5 Google Ranking Factors you shouldn’t overlook in 2016

With 3.5 billion Google searches made everyday, it is more important than ever to understand the Google Ranking Factors that affect the position of your website, in search results. The Google Algorithm has 200 major ranking factors and here we take a look at 5 Google ranking factors that you shouldn’t overlook in 2016. 1. Links Links going into your site still impact ranking significantly and when quality and page relevance issues don’t exist, it is probably the most important factor of all. Domain diversity is key with the number of domains linking to your website correlating directly to its ranking. 2. Content Content that is topically relevant will of course rank better but it is long form content that can lift a website up through the search results. Each webpage should concentrate on the topic in depth and cover just a single topic. Longer content ranks higher with webpages on the first page of search results typically containing almost 2,000 words on average. 3. RankBrain RankBrain is a machine learning artificial intelligence system, which Google confirmed that it had been using in October 2015. RankBrain interprets search queries to find more relevant results, even if the search phrase doesn’t match the words on a webpage. RankBrain does this because it understands complex ‘long-tail’ search queries and how they relate and are similar to other unconnected complex search phrases. This adds weight to the power of long form content, where pages without a keyword can still rank higher than other pages, if the topic is discussed in detail. 4. Mobile Friendliness Since May 2016, mobile friendliness has played a more important role on mobile search results. Webpages that are relevant and mobile friendly rank highly and with more Google searches being made though mobile devices (50 billion per month) than a desktop, its importance cannot be overlooked. The page speed of mobile pages will be ranked separately in the latter half of 2016 and this hints that mobile friendly sites will rank higher than those that are not. 5. Local Search Local search is directly affected by the popularity of your business. The most powerful indicators of popularity includes Google Reviews and Profile Views. Other important Google ranking factors There are many other Google ranking factors to consider and the most important of these includes having a HTTPS URL, as discussed in our post ‘How SSL Certificates and Dedicated IP Addresses Affect SEO’. In addition to this, content with at least one image will rank better than content without an image, although having more than one image does not further improve rankings. Exact match anchor text still has a strong influence on Google rankings and although Click Through Rates (CTR) do not affect ranking, as it is too easy to falsely replicate, it indirectly affects ranking as a low bounce rate will improve rankings.

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