The World’s Most Popular Search Engine And How It Conducts Its Business
Do you have a similar scenario above? Are your Organic and Paid Traffic are stuck or getting low over time while your cost is getting high? bad ROI right?
Google is the world’s most popular search engine and it has a lot of ranking factors that it uses to rank websites. Google ranks websites based on their relevance, authority, and popularity. which is a lot different than the other search engines.
Google uses the number of links that websites have, how many people clicked on the links, how long it took people to click on all those links, and their page speed.
The more links that a website has the better chance it will rank on Google.
In addition, Google also ranks websites based on how relevant they are to the visitor’s search and what other websites like them have ranked for.
For example, So if somebody searches for “The Best Vegan Food in Chicago” then a website ranking for the best vegan restaurants in Chicago would rank higher on Google than a website not ranking for any of those terms.
According to Google, “the number and quality of links that back to the site, page speed and how long it takes someone to click on all the pages of your site.”
The more links that are pointing towards your website from other websites you will have a better chance of being ranked.
Google also states that “a good link should be one that’s in your own niche, goes to a page you control, and is from a site within the same domain as your website”.
Google’s rankings are a science grounded by set of theories, or guidelines known as ranking factors. Ranking factor categories reflect what types of qualities Google promises that it will consider in its algorithm.
The ranking factor categories are currently categorized into nine types (Google Ranking Factors 2022):
- Domain Factors
- Page-Level Factors
- Site-Level Factors
- Backlink Factors
- User Interaction
- Special Google Algorithm Rules
- Brand Signals
- On-Site Webspam Factors
- Off-Site Webspam Factors.
And we will only tackle some of these, as we call them Key Google Ranking Factors in ranking your website and pages.
Critical Google Ranking Factors That Drive Traffic
Number of referring domains
The number of referring domains is one of the most important ranking factors for Google. It is also an important metric to measure the popularity and authority of a website. .It is calculated by multiplying the number of referring sites by their rank. For example, if a certain website was found on 10,000 referring domains and it had the ranking of 8th, then that website would be ranked in 8th place for popularity and authority. The total number of all websites linked to a domain is called “backlink count”. The backlink count is an important metric for measuring popularity and authority. The number of websites linking back to a domain tells you how much activity there is on the internet about that site. It measures the popularity of a website and shows how many other sites link back to it. The higher the backlink count, the more important or influential it is.
Anchor Text
Exact-match
Exact-match keywords are the most powerful type of keyword. They are the most specific and they have the highest conversion rates. The anchor text variation is a way to increase your exact-match keyword’s ranking in Google’s search engine. It is a way to make sure that your exact-match keyword has more than one anchor text pointing to it.
Partial-match
Partial-match keywords are a great way to get backlinks and rank for your website. They are also a good way to get more traffic from search engines.
The best way to find these keywords is by doing research on the topic you are writing about. You can also use tools like Google Adwords Keyword Tool or SEMrush to find these keywords. They are basically keywords that partially matches the domain name or focus keyword, hence partial-match. domains are very useful for website owners.
Example: You want to rank with Focus Keyword “Iphone cases” then you’re partial-match keywords are:
best apple iPhone 7 cases, iphone 6 case, iphone 8 plus, iphone 7 case etc.
Branded
A brand name used as anchor text. For example: ‘Green Blue Digital‘ linking to an article on the Greenbluedigital Blog.
Naked link
A URL that is used as an anchor. For example: ‘www.webtrafficsolutions.expert‘ is a naked link anchor.
Generic
A generic word or phrase that is used as the anchor. “this site” is a common generic anchor.
Images
Whenever an image is linked, Google will use the text contained in the image’s alt attribute as the anchor text.
Images Alt text
Images are a powerful way to convey your message. They can be used to illustrate a point, provide context, or just make an article more visually appealing.
The alt text is the text that appears when you hover over an image on a webpage. It is important because it provides context for the image and helps people who are visually impaired navigate the web.
Optimizing images for social media is important because it will help you get more engagement on your posts. Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram all have different requirements for images so it’s important to know what they are before uploading them.
Referring page authority
The referring page is the page that a visitor came from to get to your site. The referring page’s domain rating and links are important factors in determining the authority of your site. A high domain rating means that the referring page has a lot of trust and authority in the eyes of Google. This is because it has been around for a long time, has many links, and is updated regularly. A high domain rating also means that it will be easier for you to rank well on Google search engine results pages (SERPs). because you share a similar audience to the referring page. Referring domains can also be seen as “backlinks”.
Competitor links
Competitor links are links that point to your competitor’s website. These links are usually found on the competitor’s homepage, blog posts, and other pages.
The main reason why you would want to get competitor links is because they can provide you with backlink juice. Backlinks are a ranking factor in Google’s algorithm and they can help you rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs).
There are two ways to get competitor links:
1) You can contact the company and ask them for a link exchange (this been debated by SEO experts as to Google really imposed penalty to overuse of link exchange or not)
2) You can find their contact information on their website or social media page and reach out to them
No follow links
No Follow links are links that do not pass any link juice to the linked page. They are also called “no-follow” links.
