Since 2006, people have snarled to cram the dark arts of SEO, which includes keyword stuffing, spammy backlink building, meta tags and much more.
Thankfully, those days are over.
A remarkable surprise came in the form of Google’s Panda and Penguin updates which significantly changed the game for black-hat Google SEO artists and overhauled Google’s official SEO Starter Guide.
So, how do you rank on Google?
The primary step involves making your site indexable and crawlable. To do so, you need to ask yourself a few questions.
- Is my website popular?
- Is my website content relevant?
- Is my content fast and easy to access on all devices?
- Is my website secure?
- Is my local business showing up on Google?
Let us look at these questions individually.
Is My Website Popular?
How popular is your website? Is it generating traffic? Are your competitors or other websites talking about you?
If your websites is popular, it will rank higher in the listings. This is essentially the case with Google. If your website attracts links and social shares, it means your website is offering high-quality content that is liked by the users.
There are a plenty of online tools to check the number of backlinks you have received as well as the number of referring domains. If the number is less, it is easy to deduce that your website isn’t much popular among the users.
Is My Website Content Relevant?
Determine how relevant your website content is. Make sure all the images on your website are related to the theme and feature relevant filenames and tags. Ensure all the titles, meta tags and keywords are pertinent and applicable.
All these points are extremely crucial. If the content is not relevant to what your users are looking for, it won’t appear in the search results. The aim is to allure the users by offering superior content and make them stick through.
Is My Content Fast and Easy to Access on all Devices?
The speed of your website does not only affect your rankings but also regulates the user experience.
Even a second’s delay in loading time can result in 7% reduced conversion rates.
There are innumerable tools online to check the speed of your website. These tools will help you in determining your website’s:
- Load time
- Page size
- Performance score
- The number of requests to completely load all contents
In most cases, site’s speed performance is associated with problems like progressive rendering, lack of browser caching, HTTP compression, etc.
You can find out more about these problems by reading Google’s PageSpeed Insight rules.
Is My Website Secure?
A few years back, Google added the use of SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) to their list of ranking factors. SSL is basically the standard security technology used for establishing an encrypted link between the browser and the web server. Every top SEO company deploys SSL to certify the security of the website.
SSL greatly boosts your rankings. Make sure to use it in your website, especially if you deal with online payments.
Is My Local Business Showing Up On Google?
This is applicable only if you have a local business.
Local SEO works differently than non-local SEO. Although both need appropriate optimizations and backlinks to rank higher in the search engines, the prime difference is local business websites also require citations.
Also known as NAP, citations are like online references to your business’s name, contact number and address. Google uses NAP settings to evaluate the online authority of your business.
In case you cannot locate your business on Google, you need to list your company with Google My Business. Here, you need to add your company’s basic information such as business name, location, type of business, contact number, operating hours, etc. This process will further help you toget your company registered with Google Maps.
What’s More?
Apart from these, there are several other factors as well that affects Google SEO rankings. One such thing is the website’s architecture. A smart and simple design, optimized for various devices greatly affects the user’s journey on the website and in turn, the search engine rankings.
Websites offering a great experience to the users by offering quality content in the least possible time are much more likely to rank higher on Google results.
You can consult the services of a top SEO company to improve your Google SEO rankings. A reputed company will offer excellent technical advice on website development, content marketing as well as development of your website structure.