More than keywords: what determines your site ranking?
The obsession of SEO marketers everywhere, site ranking is the position your company occupies in a page of search results. If your site ranking is not quite where you want it to be, there could be numerous reasons why. Obviously, keyword use (or lack thereof) is one explanation, but there are several others. Keep reading to learn more!
Site accessibility
Accessibility refers to how easy – or difficult – your site is for disabled users to navigate. Sites that are designed with accessibility in mind tend to perform better in search results than their less accessible counterparts. This is for a few reasons, including (but not limited to) the following:
- ‘Alt’ (alternative) text for images and captions for videos get indexed by search engines, whereas images and videos themselves do not.
- Organizing your text in an accessible way (i.e. with clearly-marked section headers and titles) makes your content more digestible for search engines and screen readers.
- Accessible sites tend to have sleeker, “cleaner” interfaces.
Page loading speed
Page loading speed is the amount of time it takes for your website to load completely. Standard loading time for a web page is about 7 seconds, but for ideal search engine ranking potential, aim for 3 seconds or fewer. If your loading times are longer than that, try the following tactics to reduce them.
- Resize images to make them smaller.
- Move your site to a new host with quicker load times.
- Remove some ads from your site.
Mobile-friendliness
Many people exclusively use their phones to browse the Web, which means mobile-friendliness is critical. If you discover your site is unwieldy on mobile, these tips may optimize it for smartphone (and improve your search engine optimization efforts in the process).
- Make your site “responsive,” or able to rearrange its design to fit any mobile platform.
- Remove Flash players and other third-party software from your site.
- Enlarge your buttons so they are easily “tappable” on smartphones.
By optimizing your page loading speed and mobile-friendliness, as well as making your page more accessible, you can master any search engine.
SEO Expert Near You
So I may not be near you physically but digitally we’re all neighbors and if you’re like me, you like your neighborhood nice and pretty. Your website’s optimization is no different. Need help optimizing your website backend or content? Let’s talk!
About Brad Nietfeldt
As one of the most sought after digital marketing gurus in America, Brad’s entrepreneurial career involves writing and producing music, successful tech start ups, working for several fortune 500 companies and in his early 20s he was of the first support staff at the then start up currently known as PayPal.com. Learn more.
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