There are 200 SEO ranking factors Google considers to rank a site. But there are 30 SEO most important factors which should be utilized to optimize the site to improve the visibility in the search engines.
The SEO ranking factors are classified into two important types- On Page SEO and off page SEO factors.
On page SEO Ranking Factors
1. Website URL structure- URL should be short and clean with one main keyword in the URL to improve the visibility in the search engines.
2. Meta Tags- This is one of the crucial SEO Ranking factors. Meta tags should be optimized for the natural use of target keywords in the title, description, Heading tags, etc.
3. Keyword Density- Avoid the over stuffing and maintain the keyword optimization by keeping the keyword density to be 1-2%.
4. Keyword Proximity- It means the distance of the main keyword from each other. Suppose your main keyword is SEO services India. Now consider the following sentence SEO services are affordable in India. So proximity between SEO services and India is 3 words. It is recommended that the proximity should be less for better results.
5. Image ALT Text- Insert one keyword in the ALT text of the image to make search engine understand what the image is all about.
6. Internal and Outbound Linking Optimization- Avoid bounce rates by linking the relevant anchor text to the target page. Add relevant outbound links to make the post more authoritative.
7. Canonical Tags- Avoid duplicate content issues on the site by adding the canonical tag and make only one web page to be preferred version on the site.
8. Site speed- It is one of the most important SEO ranking factors. Optimize the speed of the site to 5 seconds by minifying JS and CSS scripts. Keep the size of the image under 100 kb. Use CDN or content delivery network to boost the speed of the site.
9. Website Errors- User experience is crucial in 2017 so resolve all the 404, 500 errors. You can also use the 301 redirection for the broken links to pass the link juice or delete if it is not anywhere linked to the sites.
10. Sitemaps– Sitemaps are of two types- XML Sitemap and HTML Sitemap. Both have their respective different functions. The XML sitemap is for crawling of the site by bots and indexing on the search engines. HTML sitemap is for providing the navigation for the site having many web pages.
11. Robots.txt- It is the file which allows or disallows the certain web pages or directories to crawl. According to an industry robots.txt file is created and uploaded to the site.
12. Redirections- Mainly there is two types of redirection. First is temporary redirection and second is the permanent redirection. 301 is permanent redirection which passes the link juice to a particular page. 302 is a temporary redirection and use only for temporary purposes.
13. Mobile Friendliness- It is necessary to have the mobile version of the site to appear higher in the SERPs. With the mobile-first indexing, a mobile version of the site is preferred by search engines to rank at a higher position over desktop version.
14. Crawling & Indexing- Crawling is the process of following the links through search engine bots. Indexing refers to adding the web pages on the search engine result pages. A site should be continuously crawled and indexed for better visibility.
15. Addition of Tracking codes- Tracking codes are important to track the key metrics of the site such as average time spent on the site, bounce rate, traffic sources and conversions. You can set the goals for engagement, conversions, event, etc.
16. Breadcrumbs– It helps in providing the proper navigation for reducing the number of steps to reach a particular target page.
17. Text/ HTML ratio- It should be around 25- 70%. This ratio refers to the visible content to the nonvisible content such as an image.
18. W3C Validation- It helps in ensuring the technical qualities by checking if the HTML and XHTML markups are proper.
19. Schema Implementations- It enhances the meta description by providing the valuable information to the users. Local, person, product, event, price and website are some common types of schema.
20. Social Sharing Buttons- It encourages the social sharing of the posts or pages to the social networks. The total share count helps in creating the credibility for the brand to the users.
21. NoFollow– If you don’t want to follow the link and pass the link juice then add this tag as rel=”nofollow”. This tag is mainly used for external links on the site.
22. Noindex– If you want that the particular page should not be indexed then add the no index tag as follows <meta name=”robots” content=”noindex”>
Off Page SEO Ranking Factors
23. Domain Authority- It is the complete authority of the domain or site. It ranges from 0-100 where 0 is the lowest and 100 is the highest.
24. Page Authority- As the name suggests it is the authority of a page based on links shared on different sites. It ranges from 0-100 where 0 is the lowest and 100 is the highest.
25. Trust Flow- It is the score given to the site based on the credibility of the site to the users. If quality link building is performed than the trust factor for the site will be good resulting in high trust flow.
26. Citation Flow- It refers to the accurate citation and brand consistency on the web. To increase the citation flow score, build accurate citations on the authoritative sites.
27. Social Shares- It helps to earn the trust and encourage the sharing of posts resulting in engagements and social traffic to the site.
28. Link Juice- It is the authority passed to the site from the links and helpful in increasing the Page Rank of the site.
29. Page Rank- It ranges from 0-10 where 0 is the lowest and 10 is the highest. In order to improve the Page Rank, build quality links for the web pages.30. Anchor text- It is a hyperlink text pointing to the web pages on the site or
30. Anchor text- It is a hyperlink text pointing to the web pages on the site or other sites. It should be build by linking the relevant or related keywords.
So optimize your site for these SEO ranking factors and drive massive traffic to the site.