Top 10 SEO ranking Signals

Any SEO strategy must take into account these Top 10 SEO ranking Signals. This is what the search Engines especially Google, are looking for when they decide how to rank your website in the Organic Search results.

1. Backlinks:

Having backlinks from other websites is considered a good thing if the links are from websites that are not blacklisted. Another part of this linking process is that the backlinks must be from diverse sources. If your website has 10 links from one website it will not rank as highly if your website had instead 10 links from 10 different websites. You can check your backlinks and your competitor’s backlinks with this website ahrefs.com

2. Domain level linking:

This measures that number of domains that link to your domain using your main Keywords. This tells the search Engines what your website is really about. For Example: A website like Marketing1on1.com is about Internet marketing. The Search Engines know that it is not about recipes or gardening. This is because of the vast number of other related websites that use Internet marketing terms to backlink to this blog.

3. Domain level keyword usage:

Your Domain has your Keyword in the name. It could also have a partial match in the name. This is among the other factors that help determine what topic your website is based on. The main page of your website must also have many related keywords that let the Search Engine spiders’ go deeper into your website. So when your Domain name and your main page keywords all point to the same topic, then the Search Engines know what your site is about.

4. Page level linking and Page level Keywords:

Further within your website, your pages or blog posts must also have related keywords to the theme of your topic. So if your Page is about generating Traffic to a website using SEO, then other related keywords would be within SEO methods like ‘blogging’, ‘using Tags’, ‘Writing content‘ and more. And each of these keywords would further link to other pages within your website that are on that topic.

5. Content:

Your website must have focused content. Your blog or website cannot be about internet marketing and also talk about cooking. These would be two different niches. The search Engines would discount your website if it is not focused enough. This would be different if your website is a top one like CNN or BBC or other News site which can have diverse topics and still rank. If your website is small or medium then it needs to focus on having articles or Pages on just one topic.

6. Engagement:

This is something the Search Engines look for. This means that they want to know how much time people spend on your website. How many pages do they visit? How long do they spend reading or engaging with your content? You can see this on Google Analytics. analytics.google.com

7. Page level social metrics:

This is based on Engagement. If people spend time on your website this means that they find something that is interesting to them. And if they like what you have put up, then they will want to share it. So your website must have Social Share buttons to help people Share your Pages. When the Search Engines see that your page has many Social Shares then this boosts your page’s Ranking.

8. HTTPS:

Google has now given a slight boost to websites that have the Https instead of http. This is because many of the spammy websites don’t want to spend a few dollars more to get the Https added to their domain names. These websites have low level content that is a waste of the user’s time. So if you secure your website with an Https before your address then your website has more of a chance of ranking higher.

9. Images:

If you use an image on a webpage then that particular page will rank slightly higher than the one without an image. You can also use the Alt Tags for the Image and use your Keywords within this to boost this in the Image Search. Writing a description below the image and also adding a link to the image increases engagement.

10. Site Speed:

Since mobile is now the dominant way people surf the web, Search Engines are giving importance to websites that load fast. You can check you page speed here: developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/
Many people no longer want to wait more than three seconds for the website to load. They want Desktop and mobile to load fast. So you can use a theme that is Responsive. Or you can have a separate site only for mobile users.

So these are the Top 10 SEO ranking Signals. All of these help the Search Engines know that people trust your website.