There are more than 200 factors that affect where your site falls on the search results page. However there are a couple of factors that weigh heavily on your position and that you need to make sure are perfect. When creating content for your site you need to consider how users view your site along with the content of your articles. Here are 5 ranking factors that you need to pay attention to and how to make sure they are working for you.
Keywords in Your Titles
Using Google and doing online searches has evolved few people type in just one word but rather they search a phrase. You can use that phrase or part of it as your title. You still have to make sure the phrase makes sense and it is grammatically correct. This ensures that Google and other search engines see your content as relevant and what the user wants to see.
Word Count
Typically longer content is better for SEO but that doesn’t mean your content should be repetitive or filled with nonsense. You should establish in the very first paragraph what the content is about. Go into detail about the topic and answer any and all questions that a reader might have. Long content should also be broken up into smaller chunks where it can be easily scanned. Break your content up using pictures, video, headings, and lists. Your keywords should be included in the content but not overdone.
Link to Other Content
If you have a blog on your site then you should take advantage of internal linking to other content within your site. If your current posts mentions a subject that you have written about previously then link to it. It helps Google to crawl your site and helps with the user experience.
Use Heat Maps
Heat maps are tools that allow you to understand what visitors do once they hit your site. The more time that someone spends on your site the better, so you want to understand the behavior of your visitors. This helps you to make improvements to lower your bounce rate. Bounce rate is how fast someone leaves your site after landing on it. High bounce rates are a bad thing, that means once someone lands on your site they are out the door pretty quickly. You are not delivering to their expectation.
Load Time
How fast your site loads is a huge ranking factor and it’s one that you need to pay attention to. Slow sites ruin the user experience and Google will bump you further down in the rankings in favor of sites that load faster. You can easily test your site speed and get your webmaster to fix what needs to be fixed in order to get your speed up. Even a second can drastically change your conversion rates.