- Making sure your Title Tags contain relevant keywords to let Google know what the page is about.
- Understanding the need to link your website pages with the target keywords you want to rank for. Internal Links will aid your rankings.
- Knowing website size matters. The bigger the website, the more pages it has, so the more keyword phrases it will rank for.
- Keeping the site content fresh. No new information means fewer repeat visits.
- More people link to websites with good content, therefore rankings improve. But quality of content does not appear to directly affect rankings, only your reputation.
Other on-page SEO factors are ensuring you use your keywords in headings, in domain names, in the URL, and using Image Alt Tags, Meta Description Tags and considering site age.
2) Off-Page SEO Ranking Factors (optimisations – mainly link building- you make on OTHER websites to assist your rankings):
- The more links back to your site, the more popular your links are. High ranking sites have numerous links coming back to them.
- A high PageRank of the link pointing to your website affects how much that link assists your rankings.
- What links say in them affects the rankings for those keywords. If your link says ‘click here’ you will receive only the link quality not the link reputation.
- Incoming links from high quality content are worth more than links from low quality content.
- Google is incorporating the theme of incoming links into their Algorithm, so get as many links from related websites as you can.
3) Negative SEO Ranking Factors
To sustain good rankings, avoid the following:
- Duplicate content. Ensure all pages have original wording and avoid any duplication on different pages on your website.
- Don’t try to hide text links on your site – the search engines are skilled at picking these up and penalties apply.
- If your website shuts down regularly or is constantly unavailable, Google will penalise. A slow server response rate also affects your rankings.
- Don’t link to low quality sites. Link only to high quality sites.
- Ensure you change the Title Tags for each page to avoid duplicate content.
- Don’t load keywords into your pages.
- Link Exchanges will only affect rankings if they are from high authority websites.
- Beware website hackers -ensure the highest level of website security at all times.
In short, your SEO strategy is to ensure all on-page SEO factors are implemented correctly and any negative factors removed. This means your website has the best possible chance of ranking on Google. Now stay in front and plan and implement a solid strategy to ensure your site is thoroughly search engine friendly.