If several years ago we found articles with dozens and sometimes hundreds of different ranking factors in search engines, today the picture has acquired a more obvious trend and various studies allow us to correctly prioritise. The following 4 factors were derived from research SearchMetrics, Backlinko и SEO PowerSuite.
1. Content
Probably, this point has been no secret for optimisers for a long time. A relevant content written in the "human" rather than "seo" language gets a noticeable advantage in the battle for tops. The use of the keywords in the title, h1 and meta tags is still an influential parameter, yet its importance is decreasing every year. For example, according to SearchMetrics, 53% of pages in Google's top 20 contain keywords in the title tag, and less than 40% of landing pages contain keywords in the H1 tags.
Conclusion. An ideal content is the one that fully answers the visitor's request, reveals the essence of the issue, and is accompanied by useful infographics, images and videos.
2. Inbound Links
Professional SEO optimisers usually purchase links from other resources to their website. This helps the promoted site get the so-called "trust": if they refer to you, then your content is interesting and necessary. So the link is still an important ranking factor. At the same time, search engines are developing and already today they are able to distinguish qualitative links from substandard ones. If you just buy a huge amount of links from the first sites that you find, it is most likely that you either get sacked from the search for "overoptimisation", or simply will not achieve the desired success, because the reputation of referring sites is of paramount importance.
Conclusion. First you need to direct your efforts towards creating some useful content, so that you find a natural mass of incoming links, for example, by distributing the article in social media. In addition, you can build partnerships with authoritative sources.
3. Mobile-first UX
In 2016 the world learned the concept of "mobile-first index" which is actively developing in 2017. It means that the search engine starts indexing your site with the mobile version, and only in case of its absence, passes over to the desktop one. Now 85% of all sites in Google comply with the definition of "mobile-friendly", i.e. are friendly to mobile devices.
Conclusion. All this tells us about fairly obvious things: be sure to optimise the site for the mobile version because it influences search ranking increasingly.
4. Technical Factors
HTTPS Protocol. In simple terms, the HTTPS protocol is a more secure version of all the well-known HTTP. In 2014, Google announced that HTTPS-sites will receive a small boost in the ranking. Although it is too early to speak about the serious significance of this parameter, it is still worth keeping in mind.
h1 and h2 Tags. According to SearchMetrics, the use of these tags positively affects the position in the search. Remember that in the IQSites Constructor, the "Title" parameter of the text widget is responsible for h1, and "Subtitle" is responsible for for h2.
Anchor Text. Anchor text is a text in a hyperlink that describes the page that this link leads to (for example, this anchor text refers to this article). It is important that the anchor text match the search query to the maximum. For instance, if you refer to another article in your blog, be sure to write the anchor text that is relevant to the article.
Intermediate Advertising. This year, sites that abuse various kinds of banners and pop-ups have a low priority in search results. Be careful with promotional materials!
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