A no-follow link is a hyperlink that does not allow search engine crawlers to crawl the linked page, and therefore does not pass any link value or PageRank to the linked page. The purpose of a no-follow link is to prevent search engine crawlers from indexing pages that are irrelevant, unimportant, or low quality.
The most common use of no-follow links is in blog comments where they can be used to prevent spamming of irrelevant sites and pages.
The critical use of No Follow links is to provide “good” reputation on Google’s eyes, AI has been so smart to know if you are creating artificial links, artificial links are links created using mostly Do Follow and raises red flag to Google. A Good percentage of No Follow versus Do follow can lessen the suspicion.
Page link relevancy
Page link relevancy is a measure of how relevant a page is to the content on another page. A good link is one that has high relevance to the content on the linking page. A bad link is one that has low relevance to the content on the linking page. “relevance” means the degree to which an entity is qualified or appropriate in relation to some goal, criterion, or standard.
For example, if someone wants more information about “Cheerios,” a good link would be one that has high relevance for that content and lead them directly to Cheerios’ Wikipedia article.
On the other hand, a bad link would be one that has low relevance for that content.
Keyword in a title
The title of a blog post is one of the most important factors in determining its ranking on Google. It is also one of the most difficult to get right.
A blog post title should be short and concise, but it should also contain keywords that are relevant to the content. The ideal length for a blog post title is 56 characters or less, otherwise, Google will automatically cut the title longer than 56 characters in the SERP.
Positive and Negative link velocity
Link velocity is a Google ranking factor that is used to measure the number of links that point to a website. It is calculated by dividing the number of links pointing to a site by the number of days since it was last updated.
Positive link velocity means that more people are linking to your site than are leaving it, while negative link velocity means that more people are leaving your site than are linking to it.
Authority sites Link
The authority sites are the ones that have a lot of traffic and are well-known. They are usually the first sites that people go to when they want to find information on a certain topic. The authority sites have a lot of traffic because they have been around for a long time and people trust them. They also have good content, which is why people keep coming back to them.
Links from “Real” sites
Links from “real” sites are a great way to get your content shared and seen by more people.
The internet is a vast and ever-changing place. It’s hard to keep up with all the new sites that are popping up every day. But there are some sites that have been around for a while and have become staples of the internet.
Websites like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are all examples of “real” sites. They have been around for years and they continue to be popular today.
Facebook is one of the most popular social media platforms in the world with over 2 billion monthly active users as of December 2017.
Twitter has over 330 million monthly active users as of December 2017, which is an increase from 328 million in September 2017.
YouTube has over 1 billion monthly active users as of December 2017, which is an increase from 900 million in September 2017.
You may encounter some guest posting opportunities, and they may willing to offer you a cheap price for a Do follow backlink. Always keep in mind that some sites are offering variety of niche in a single website, that is actually not a “real site” but a hub of pbn’s or public blog network.
Organic Link Profile
The organic link profile is a set of links that point to your website from other websites. It is also called an inbound link profile. The more quality, relevant, and authoritative links you have, the better your organic link profile will be.
Content quality of Linking Sites
The content quality of linking sites is a crucial factor in ranking. It is important to have relevant and organic content on your site. Search engines will place more weight on websites that are found in certain directories than they do on those that are not. .Links from blogs, forums, and other websites that are relevant to your website’s niche may lead to an increase in your rankings. The number of links is also a factor in ranking.
Internal Links
Internal links are the links that point to other pages on the same website. They are important for SEO because they help search engines understand what your site is about and how it is structured.
Internal links are also called inbound links, backlinks, or incoming links. They can be either strong or weak depending on their relevance to the page they link to.
Internal linking is a way of telling Google that you have relevant content on your site and that you want it to rank higher in search results.
Quality and Helpful Content
Google’s latest update (September 2022) on Helpful Content is a step in the right direction. It is a reminder that high-quality content is what will help you rank higher in search engine results pages.
The number of words in your blog post should be of decent number (around 1500 or more) of words. This will ensure that your blog post has enough content to be helpful to the reader, but not too much content that it becomes overwhelming.
User experience should always be at the forefront of any content strategy. The user experience should be seamless and easy for the reader to understand what they are reading and how it can help them with their needs or problems.
Meta Description
Meta descriptions are the short summaries of a web page that appear in search engine results pages. They are usually 150-160 characters long and they should be written in a way that will make people want to click on the link.
The meta description is an important part of SEO because it is what people see before they click on your website. It should be compelling enough to make them want to visit your site.
H1, H2, H3 Header Tags
H1, H2, and H3 tags are used to organize content on a webpage. They can be used to create headers for sections of text or for titles of images or videos. H1 tags are the most powerful location for a keyword you want to rank.
Conclusion
It’s Crucial to understand the fundamentals of Google ranking factors simply because Google is the most popular search engine in the world. It has a market share of over 90%. This means that if you want to rank on Google, you need to understand how it works.
There are many different factors, but there are some that have more weight than others. Google uses a combination of these factors to rank its search results. A “quality” ranking factor is that search engines find what they consider to be the best results for each search.