Are you striving relentlessly to achieve the top slot in Google’s search results? You may achieve the highest ranking on Google’s SERP provided you understand what it entails and you know some of the important ranking factors that Google takes into account. However, Google is not in the habit of revealing the ranking factors it refers to. In fact, it is pretty secretive about it.
Unfortunately, if you do not appear on Google’s first page obviously, you are losing out on sales opportunities to your competitors. In this context, you must know that 97 percent of searchers do not even bother to click beyond the first page of Google’s results.
We know that over 3.5 million searches actually are made daily on Google which is supposed to be the organization that is known to hold more than 85 percent of the search engine market segment on the desktop.
It is quite natural for business owners to be determined about making their business get higher SERP rankings ideally in the top three organic listings. For achieving this objective, it is important to discover some of the important Google ranking factors for optimizing your site so that it is among the top rankings on Google and gets the best chance of being visible to its potential target audience. Let us unravel some of the crucial ranking factors.
CTRs or the Click-through-Rate
Google’s algorithm would be taking into consideration CTRs or click-through rates. This is calculated in terms of percentage that actually reflects the exact number of clicks that you have got from the total number of searchers online. The higher the CTR percentage, the more attractive and appealing your listing seems to be in comparison to your competition.
If your CTR is the highest, Google would be gently pushing you up the SERP because this algorithmic factor would be conveying the fact that searchers are showing a preference for your listing.
However, it is not always enough to simply consider the click-through-rate because people could generate deceptive Meta descriptions and title tags for boosting their results. So Google would also consider your bounce rate.
Domain Age
As per https://optinmonster.com , “Did you know that nearly 60% of the sites that have a top ten Google search ranking are three years old or more? Data from an Ahrefs study of two million pages suggests that very few sites less than a year old achieve that ranking. So if you’ve had your site for a while, that’s already an advantage.”
We have noticed that a majority of the websites that get a relatively higher ranking are a minimum few years old. In this context, you must understand that these older websites are having more content and backlinks since they had existed for a much longer time.
It is observed that when a fresh new website is developed, tons of related links are built, and high-quality content is added, yet the new site would fail to get much traffic until it is a few years older because age is an important determinant for Google Search Engine Optimization.
Nothing much could be done here apart from giving it some time. As your site grows older, more and more traffic would be heading to your site assuming that you are continuously trying to boost your website.
Content Quality
Ever since the Panda update, it has been possible for Google to evaluate the websites’ content quality. For instance, it could be determining if a site contains duplicate content or if it is too thin. The Panda update has been able to assist Google in performing much- improved content quality analysis as compared to before.
Google is able to spot some of the high-ranking older sites that are having tremendously high-quality content. You may not be able to understand and judge the actual quality of content but Google can as it is able to do a meticulous comparative analysis.
It goes through the content that is present on one site and goes on further to compare that content with other existing content within that space. It is, therefore, mandatory on your part to generate top-quality authentic content to stand tall among the rest and forge a way ahead of the competition.
You would be outranking all your competitors eventually if you focus your attention consistently on upgrading the overall quality of your content. You may hire the professional services of a reputed branding company for best results and a boost in your brand image and overall online presence.
Website Loading Speed
There are a few things on the internet that are more irritating than websites that take forever to load. You are also a lot less likely to want to come back to a site that loads slowly, and this is factored in by Google when ranking sites.
Load time is certainly an important factor; Google executives believe that consumers are likely to use Google less if it leads them to slow websites, which means they make less money from advertising and also lose significant market share.
As a site owner, you certainly do not want to be on the wrong side of this verdict, so some things you can do to speed things up are cleaning up your code to its simplest form without frills or bugs, picking a reliable and fast hosting provider, and finally using a global content delivery network that ensures quick load times throughout the world.
Page Speed
Page speed implies how quickly your webpage would be loading when a searcher actually clicks on it directly from the Google search result. The speed of a webpage depends on many on-page factors, however, in general, the quicker a website, the higher its chances of achieving a higher ranking on the SERP of Google.
Usually, pages which are able to load quickly even within less than 3 seconds actually are regarded as quick enough to serve their visitors and bounce rates would be substantially lower. Page speed varies as per the purpose of the overall website.
For instance, if you are running an e-commerce website, you are encouraged to really be faster and must be fully loading within just 2 seconds. Searchers must not be made to wait otherwise; they would lose both interest and patience.
Some of the chief reasons why your web page is getting bogged down could be different types of fonts and different sizes that could be slowing down your page loading speed. Moreover, the uncompressed picture contributes hugely to the slowing down of the loading process. All complex and heavy media should be eliminated to boost your page speed. You must consider compressing your pictures before you upload them on to your CMS.
Conclusion
The secret to attracting more search traffic is definitely not simply about adding more content or building more links. It is very much about having a sound understanding of Google’s algorithm. You could take your search engine optimization to the next level by understanding people or your target audience as the goal of Google is to always do the best for all customers or users.
Therefore, you could achieve higher rankings by doing what is the best thing your customers are expecting from you. You must focus on understanding consumer psyche, buying patterns, attitude, and overall lifestyle.
