10 Crucial Elements To Put Into Consideration In SEO

As you might already be aware, SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It is a mechanism that is used by search engines to rank web pages on the results pages. The SEO rank is the position with which a web page takes in the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). It is the core priority of all serious content creators to have their web page appear on the first page of the results page. The advantage of having your web page appear on the first results page is that the number of clicks will most likely skyrocket increasing the popularity of your websites and revenues.

Taking your page to the top of the results page is not just a walk in the park. It is something which needs genuine hard work. It something that can take you time to achieve. Ahrefs found put that more than more than 60% of the web pages that rank on the first page of the results page are above three year of age. With proper mechanisms, you can put your website where it is supposed to be (the first page). Just make sure that during your next SEO audit, the following ten factors to focus on.

Presence of an SSL Certificate

One of the key areas which google takes a keen concern is on the privacy of the users. Google is out to do all it can to ensure that users’ privacy is strictly upheld. To google, consumer security has been a top priority.

So as to ensure for utmost security of the users, Google, in the year 2014, announced that HTTPS would be used as a ranking factor. To date, according to Searchmetrics, over 50% of the websites that are found on the first page are HTTPS websites. This shows that Google has implemented this guideline to the latter. Lack of an SSL certificate can really affect your website. The Chrome 68 version that was released in 2018 will label your website as “not secure” if your site does not have an SSL certificate. For instance if you are looking for the single security solution for the primary domain and its all level one associated subdomains then GoDaddy Wildcard SSL Certificates can be ideal choice. People care about their internet security and nobody is ready to visit a website where his security can be compromised.

If you have the intention of making your web page rank highly on search engines results page, then you simply have to buy an SSL certificate. Operating on HTTP websites will simply compromise the security of your clients as well as your own security while putting your google ranking in jeopardy. So do not sit back and wait, simply switch your websites from HTTP to HTTPS and see yourself reap big from the fruits of being on the first page.

The speed of your website

The loading speed of a website has been used a very critical ranking factor for years. As already pointed out earlier, one of the vital objectives of google is to improve the users’ experience and to ensure that web page visitors are fully satisfied. Slow websites make users dissatisfied and bored thereby hurting your site rank. High loading speeds will ensure that a user is fully satisfied. This is what google is looking for and it will rank your website even higher. It is your sole responsibility to improve your sight speeds. There are several things which you can do to ensure for this. You can compress the images and the codes, upgrade your hosting and implement a Content Delivery Network. Doing this will improve your website speeds and improve your website rankings.

Presence of Social Signals

There is a very strong link between social media presence and SEO ranking. When your content is highly shared via social media platforms, then you are winning the race of google ranking. It is a fact that the highest ranking pages on the internet today are those that have had frequent hares via social media platforms. More social media shares will usually attract more traffic to the website. Your content is also more likely to build backlinks which are important when it comes to site rankings. So if you are out to improve your site rankings on search engines, then it about time you started thinking about having a social media presence where you can share your content and attract more traffic.

Mobile Friendliness

Mobile friendliness, simply defined, is how a website will behave or operate when it is viewed via a mobile device. Websites that are mobile friendly will provide an excellent user experience by making use of a responsive design which makes the content flexible enough make a perfect fit on all the screens.

There has been a surge in the use of mobile devices. A recent survey carried out by Statista shows that over 52.2% of all internet traffic originated from mobile devices. It is therefore you responsibility to do all it takes so as to have a share of this traffic. To do so, you need a mobile friendly website.

In order to establish if your website is responsive, you can use the Google Mobile-Friendly Test. All you need to do is to submit the URL of your website and then wait for a report on any issues with the mobile version of your website.

The Quality of the Content

Another factor that you should check in an SEO audit is the quality of the content of your websites. A quality content will boost the rank of your website on search engines.

The quality of the content has often been used as one of the most vital SEO factors. Google and other search engines will always want to give the best to website visitors. They will hence give key priority to those websites which have a well written, in-depth and mistake free content.

Let it be your priority to create an appealing content that has little mistakes. A content with spelling mistakes, poor punctuations and grammar will most probably cost your search engine rankings. You do not want this to happen and that is why you should always endeavour to come up with quality work, proofread and edit before finally publishing it. Hiring an editor or proof-reader   could be also a good choice for you.

The choice of key Words

It is not just about content creation. First you must come up with a quality content. Then you should perform a research on the most appropriate keywords which you should include in your content. Doing a good research on the most appropriate keywords will enable you to come up with the right keywords with the ability to drive traffic on your website. while doing the keyword research, ensure that you target long tail keywords which are those with three or more words. Another important tip which you should understand is that, key words should be as natural as possible. Do not force them to fit, just have them occur naturally in your content. Having the right key words as well as having them fit naturally can drive a lot of traffic on your website and improve your rankings on search engine results pages.

The Domain age

Data from Ahrefs show that 60% of the websites that are on the first page of the google results page are three years old or more. While age of the website is not something you can change, it can greatly affect the ranking of your website. Therefore, if your website has been existing for a while and you have put in place in all the essential SEO factors, then you are much ahead for as far as google ranking is concerned.

User engagement

One important and key factor that search engines use to rank websites is the user engagement factor. Search engines will put into great considerations how users interact with websites and then determine which page is better to searchers. Google users an artificial intelligent tool called the RankBrain to consider the user interaction with different websites. Some of the user engagement factors that google looks at include:

• Time on Site- this is the amount of time that a web visitor spends on a page after finding the page via search.
• Click through rate- this is the portion of the searchers who end up clicking on a the search engine result after the result has been presented to them.
• Bounce rate- this is the rate at which people leave a site after clicking on the site.

This factors put together, will help search engines to determine how valuable the content of a website is to searchers. It is the sole responsibility of content creators to make their content as engaging as possible. To do this, website owners should invest in quality website designs and use internal links to help in user navigation.

The backlink profile

Quality backlinks are another vital SEO factors that you should asses during your SEO audit. Backlinks re usually indicators that a website is credible and legitimate. The number of quality backlinks hat point to your website is a very crucial on page SEO factor that can greatly influence your search rankings. If you want your website to rank, then you need a strategy that builds quality backlinks to your website. You can do this through guest posting and link acquisition.

 

Content Optimization

To improve your search engine rankings, you also need to put into consideration several on-page SEO factors. On-page SEO is done by optimizing every page that is found on your website for target keywords. Ensure that you assign a unique keyword for every page. You can use an on-page SEO checklist tool to optimize your website. An on-page SEO checker can be used to ensure that you did not miss out on any optimization opportunity.

 

Conclusion

There are a lot of benefits that your website will amass by being on the first page of the search engine results page. You are sure of maximum traffic that can lead to high conversion rates and high revenues. It is the objective of every website owner to be on the first page. To achieve this, there are several key considerations which you must be able to put in place. This article has explained some of the 10 factors which you must consider during your next SEO audit so as to improve your search engine rakings.