Knowing how search engines work arms you with some very powerful information. For instance, if Google is looking for 10 different search engine ranking factors, and you provide them with 9 while your competitor only delivers 5, your ranking for relevant keywords is probably going to be higher.

This is why search engine optimization is so important. When you design your site and write your content according to search engine requirements, you effectively communicate exactly what your web page, website, and any other online content is about. This leaves no confusion in the eyes of the search engines. Instead of sending you just any web traffic, they can get your content in front of the people who are looking for exactly what you have to offer.

Done correctly, SEO can reward you very handsomely. Put quite simply, the higher you rank for a particular keyword or phrase, the more free, relevant traffic you get. Consider this:

Over 50% of all organic search traffic goes to the top 3 listings in search engine results.

The further down search result rankings you appear, the less traffic you will receive. Your aim should be to appear on the first page of Google search results for several keywords and phrases relevant to your niche. That way, you have multiple opportunities for your target market to find you, depending on what they’re searching for

Important SEO Factors

Search engines are very good at reading HTML text. HTML, or Hypertext Markup Language, is “a standardized system for tagging text files to achieve font, color, graphic, and hyperlink effects on World Wide Web pages”. This is how almost all web content is designed. You may see words, pictures, and videos on a web page, but what you are seeing is actually created by HTML code.

Even when you are adding a video clip, digital photo, or audio file to your site, you need to name those files in a specific way to tell the search engines what that content is about. Without optimizing your content for search engines, your web pages don’t get indexed, no one finds you online, and all of your internet marketing efforts are wasted.

Getting a lot of traffic to your online content should not be your goal. You should focus on attracting relevant, targeted traffic. If you receive 100,000 visitors to your website every month, that may look on the surface like a good thing. However, if those visitors are searching for content irrelevant to your website, they leave quickly.

How do you ensure that you are speaking the language of internet search engines effectively, so they deliver relevant traffic that is looking for exactly what you are offering? You do this by keeping the following important search engine ranking factors in mind when designing your website and creating online content. 

NOTE: If you don’t know how to find some of the important elements for SEO and you have a WordPress site, you can easily edit them using different plugins, such as Yoast SEO. The Yoast plugin will provide you with a place to insert your keyword, edit your title and description, and will tell you where you need to adjust your post for better SEO.

Important SEO factors:

Make your URL SEO-friendly

Search engines use your URL to find a clue on what your site is about. Remove dates, categories, and any other unnecessary information or symbols from your URL, add relevant keywords, and keep it as short as possible.

Add your target keyword or phrase early on in your post, preferably early in the first sentence

If you are writing about “how to train a parakeet”, it wouldn’t make sense for that phrase to first appear in the last paragraph of your blog post. The things you begin talking about early on in your content give search engines a quick idea about what your content is covering.

Related keywords and phrases

LSI (latent semantic indexing) is a fancy way of saying search engines like to see words and phrases related to your target keyword. If you are targeting “paleo diet recipes”, you should include phrases like “weight loss recipes,” “low-carb diets,” and other related phrases.

Go long with your content

Across all niches, as an average, when your content is at least 1,800 words or more, you have a better chance of being ranked in the top 10 for particular keywords and phrases.

H1, H2, and H3 your keyword

Your H1, H2, and H3 tags (header tags) function as your page’s sub-headlines. Make sure your header tags include the keyword you are trying to rank for.

Place your target keywords in the very beginning of your title tag

Your title tag should begin with the keyword that your web page is focusing on. If you are trying to rank for the keyword phrase “blood type diet”, your title tag should be “Blood Type Diet Recipes” as opposed to “Delicious Recipes for the Blood Type Diet”.

Add multimedia like screen shots, images, and videos

This does not directly affect your page ranking according to most search engine algorithms. However, multimedia does keep people on your page longer, and also drives user interaction, two important search engine ranking factors.

Outbound links

Search engines, especially Google, like to see you participating on the web. This means when you link from your site to popular authority sites relative to your niche, your ranking improves.

These tags are also the ‘styles’ in a WordPress post, so use them for headings and sub-headings when you format a post or page.

Internal linking

Link from your content to other content on the same site. Internal links are just as important as external links in the ranking process.

Get social

Add social sharing buttons before and after your blog posts and articles. This makes it easier for people to share your content, which builds backlinks, drives traffic, and gets you noticed by the search engines.

Page loading speed

Google very rarely confirms any aspect of their search engine algorithm. They have continually and repeatedly pointed out that the faster your page loads, the better as far as your search engine rankings concerned. If you have a slow site, consider hiring a developer to figure out how to speed it up for you.

Incoming Backlinks

This is a crucial piece of any search engine ranking algorithm. When you have a lot of inbound links pointing to your site, and they come from related pieces of content, you will rank higher for specific keywords and phrases.