As you all know, Google has been updating their algorithms very often for the last few years, that’s why so important to stay up to date and be always aware of what are the most important SEO ranking factors to take into account when getting ready to work on a website ranking or a new SEO campaign.
In this article, we will only cover the main factors that really need to be taken into consideration, and that have also been proven to be very impactful towards the website ranking. Let’s then get started:
Most Important SEO Ranking Factors for 2017
1. Backlinks
Backlinks are well known as one of the most, if not the most important off-page reference factors to calculate a domain’s authority and it can definitely help your site rank a lot better in the results of all search engines. Backlinks are usually placed on websites of high authority and reputation, it’s just a reference link to your website or one of your posts and it works to gain good reputation and authority.
There are two main types of backlinks that can be used as SEO ranking factors and they can cause a different impact towards your website ranking, do-follow, and no-follow links, these two need to be appropriately balanced in order to avoid being penalized by Google.
- You might also want to see: Best Free SEO Tools to Get Your Website Ranking #1 in 2017
-DoFollow links tell the search engines that they can follow the link to your website and also humans can follow these links, this is how you can increase domain authority, the more DoFolow backlinks you get, the more you will be benefited of the authority of those websites linking to you and improve your website ranking.
Anchor text is also considered as very important SEO ranking factors, and this is basically a DoFollow backlink with a targeted keyword. This is most likely the way someone will let you get a back link from their blog or website.
DoFollow links look like this: <a href=”
http://www.google.com/”>Keyword</a>
-NoFollow links tell the search engines that only humans can follow these links to your website, but not the search engine itself. This is mostly used when you want to link to a website and you don’t want to give them backlink love. This type of backlinks is also important when you are working on an SEO campaign because you want all your backlinks to look natural in order to avoid penalizations, making sure that you have as many DoFollow as NoFollow backlinks will keep things balanced for you and stay on the safe side.
NoFollow links look like this: <a href=”
http://www.google.com/”rel=”Nofollow”>Google</a>
2. Content Optimization
This is most definitely one of the most important SEO ranking factors, we all now how much google loves content. When we talk about content optimization as one important resource for website ranking, we are talking about all the following aspects:
-Meta Title (It needs to include your targeted keyword, preferably at the beginning and its length needs to be below 75 characters).
-Meta Description (This tells the search engines what your page or article is about, it needs to include your targeted keyword and its length must be between 100 and 160 characters).
-Content length and Relevance (This is not a secret, everybody knows that google loves content. The content must be original and it should have at least 800 words, but the more text you have, the more love google will give you. Also, make sure that your content is original, you don’t want to be penalized for using someone else’s content).
3. Page Level / Keyword
Being able to find the best keywords to target for, is one of the toughest tasks for bloggers who are just beginning on their career and don’t have a lot of experience or knowledge about SEO ranking factors or website ranking. There are a few basic concepts that you cannot miss if you really want to be #1 on google search results.
-Longtail Keywords: Longtail keywords are basically the ones formed by three to four words, these are indeed the least competitive keywords since they don’t have as high search volume as keywords that are only formed by one or two words, therefore it’s easier to rank for those. Let’s give you an example:
This is a good example of a short tail keyword. It’s only formed by two words and it has good search volume, that means that you will get between 10,000 and 100,000 visitors from that keyword if you are able to get to #1 on the search results for that particular keyword. Now the problem is how difficult is it to compete here?
Now let’s try to find a 3 to 4 words longtail keyword and compare it.
This keyword is formed by three words, and it can definitely drive more targeted traffic to your website, this is due to the fact that it’s also a more specific search. It’s clear that the user is looking for “companies”, while in the first example that was not so specific. Competition is lower, although it has less search volume, it will take less time and effort to start ranking for this long tail keyword, but it also has a higher CPC which could result in more revenue if you are monetizing with a PPC such as Google Adsense.
- You might also want to see: Make Money Online With Advertising – Google Adsense US$2,000/mo
4. Page Loading Speed
Google itself has officially announced that one of the key SEO ranking factors that they will be taking more seriously for this 2017, is the website loading speed. Every user is expecting a fast loading site with around 2-3 seconds for the loading speed if your website takes longer than that then they are already thinking about leaving your slow turtle website and click somewhere else. This is, therefore a very important detail that affects your conversion rate. Probably you are already located within the top 10 search results for your targeted keyword, but people is often bouncing out of your website because it takes so long for it load completely.
GTmetrix provides great recommendations to reduce your website’s loading speed.
5. Mobile Optimization / Accelerated Mobile Page
This is definitely another SEO ranking factor that google has announced to be one of the bullet points they will be targeting for 2017. Indeed google initiated the
AMP project which introduces a lighter version of a website, designed especially for mobile devices. This initiative allows mobile users (Smartphones and tablets) which nearly represents at least 30% of the users searching for things through google every day, and the number is increasing. This is the reason why you must ensure that you configure your website appropriately for pages and post to display accordingly with its AMP version.
This is what some of the experts from google have to say:
“Speed has always been a cornerstone of Google Search and we’re thrilled to be working alongside others in the tech industry and publishers around the world to bring the Accelerated Mobile Pages Project to life. An open content ecosystem will give publishers maximum reach and allow users to get the best content no matter which app they are using. AMP HTML will make it all blazing fast, so we can’t wait to use it!”
David Besbris
VP Engineering, Google Search
6. SSL Certificate / HTTPS
In the past, having an SSL certificate was only important if you had an e-commerce website or if you needed to collect information that needed to be encrypted, such as credit card information, SSN, etc.
Now it has all changed since google has officially announced that they will flag any site without an SSL certificate as insecure. This is certainly one of the big changes that google has announced for 2017. If you were wondering what was coming after panda, then now you know it.
An SSL certificate has an estimated cost of around $60/year, but there is also some free options out there that you can always enjoy of, for instance;
Flexible SSL by CloudFlare and
Freee SSL by Let’s Encrypt.
