Factors that Affect SERP Rankings
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Advice on how to achieve higher and better SERP Rankings?
There is no golden rule to follow to achieve Higher SERP rankings as Search Engines are constantly updating their search algorithms to better provide Value to their visitors and thus one must stay on top of the latest trends to keep updated and rank high on Search Engines. Also one must understand that each Search Engine is different and chooses to weigh ranking factors differently accordingly to their Perception, Mission and Objectives.
Having said that, in this article we will cover the most common and fundamental Building Blocks that all Major Search Engines take into consideration when Ranking Websites, though the degree Search Engines value these factors differ from one another, the fundamental building blocks will not change for the near comming future. New factors may affect SERP such as social sites are playing a large role these days,
but for the coming future the factors mentioned below will always have the fundemental value in them.
15 Essential Factors that Affect SERP Rankings on Search Engines
1. Page Value
The Value a website provides to its visitor. If the visitor gets what he was looking
for from the site then it has achieved the fundamental milestone to proceed to the other
factors. If this isn't the case, no matter what other points mentioned below factor
into a website, the rankings will never reach any where close to the bottom,
as a matter of fact they would not appear at all.
2. The Title and Description of the Site
This will help build the description of a website for Search Engines to determine which Keywords
are relevant to the site. It should be as precise as possible using "Keywords" that identify what a website is offering.
3. Content if applicable
When one looks for images, videos or maps their is little if any content involved.
However, where applicable
part of the content will be used to
i. Build s Websites' Description
ii. Identify the value of a website (For example is the content unique? does it answer the question in hand?)
Content needs to be well written, spell checked, proof read to say the least.
4. Back Links
They say that back links are the blood of any given website and how it ranks on Search Engines. True indeed, but remember, Quality over Quantity. Getting one Valuable Back link from a related site is worth tens of thousands of links from unrelated sites. There are different link building strategies that can be used, but the best strategy is common sense.
5. Keywords used in a Sites Domain Name
Domain names may reveal much to what is to be said about what a certain website is offering.
Take for example Free-SERP-Tools.com, immediately one might identify that the site provides Free SERP Tools. It is advantageous to have related keywords in your domain name but it is not a necessity in anyway.
6. Meta Data
The Meta Data includes both the Description and Keywords, this is used to build your website description, though it is not necessary to have any Meta Data if your site is well established, it is both highly recommended and advised that these two parts are accurately available on your site.
7. Reliability of a Site
How reliable a site through means of analysis conducted by Search Engines will affect SERP rankings. Dead Links are also dropped links and this is a fact. Reliability doesn't only discuss the reliability of your site but also discusses how fast is the site, is it hosted on a dedicated server, How old is the site, have you stood up to the challenge of time and survived. These are factors that Search Engines take into consideration.
8. Size of Site
They say size doesn't matter but this is not true when it comes to Search Engines ranking strategies, cause size matters and the larger a site is the higher it will rank among the Search Engines.
9. Page Degree of Optimization towards being Search Engine Friendly
Search Engine Optimization is a strategy that is used, a standard between a website and the Search Engine, when the Search Engine crawls the site it looks for certain data and standards to better identify what the site is about. If a site isn't Search
Engine Friendly then most probably the chances to achieve better SERP results are slimmed.
10. Off-Page Factors
Some Off-Page factors do take affect into SERP results, these could include media coverage.
11. Social Popularity
A new factor that just came into existence, "The Social World". Search Engines are using Social Media to their advantage to Better Rank Websites, Twitter a micro-blogging platform has attracted both Google and Microsoft to provide "Twitter" results in addition to their search results. This could have a very big impact in the future when "Live Search" comes around the corner to us.
12. Frequency of Updates
There is no better way to tell Search Engines a site is dedicated and doing well except through regular site updates and new page additions to it.
13. The Age of the Site
The older a site is the more value it has as it has gained a base of establishment on the web. However, do remember that Search Engines do take into consideration the age of the site V.S. the age of the page.
14. Statistical Data about Visitors
Truly, Knowledge is power and for that reason Search Engines constantly look into statistical data to determine when a visitor lands on a site, how many pages does he go through, How long does he stay on the site and where does he go next. A common criteria of measurement is known as the Bounce Rate which determines if the visitor left the site without getting what he was looking for. The higher the bounce rate percentile, the less attractive or valuable the site appears to Search Engines.
15. Geographical Limitations
Common sense derives if a site can accommodate a larger market segment then the site should be more valuable. If a site offers different languages then without a doubt it can accommodate a higher number of visitors and thus will be more attractive to Search Engines.
There are many factors that determine fundamentals of SERP rankings and we will update them accordingly when we receive news of major events. These are the fundamental building blocks if carried out right will provide any site with positive SERP rankings. If you have any suggestions on other valuable factors that can break or make a sites'
SERP rankings, please do send us a line and we will review it and consider it to
update this article.
info@SearchEngineResultsPage.info
Article References
This article was created based on the following references:
1. Search Engine Ranking Factors - SEOmoz
2. Top 10 SEO Factors That Effect SERPs of a Website - EZineArticles
3. Search Engine Watch
4. How Does Visitor Behaviour affect SERP Rankings
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