers navigate your content efficiently. For that to happen, they need to be coded within heading tags to search engines can tell they’re headings.
While meta tags are not visible on the page, two items in the HTML code of your page are very important: the page title and the description tag. The page title isn’t a heading on your page, but it acts as the headline for your listing in all search engines. So it’s a critical place to include your keywords. Google says keywords in your meta description tag don’t influence your ranking, but since this description often ends up in your search listings it has a direct impact on how likely a searcher is to click on your listing.
6) Image keyword optimization
Every image on your page provides two or three places to put your keyword phrases in front of the search engines without keyword stuffing your text content.
The image filename is most obvious. An image filename of img183572x6.jpg tells Google nothing. But one that’s got a keyword in it (like nj-real-estate-lawyer.jpg) can really help.
Alternate text is text describing the image for visually impaired visitors who have their computers read the page out loud. It’s a great place to show your keywords to Google.
And if an image acts as a clickable link to someplace else, a title attribute generates a little text box that pops up when the user hovers their mouse over the image. It’s meant to tell the user what’s at the other end of the link if they click it, and is another place you may be able to use a keyword.
7) URL structure
Your URL structure helps you in three ways.
It improves the user experience of your listings in Google:
Links can sometimes serve as their own clickable text of a link.
Here’s an example from Moz:
8) Schema code
Schema markup is a common short term for structured data, named after Schema.org, the website for structured data markup. It’s sometimes called structured data markup and it tells the search engines exactly what kind of information is on your website. It’s totally in the HTML code behind your website and doesn’t affect what visitors see on your site. If you’re a local service area business, it can be especially helpful to identify your location and service area for local searches.
You can easily check out your own schema code in this schema code validator. If it shows you don’t have schema code, it’s time to fix that.
Page and Domain Authority strongly impact your rankings. These are metrics developed by the folks at Moz that attempt to predict how well a given website will show up in search results. It’s based largely on the number and quality of other websites that link to you and is designed to correlate with Google’s internal PageRank scoring.
10) Local prominence
Prominence refers to how widely across the web you’re listed with a correct and consistent NAP (name, address, phone). It’s particularly important for small businesses to show up in local search results and in the Google Local 3-Pack. These listings are often called citations and citation management deserves ongoing attention from small local businesses. But don’t be misled by many of the common misconceptions about citations that are floating around.
Feel free to use our free tool to check on several dozen top citation sources to see how your own prominence looks.
Bottom Line
None of these are absolutely essential. But none of them can be ignored either. Where you rank is the result of all of these things (and more). Just do your best with as many of these as you can.
How’s your experience been with these issues? What other factors do you think deserve to be included? Start a discussion below.
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