Understanding SEO, or “How Do I Rank Higher on Google?”

Many people wonder how Google rankings work, so before we get into the actual search engine ranking factors, let’s get started by answering some of the basic questions most people have about SEO.

What is “Ranking” in SEO?

As you may know, SEO stands for search engine optimization, which simply means making the web pages better for search engine ranking.

How Do Google Search Rankings Work?

When people want to find information, they type or say words related to what they’re looking for. Those are called keywords, and we’ll look at those in the content optimization section of this guide.

But search engine rankings are not just about keywords; they’re also about the quality of information.

According to Google’s own search quality ratings, when it indexes the main content of each page, it checks factors like:

• The purpose of the page
• Expertise, authority, and trustworthiness – not just from the site and the page content, but expertise from the individual creator of the content too.
• Content quality and amount
• Website info and info about the content creator
• Website reputation and content creator reputation

These go into its ranking algorithm and help to determine SEO ranking.

SEO requirements keep changing, and it can be hard to keep up with the latest developments. But if you want your site to get traffic, you have to be in the know.

Well-optimized sites get more and more traffic over time, and that means more leads and sales. Without SEO, searchers won’t be able to find your site, and all your hard work will be for nothing.

In this guide, we’re going to share the essential SEO ranking factors you need to dominate search.

We’ve created this handy table of contents in case you want to skip ahead to the SEO ranking factors that are most interesting to you:

What Are the Most Important SEO Ranking Factors?

1. A Secure and Accessible Website
2. Page Speed (Including Mobile Page Speed)
3. Mobile Friendliness
4. Domain Age, URL, and Authority
5. Optimized Content
6. Technical SEO
7. User Experience
8. Links
9. Social Signals
10. Real Business Information