Welcome to the monogamous virtual world of search engine created by Google (with respect to Microsoft, Bing and of course Facebook). In this world, Google is the major authority that will dictate its terms on its users. Those who adhere to the norms will survive (with better ranking) and those who don’t will perish (poor ranking). Changes are inevitable in this world and only those, who constantly pass this survival test, will rank higher and ahead of their competitors.
Google will constantly test your patience with several major and minor algorithm updates. From Panda to Pigeon to Penguin to the latest Mobilegeddon updates will test the overall quality of your website and if you still remain unscathed then your online visitor will become the ranking factor.
You will be constantly be deemed by Google on the basis of the impression that you just left on your click through user. From the desktop crawls to the laptops comfort and now to the smart mobile searches, your online visitor will test your rank worthiness, too. From the overall look and feel of your web pages (technical aspect) to the richness of your content in terms of user engagement (content and user experience), will majorly form the basis of your Google ranking.
Listed below are three point Google ranking factors that will be touched upon in this rather brief discussion.
1) Technical Aspect Of Ranking
How technically competent your website is, still forms one of the major ranking factor on Google. With each passing year, there is an increase in the search volumes of the domain names. Popular brands often rank higher on the basis of their visibility factor, brand searches, with or without extra keywords also influence the non-branded searches.
In addition to that, your domain’s SEO visibility, H1 and H2 tags, the meta description, a smart URL, which is worth thousands of keywords, website’s navigation speed and to some extent HTTPS encryption are some of the positive factors that should be considered.
Otherwise, Keyword domains used to influence the ranking as such but not so much as of now. If previous year’s stats are to be believed, under 10% of the URL’s in the top 30 included a keyword in their domain, which got down to 6% this year. Also, Flash enabled web pages was significantly lower on both mobile and desktop SERPs.
2) User Experience Is Crucial Too
The user experience is one factor that aids in the automatic surge in your online ranking. The better the user experience, the better your ranking. The click through rate, bounce rate and the time spent on a particular site are some of the most important factors that determine your ranking. For that to happen, the internal link structure of your website becomes crucial to your chances further. This year, so far there are 150 internal links within the top 10 rankings as compared to 131 last year. The same goes for optimization as well, factors such as responsive design, font size and interactive elements. Bulleted lists also influence the ranking as they feature in the second ranked sites and 40 in the top 30.
Moreover, the number of images helps the rankings whereas in the previous year, stats showed the number of video embedded sites experiencing a drop in the rankings. Google only plays video thumbnail in SERP’s with the dominance of YouTube making things only worse. According to some surveys, a large number of Ads hurt the rankings in comparison to the pages other than first two SERP spots recorded the AdSense percentage of more than 10.
3) And Content Is The King
Content is not only the king but the entire kingdom. As far as your online presence is concerned, it becomes far more important in terms of user engagement. The study of the content of top 30 ranked sites shows the word count for top 10 pages averages around 1,285, 25% higher the previous year.
According to some popular surveys, keywords have become less influential in the context of content. The survey findings confirmed the drop in the ranking towards the topmost position with the percentage of pages that have keyword to rank as an external link’s anchor as such. But keywords do play a crucial role in the internal links structure of your website.
The comprehensive study can be found here.
In conclusion, it’s all about the survival of the fittest in this virtual monogamous world of Google and if your online presence covers the above three point ranking factors then all is well. If not, you can get in touch with us at sales@ebrandz.com or Call 1-888-545-0616 (Toll Free). And, do not forget to ask for a FREE SEO Analysis of your website.
