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Posted by Sagar Khandekar
December 31, 2018
If you are familiar with the digital marketing era, you might as well know that there are over 200 ranking signals used by Google. These signals never remain constant. With regular tweaking and refining in the algorithm, Google has successfully introduced new ranking signals as per changing priorities.
It can be very overwhelming to optimize for all of these ranking signals. However, the good news is that it is not necessary to optimize for all of the ranking signals. This is why it is important to know which ranking signals will dominate 2019.
Without further ado, let’s get started.
It is but obvious that whenever anyone is searching something they have a particular intention in mind. This is where Google will help in figuring out the most relevant search results in the top positions. This is why it is important to make your page as relevant as possible. The more relevant your page is to the search query the higher the chance is to rank higher.
In order to understand the search intents behind the keywords, you can try experimenting with various queries. This can be simply done by typing certain keywords in the search box and have a look at the first result pages. This is how you will be able to find out its search intent.
CTR is one of the most crucial relevance signals in Google. An increase in CTR always means that there is a significant boost in the rankings. Google Search Console’s analytic report can be used to know what the people tend to click on for SERP’s to reach your site.
Make sure you pay high attention to pages that rank higher but have a low CTR. This can be due to many reasons. However, the most obvious reasons are having comparatively less relevant title tags and meta description.
Optimizing keywords in the title tag will remain a powerful ranking signal in the year 2019 as well. This is the way Google decides whether the page is relevant to the query that has been searched. This is why it is better to place the keywords in the initial phase of the content or to use it in the title of the content.
The most important keywords as per priority should be presented in the body of the content. However, one must make sure that the keywords are not overly used so that you don’t get penalized for keywords stuffing.
Google has recently emphasized a lot on quality search. Google has started showing results that are most relevant to the search query rather than solely relying on the keywords. This is why your focus should not only be to optimize keywords in the best way possible but you should also make sure that the website content is as comprehensive as possible.
You can also consider using TF-IDF analysis, which will help in calculating how frequently certain keywords are used on the competitor’s pages. This will also shed a light on some of the most used keywords and concepts that are used for optimization purpose by your top competitors.
Make sure your content is free of any grammatical errors. This is yet another signal for Google that the content quality is good. There’s nothing much to elaborate here, just make sure you proofread your content before publishing it. Using various online tools can also help you to rest assured.
It is very important to make it easy for the search engine to understand what your content is all about. By organizing your HTML markup in a clear way, it is easy for the search engine to find your website and show it in search results.
If your page has messy HTML then no matter how good has been written your content is if your HTML is not structured nicely your website will not rank high. There are plenty of plugins available which will help you in optimizing and clearing your HTML.
If you are someone who has been in the SEO game for a while, you might know that Google penalizes heavily for duplicate content. This is why if you want your website rankings to be high to make sure that your website has o duplicate content.
In case you suspect any of your website’s pages, go ahead and check them on any plagiarism tool. However, it can be difficult to bring out new content when you are in a certain business. During such times, all you can do id to make sure that the products on your website have a unique description.
This comes to no surprise that backlinks are the most crucial part of SEO. They have been ruling SEO for ages and the fact is that they still remain the strongest indication of authority on Google. Google definitely appreciated quality more than quantity.
However, the total number of backlinks still contribute a lot when it comes to powerful ranking. It is also important that if links want to carry the significant weight they have to come from different domains. All you have to do is look at different total number of backlinks and total linking of the parameters that belong to each domain.
The very first thing apart from quality content is the speed of your page that contributes to the pleasant user experience. This is why Google speed update has made page speed a ranking factor for mobile. The eligibility of any website these days is calculated according to two factors: speed and optimization.
If you wish to get an idea regarding how your page is performing, you can also go ahead and test it with PageSpeed Insights. You should also pay special attention to optimization parameters and make sure that you fix any technical issues if any.
The overall ranking of your page is highly influenced by the internal page linking. It is safe to say that PageRank is one of the strongest authority signals for Google. If you improve rankings of certain pages that do not perform well it is important that you don’t hide them deep into the website.
Although, if a page is buried in your site structure and you need to boost rankings then the best thing you can do is point some internal links to it. However, before doing that, you need to look at your site structure using WebSite Auditor’s Visualization to see how the internal link is distributed within your site.
Now as you have finished reading this you might as well know that there are endless factors that directly or indirectly influence the position of SERPs. No matter what year it is always important to create great unique content and focus on quality link building.
