Ranking high in search results is the goal of SEO, and it is imperative to know the ranking factors so that you can optimize your website for the best results. But it can be quite confusing to choose which ranking factors you should work with among more than 200 ranking factors that we know about. Not only are there too many ranking factors, every year these keep changing in some way or the other. To make things easy, it is better to figure out some of the highest impacting ranking factors and focus on it to create SEO strategies.
In this article, we will discuss some ranking signals that you cannot ignore especially in the context of mobile first indexing. For those who are new to the concept of mobile-first indexing that Google is already using, should know that nowadays Google is indexing mobile website pages first. It means that you must concentrate on mobile optimization and choose the ranking signals that have the potential of boosting Toronto SEO. To dominate search results take a close look at the ranking factors that are extremely important for you.
Search intent is all important
Google is hell-bent upon providing the most relevant and appropriate answers to search queries and have started digging deep into keywords to figure out the purpose behind searches. What was the intention of searchers is what you too must try to understand when choosing keywords so that your SEO approach matches with the ways of Google. You must make your page most relevant to search queries because it has a direct relation to ranking for which you must have a good understanding of search intent. The most interesting aspect of search intent is its ability to push up CTR.
By experimenting with various search queries, you can discover the search intent behind it. Type one of your keyword in the search box and then by looking at the first page of SERP try to understand the search intent behind each result. If you find some of the pages not corresponding to the search intent, then it means that the keywords do not go well with those pages.
Placing keywords
Old ways of optimization still work at least with respect to putting keywords in the title tag which is always a dominant ranking factor. The title tag helps users to know how much relevant is the page to the search query. You must know how to accurately position the keyword in the title because the closer it is to the beginning of the title, better it is. All important keywords must find a place in the body of the page, H1 tag and alt texts.
However, be careful not to overuse keywords by placing them left, right and center, because it would amount to keyword stuffing that, attracts penalty. Although optimization mainly happens around focused keywords, you must also use some related terms along with it. To find related keywords, enter a keyword in the search box and look at the bottom of the results page where you can find some suggested keywords that closely relate to the focused keyword.
Click through rate (CTR)
High click-through rate means that the content or page is very relevant and it helped earn more clicks. This factor is especially important because of its influence on ranking. Studies have shown that high CTR boots ranking. To get some idea about what people are clicking upon on the search results page to reach your site, make use of the Search Analytics report available in Google Search Console. Focus on pages with low CTR but high ranks because it could be an indication that your Meta descriptions or title tags are not much relevant, and needs improvement.
Comprehensive content
If you look at the way, Google is trying to improve the quality of search. You will realize that Google now prioritizes pages that are closely matching with the meaning of the keywords even if it might not be matching with the keywords itself. That is an important observation that you must implement when creating content which must never be keyword packed but comprehensive enough to cover the broader meaning of keywords. To develop comprehensive content by knowing what would be the right frequency of using keywords you can look at the pages of your competitor and use TF-IDF analysis to determine it. It would give you access toa lot of relevant terms as well as concepts used by your competitor who ranks high.
Beware of duplicate content
Google appreciates and rewards unique content, but it should not happen that in pursuit of creating exclusive content you fall into the trap of duplicate content. To improve rankings by avoiding Panda penalty for content duplication, you must learn how to create content that is truly unique and not just a feeble attempt in duplicating some earlier content. Learning the techniques of spotting duplicate content and knowing how to deal with various duplication including external duplication should help to avoid the pitfalls. Using Copyscape to check duplication is an excellent way to ensure that it does not fall under that category.
Well-structured HTML
It is your responsibility to help search engines understand quickly what your content is about and the best way of doing it is to organize HTML markup in a clear way. Since search engines still rely on the HTML structure together with the semantic markup, you would be on a strong footing if you have a well-structured HTML. Even the best content can look ordinary or poor in the eyes of search spiders if the HTML markup is not satisfactory. And this can result in poor ranking due to poor indexing. If you have a WordPress website, chances of which are very high, you can use suitable plugins to clean and optimize your HTML. Using schema markup is one of the ways of imparting better structure to HTML.
To complement your work in creating great content, building quality links and improving user experience, you must work hard for improving the ranking factors for best SEO results.
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