Top SEO Ranking Factors in 2017

Business, both new and old, and more and more moving to the digital sphere to conduct their activities, whether it be selling a product, offering a service, interacting with a client, resolving an issue, responding to feedback, etc. With the online world becoming the marketplace of choice, positioning your website high on Google is the key to maintaining a successful front.

This is where SEO comes into play. Search Engine Optimisation offers tools to ensure that the content is curated with the sole intention of increasing visibility and ranking high on search engines to generate more traffic to your website. With Google continuously evolving its algorithm, SEO ranking factors also keep changing to cope with what it takes to stay on top.
2017 has been a year of graphic change, and it is important to understand the latest trends to keep your website rank healthy.
Some of the main SEO ranking factors that can optimize your website in Search Engine Related Pages are –

Using your Domain Name
Using your keyword in the subdomain name can boost your SEO ranking. The domain’s registration length also counts, as Google factors in the validity of the domain to decide whether to consider it legitimate or not. Your domain name is your brand, and it is intrinsically linked to what people perceive of your business. Therefore, Google favours a trusted brand to boost in its rankings. In addition, a country-specific extension helps in the ranking of that website when it comes to that specific country, but reduces visibility on a global scale. So, if your business caters to something that is exclusively national, it might be a good strategy to go for a Country TLD extension.

On-Page SEO Ranking Factors

The most important ranking factors relating to On-Page SEO are discussed here.
Including keyword as part of the title tag. The title tag proves to be one of the most significantpointers as far as a search engine is concerned. The title is supposed to clearly indicate the subject of the entire article, which basically is the keyword that the article revolves around. Search engines will get a direction regarding what the page is to be ranked for once it uses the title tag to determine the main subject of a search result.

Including keyword as part of the Meta description tag. The Meta description is the only little piece of information a user has to decide whether or not your website is worth visiting for whatever solution they might be searching. Meta descriptions play a vital role in generating clicks from users directly from the search engine by making the link more relevant to the searcher.

Keyword in subtitles. SEO experts indicate that including the keyword in an H1 tag goes a long way in ensuring a good site ranking. The keyword in H1 tag indicates a description of the article or part of the article, and serves to direct a search engine accordingly.

Content Length. Statistically a more comprehensive, longer post is likely to generate more traction than a shorter post. Google considers this as more informative in terms of content revolving around a keyword, and chooses to rank it before any of the shorter articles which might be concise but do not have the same depth of analysis of the topic. Longer content with high keyword density is the perfect match to make Google rank your website high.

Image Optimization. Images, video, infographics and other forms of media content can be optimized as well through alt texts, descriptions and captions.This is especially important in 2017 as the latest trends indicate media gaining a stronghold over plain text as far as ranking is concerned.

Outbound links.Google and other search engines interpret an outbound link as a vote of confidence by one website to another. If you get credible, well-known websites to link to yours, it acts favourably for your ranking. On the other hand, if you link out to credible sources, Google interprets it as supplementary information, which would also influence your ranking in a positive manner. Too many outbound links, however, can end up hurting the search visibility, so they are best used in moderation.

Internal links.Internal links are a great way to ensure that the strength of ranking is passed within pages from your website. It also offers the search engine the path to ranking your pages. Once a visitor enters your website you would ideally want them to stay as long as possible, and respond to the call to action that you have set out for. For these reasons, internal linking is especially useful.

Content duplicity. Having supplicate content influences the rankings in a negative manner. You should not have content along similar lines in two different pages of your site. It is advisable to write on a unique keyword in each page and each post.

There are factors outside the immediate website which also contribute to the ranking on Google and other search engines.

Off-Page SEO Ranking Factors
Off-page SEO entails the procedures that can be used to improve the positioning or ranking of a website in the SERPs or the Search Engine Results Pages. Other than the common link-building method, there are other technicalities of promoting a website that is important in off-page SEO ranking.
The following list highlights a few of the most common off-page factors.

Linking domains and pages. The number of domains linking to your site and the number of links from other domains to your site are very important ranking factors on search engines. It is, however, preferable to have links from different individual domains than a lot of links from a single domain.

The linking page’s domain authority.Search engines maintain a repository of the dynamic credibility of domains. This is where the domain authority of the linking page becomes a factor in SEO ranking. Links to any pages with a higher authority domain are automatically more influential in better ranking than the same for low authority domains.

Nofollow links and Dofollow links.Nofollow is an attribute used to indicate to a search engine bot not to follow the hyperlink. Nofollow links do not contribute to ranking in Google or other major search engines. A dofollow, on the other hand, contributes to the distribution of page rank from a page. A dofollow link from or to a credible website leads to favourable ranking.

Site Level Factors
How a website is constructed goes a long way in indicating to a search engine how legitimate it is. The site architecture needs to be well framed to let Google organize your content – it boosts your site ranking in the search engine significantly. In addition, 2017 is the year of mobile optimization. The mobile-friendliness of a website is one of the major factors today in the ranking of a website. The percentage of internet usage exclusively on mobiles is expected to grow steeply, making these issues very relevant to site ranking.
Digital expertise is the most sought-after skill in today’s online world. Implementing SEO ranking factors such as the ones discussed here are crucial to the growth of businesses and strengthening of the online market. These are fields of expertise that the modern tech enthusiast should really invest in educating themselves for. To satisfy this endeavour, we have institutes providing specialised educational courses in modern technology like digital marketing. One of the premier institutes in India is Digital Floats in Hyderabad, offering specialised courses in digital marketing streams including SEO marketing, which encompasses understanding and implementing the tactics of SEO to boost a website’s ranking factor and visibility. Undergoing a course at Digital Floats in Hyderabad, is a great way to get to how the big world of SEO marketing, and understand the nuances that contribute to the success of a website and its related online business.