Kleinburg Brewery
- design
- / web
It seems like just as we overcome a major overhaul in the search engines, another wave of change comes our way.
It’s been done with Google Penguin, Panda and Pigeon – many websites experienced drastic drops in page ranks as a result.
Webmasters all over the globe study “ranking factors,” which are essentially things that directly affect the rankings of a website. It’s the criteria for evaluating webpages and what produces specific rankings that are generally referred to as ranking factors.
Looking at the most important ranking factors can give content marketers and webmasters some valuable insight into what is affecting their webpage rankings, and how things can be adjusted to improve them.
For 2015, the following have been listed as the most influential factors on websites from an SEO perspective.
Relevant, Organic Content is Key
‘Content is King’ has always been a mantra that good web developers have stuck to in order to stay in Google’s good graces. But no other time has this been as important as today. Ranking factors, including word count and Flesch readability, are incredibly important, particularly with longer texts that are easier to read.
While there still remains a trend to make smart use of keywords, relevant content is even more important. High-ranking sites are focusing more on trying to understand the reader’s intentions in its entirety and reflecting this quality, well-structured content.
User Experience on Mobile Devices is Paramount
Not only does the user experience need to be a positive one on PCs, it also needs to be improved on mobile devices as well. With more and more internet browsers using their tablets and smartphones to peruse online, it has never been more important to ensure that websites are optimized for use on such devices. A responsive web design most certainly has a huge effect on page rank. This fact will most likely continue to be more true as time progresses.
Keywords Aren’t as Important as They Used to Be
Keyword correlations are decreasing. Not only that, but an increasing number of high-ranking URLs aren’t using corresponding keywords in the body or description. This points to the probability that the trend towards effective use of keywords is diminishing. Obviously keywords are an important part of organic content, but without structure and relevance, they’re pretty much useless.
Social signals Help Boost Organic Rankings
It’s not entirely clear what the magic number is for social media signals – including tweets, likes, etc – but it’s becoming increasingly apparent that there is a positive correlation between the number of social signals and page rank (event though Google says it doesn’t directly use such signals as a ranking factor). These social signals are still important to promote brand awareness and boost organic traffic to websites.
Having a seasoned web designer take the reigns when designing your site can ensure that these factors are always taken into consideration in order to maximize the chances of reaching top spot in Google and other powerful search engines.