Understanding Search engine ranking factors

Search engine ranking factors are the nightmare of every blogger as no one can claim to totally understand the factors that have the highest influence in Search engine ranking factors. A lot has been written about this topic, even Matt Cutts himself wouldn’t tell you explicitly what the ranking factors are or which has the highest influence in search engine rankings.

But one thing remains constant about all that has been written about these factors – high quality contents. Google or any other search engine will tell you that they are more concerned about the quality of the content than any other factor. But I tell you, if you have high quality contents without understanding the other factors that come into play to help you rank easily you will still find it difficult ranking for even your own domain name. So let’s take some time and study the Search engine ranking factors in this article.

Search engine Ranking Factors you should know:

Quality of Content: Like I said earlier, the quality of your content is a major factor to your ranking in the search engines when it is well combined with the other factors I will be discussing below. When a visitor comes to your blog and finds the content rich enough to provide him with the information he needs, he stays for while longer and even visit more pages of your blog, when once a visitor hits the back button back to the search results, Search engine will simply take it that your content did not provide enough information to the visitor for that search query and will consider your content’s quality against your competitors with the visitors data they collect over time and decide where your blog should appear on their search results for such query. So to rank well in search engines, strife to write rich quality contents, make your researches and gather your facts before publishing.

On-Page SEO: Having a high quality content is one thing, optimizing it for search engines is another. Many fellow bloggers have asked me this question so many times, and I simply refer them to read an article I once published titled ‘The basic on-site SEO tips you should know’. If you read the article, you will notice that there are formats you should follow while writing your blog posts. I will recommend you read the post to understand the On-Page SEO ranking factor better.

Backlinks: So many experts consider this one of the influencing factors in Search engine ranking. Google itself said that a site’s reputation is a function of how many other sites linked to it. Backlinks are indeed necessary if you want to rank high in search engines. But let me share a secret with you, the number of backlinks doesn’t really matter, what matters more is the quality of backlinks, even if you like acquire backlinks from millions of low quality sites and if I could get quality backlinks from a couple of respected sites on the internet, I will definitely rank ahead of you for the same query in search engines. So I all I am saying here is as much as backlinks are important its quality is more important. Search engines like Google respects sites like LinkedIn, Tumblr and even their own Google+ etc, a dofollow backlink from such sites will be more valuable than a hundred from low quality sites. Learn how you can get quality dofollow backlinks from Google+, LinkedIn and Tumblr.

Natural link building is the best form, avoid all blackhat methods of link building as Search engines will definitely punish you for it. Learn about Link Schemes from Google itself here.

Site Age:  I am one of the people affected by this factor and I hope by the time Netmediablog stays for a couple of more years Search engines would’ve earned much respect for me and would strike off this factor for me so I will rank higher. It’s all about trust, Search engines trust sites that have been around for years than you the new comer with no reputation. This factor is doesn’t really hold much influence in search engine rankings because I have also written posts that outranked sites that have been around for years. I wonder its influence then.

Visitors Activities: A Visitors activity on your site is also a factor that determines how search engines see your content. If visitors comes to your site, and after reading your post decided to drop a comment, share your posts to social networks or even bookmark the page, Search engines see it as the content being relevant to the visitor to have made him perform such act.

Bounce rate: Search engines considers your site’s bounce rate as a ranking factor. In a blog post I published here some time ago titled ‘Reduce bounce rate with Simplereach slide’, I explicitly explained how your site’s bounce rate affects your search engine ranking. If you have a high bounce rate, Search engines will interpret it that your site is not relevant to its visitors and will lower your ranking. So I will recommend you read that article to understand this factor better and how to lower your bounce rate and rank higher in search engines.

Final Thoughts:

No matter the strategy you use to rank in search engines, the above discussed factors are the basic ranking factors you should always consider and work with. Apply the principles today and see how you ranking will improve over a period of time. I have seen serious improvements in my search engine rankings since I started practicing these principles.

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