Sellers' Quick Look: Six Factors Affecting Search Engine Rankings

Digital marketing consultant Shane Barker shares the six most relevant and important factors for 2021. Sellers, come and take a look!

1. Content Quality

The most important ranking factor is always content quality . The first rule of SEO is to create high-quality , useful content for a specific target audience .

Characteristics of high-quality content include being unique and original, staying fresh and updated, being well-structured, providing value to readers , covering the topic in detail , and being optimized for the right keywords .

2. Backlinks

Backlinks help Google find and index your website , and the quality of your backlinks shows your website’s authority and trustworthiness.

High-quality backlinks help to obtain referral traffic and improve the website 's ranking in search engines , which is also a key area for sellers to perform SEO optimization .

3. Mobile Responsiveness

Nowadays, a large amount of online traffic comes from mobile devices , and if your website does not perform well on mobile devices, you will not only lose traffic, but also send bad signals to search engines.

Therefore, sellers need to optimize your website for mobile devices and make sure it displays properly on all screen sizes.  

4. Search Intent

Search intent refers to the reason why a user types in a specific search query . Similar keywords may have different search intents, such as conducting product research or preparing to purchase.

For different search intentions, sellers need to choose specific matching keywords in order to increase the click-through rate of the website .

5. RankBrain Algorithm

RankBrain is an algorithm that Google uses to measure the user experience of a website and is one of the important ranking factors.  

Google looks at metrics like bounce rate , click-through rate , dwell time , etc. and strives to direct users to the most useful and user-friendly sites.

To improve the user experience of the website , sellers can refer to the following methods:

Keep your website layout and navigation as simple as possible

Avoid lengthy text content

Use internal links to drive traffic to other pages on your website

Optimize your meta title , description, and URL

6. Keywords

Every piece of content you publish on your website should have your target keyword in mind. And, you need to include your keyword enough times in that content for Google to recognize what your content is about.

For most types of content, a keyword density of between 1%-2% is fine. For landing pages, you can keep the density a bit higher.

The factors that affect search engine rankings are constantly changing. Shane Barker calls the above six factors the most relevant and important ranking factors in 2021. Sellers should also pay more attention.

Search Engines

SEO

Website ranking