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Top 10 Google Search Engine Ranking Factors

Here are top 10 factors that lead to a better ranking, not listed in any order of priority or importance. Web admins and site owners tend to worry about a site’s Google ranking more than anymore else’s. They have reasons to worry so. Google’s ranking factors depend on a number of steps, of which pagerank is just one of them. A Pagerank is the importance that Google gives for a particular page.

The key to using keywords

Much of search engine optimization takes place while writing content or just before publishing it. Keywords are important, even if many have begun to feel they aren’t quite so. To begin with, a title’s keywords must match the content and search terms. Keywords need to be used in the content as well, but sparingly. Keywords help Google’s spiders to understand what your content is all about.

It is all about linking

There are certain off-page ranking factors which every web-admin must consider. It is well known by now that backlinks from trustworthy or authority sites are important to boost a site’s SEO rank. One can always include quality inbound links to other sites, as that is favoured by Google as well. Linking to information ad well established sites is paramount.

Internal linking

One could also link to other websites that you may own, if the content is relevant. Internal linking helps to drive traffic to previous posts even if they are old.

Importance of social signals

The Internet has become social, and a site’s importance depends on how much it shared, liked or endorsed by those who visit it.

Clean URLs

The URL structure must be clean, and should not be clogged with symbols, numbers and meaningless alphabets. For this, one would have to change the URL slug in the permalink.

Using and not using SEO tools

While it is not a great idea to use tools that claim to help improve ranking, there are a few good tools that make descriptions and titles appear in a clean way when one shares links on Facebook, or when they appear in search results.

Importance of meta data

Meta descriptions, meta titles and meta keyword tags allow readers to identify the kind of content that a link might lead them towards. It also helps search engines like Google to identify what the site is all about and direct users to the webpage based on their queries.

Error free and clean webpages that load fast

Flash and JavaScript aren’t particularly SEO friendly, and using HTML5 may always be more search optimized than using the former two. At the end of the day, great content that makes visitors keep coming back to your site is what is most important. HTML5 loads faster and is more search engine friendly than flash.

Content quality

To ensure that there are no plagiarized bits of text in your content, you can use a plagiarism detector after writing out the draft. Using these types of tools can be helpful to spot any type of accidental plagiarism that may have come in your writing.

One must write for human readers, and not search engine robots. Rewriting, plagiarizing or not contributing anything new can affect a webpage negatively.

Publishing frequency

It is also important to publish regularly. Web crawlers and spiders visit pages more often when content is published in regular intervals.