SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION TECHNIQUES- SEO RANKING FACTORS
If you google for online marketing SEO services or any search engine optimization firm, you will see that there are many expert SEO companies.
The experienced Google SEO consultants will provide you with effective SEO services.
We can also learn to be an SEO experts in due time and but at first, we need to start with some basic search engine optimization techniques.
Here are 12 SEO ranking factors that are useful SEO for bloggers and SEO for beginners.
WHAT IS SEO?
Search Engine Optimization is the process that determines the ranking and visibility of our site in search engines.
The higher the site is optimized for given keywords, the higher the chances of getting a good ranking in search engines and hence it draws more visitors.
Blogging without any visitors is really painful. I know & it is obvious that all successful bloggers will start with zero on day 1 🙂
But what can we do now? The answer is proper to search engine optimization technique.
When you search for a particular question or subject do you ever go beyond the 1st page of Google?
I am sure the answer is NO. In fact, 99% of users tend to click only on the sites which are displayed on the first pages of search engines. Getting visitors from search engines is known as Organic Traffic which contributes 70% of visitors to any particular website or webpage.
TOP SEO RANKING FACTORS
What are the factors which affect SEO?
Well, there are about 200 factors that Google takes into account for ranking a post. But to name a few it is the backlinks, keyword density, fresh content, and crawling of bots.
1. BACKLINKS
The first SEO ranking factor is having enough backlinks. Backlinks are really important for your site ranking. Backlinks define your page and domain authority.
Acquire as many backlinks as you can to get posts ranked in search engines.
Some of the easy ways to get back-links are:
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- Commenting on other high authority blogs.
- Discussing niche-related matters in forums.
- Create 16 social media backlinks for website traffic
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2. KEYWORD DENSITY
Keyword density helps us to rank our site for particular SEO phrases.
Though keyword density does not matter as much as it used to be. But proper placements of keywords are very much necessary to rank our posts.
You can find more about using proper Keyword Density here.
3. WEBSITE SPEED
Site speed is one of the factors which matters. If your loading time is huge then probably you are lagging behind a number of sites in your niche.
Loading speed also matters to retain your users as they will probably leave your page if it takes too long to load.
You can test your website speed at the Website speed test, SEO site checkup, and WebPage Test.
Tip: The first step to decreasing site loading time is to use compressed images on your post which make your web page reasonably lighter.
4. KEYWORDS IN URLS
Including the keyword in URLs is a vital step in the search engine optimization technique. A user always checks the URL keywords before clicking on the links.
You can read the Ideal setup of focus keywords with the Yoast SEO plugin. This plugin will help you to put your keywords in the proper places in your post.
Google likes URLs with hyphen separators. If you write your URL keywords at a full stretch then it will hinder the readability of your users.
NOTE: Single URL to content is always way ahead of multiple URLs pointing to the same content. If you have developed any multiple links to your content then learn to avoid the canonical issue ( Just wanted to put a bit of advanced SEO :))
5. COMPATIBILITY
We are at a stage where people surf the internet from all the mediums possible. It is not only the desktop that contributes to the highest percentage of viewers.
All the trendy technical devices contribute equally in terms of usage. It is very necessary for your site to be compatible with mobile, tab, desktop, and any other gadgets.
6. SOCIAL MEDIA PROFILES
Check how Social shares matter for search engine rankings.
Your social profile may rank in search engines. Social media these days plays a vital role as a 2/3rd population is using social networks regularly.
If you write content that people will like, share re-tweet, and Re-pin then it is likely for your profile to rank in search engines.
Check the example below.
The Pinterest profile is itself ranking in the 1st position of the Google search for ‘Birthday decoration ideas’.
7. PAGE AND DOMAIN AUTHORITY
Page and Domain authority is a concept of MOZ rank and it is a logarithmic scale score of a hundred points. You can check your site’s page and domain authority in Check Page Rank.
Domain authority is the power of your domain as a whole and Page authority is the power of a single page on your site.
Usually, your site homepage has the highest page authority as people tend to link on the homepage usually.
THE NEGATIVE SEO FACTORS
You can also affect the SEO in such a way that it starts decreasing your value in search engines. Your page rank may deteriorate sufficiently if you are not paying attention to some of the basic factors.
1. KEYWORD STUFFING
Keyword stuffing is a good search engine optimization technique but if it is overdone it will affect the SEO negatively.
Keyword density if done right then it is the strongest point for ranking but keyword stuffing including phrases with a list of words irrelevant to the content will give poor user experience as well as poor visibility of the site to search engines.
2. ADS PLACEMENT
Any standard website is likely to have no more than 3 ads on a page.
You can surely set your ads to earn more or to show relevant ads but do not make your site fussy with ads. The sites which use many ads where the content itself is so hard to find are a definite sign of negative SEO.
3. CANONICAL ISSUES
We our-self only create duplicate content by various methods. Checkhow duplicate content is formed and how to avoid them using re-direction, and canonical URLs.
When we create multiple duplicate contents for our particular blog posts then the search engine gets confused, about which to rank better and ultimately settles for the lowered page rankings of our original post.
You should select ‘preferred domain in the search console’ to tell the search engine whether to use www before your domain name.
4. SPAMMING
5. THIN CONTENT
Today is an age of excellent content so if you start writing below-average content then that will also penalize your rankings.
This is also termed as ‘thin content’ by Google Panda update in 2011 and was penalized in rankings and search visibility as they were similar to spam content and does not contribute any valuable information to its users.
BACK TO THE SEO KEY POINTS TO KEEP IN MIND
Your web page rank depends both on positive and negative factors.
Optimizing your site to rank well in search engines for a particular keyword can be rewarding. But if you stuff keywords more than required then it will have a negative effect as well.
Always be sure that your site is crawl-able before applying to any other SEO methods.
Focus on building trust with your visitors. Always provide quality content. Even if you rank higher in search engines by proper search engine optimization techniques then also you will not succeed as a blogger( a hard truth) if you cannot provide a user-friendly experience.
