It’s the golden standard – for any SEO professional and small business owner – to be as close as possible to spot number one on the Google Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). There are a couple of things that Google looks at when ranking websites. Here are some of them.

Ranking Factors

Domain age

The older your domain is, the more likely it could be ranked up the first page of the Google SERPs. There are more than a couple of reason why this could be so. However, we would like to suggest that the reason why an older domain ranks more highly than a new one is that Google search bots have had more time to crawl an older site as opposed to a newer one. This means that the older site has received more opportunity to let Google know of their focus areas and is able to rank for them.

The first word in a domain is a targeted keyword

One of the factors which contributes to Google ranking a site highly is if the website’s domain has a targeted keyword as their starting word. So, for example, if you are tying to rank for the keyword “copywriting” if you have a domain entitled “copywritingservices.co.za” you will get the edge over other domains which offer the same service.

Your title tag should start with your targeted keyword

According to Moz.com, if a website’s title tag starts with one of its targeted keywords you have set out for your website, it’s been shown that these websites will perform better than those sites which feature the targeted keyword features at the bend of the title tag.

The H1 tag must contain the targeted keyword

The H1 tag is seen as the secondary title tag of a web page. This means that Google will take queues from your H1 tags in order to determine the subject matter of your site or blog post. So, in order to rank highly for your targeted keyword make sure that your H1 header contains it.

Your metadescription should contain your targeted keyword

According to Google, the metadescription doesn’t play a significant role in influencing the ranking factors of the SERPs. However, the metadescription of a particular website does play a great role in convincing a reader to click through to a site or not. This is because the user will judge whether or not a site is relevant to them based on the metadescription.

Long-form copy wins over short-form copy

As we’ve said in previous articles that we’ve published on content marketing, this type of digital marketing will remain a constant in 2019. In fact, most digital marketers report that they will be increasing their spend exponentially, for content marketing, in 2019.

To make the best out of the great opportunity that content marketing affords you, you need to publish long-form copy, as opposed to shorter copy, on your website. Long-form copy usually comes in at 700 – 1000 words. This is as opposed to short copy which can be anything from 350 words upwards.

SEO – or Search Engine Optimisation – is the way of the future which is being demonstrated in the present. It is a way for customers to find what they are looking for via a simple Google search and to get what they are looking for in a matter of seconds. However, to fully harness the power of SEO, it is necessary to do an SEO course so that you can learn how to use SEO to the best of your advantage in your business.

Get in touch with the Digital School of Marketing

The Digital School of Marketing offers a comprehensive SEO and Web Analytics Course that will teach you the ins and outs of this specialised branch of digital marketing. For more information about this course and to register, follow this link.