SEO Ranking Factors for 2018

It has long been a point of confusion as to what really plays into a website’s ranking online.  If you add up all the criteria that Google has mentioned (or been discovered to use) at various time, the count is over 200 different factors now.  And as time goes on, the science around SEO trends is becoming even more complex.  It seems that everyone has their own theories as far as what really matters and what doesn’t, and in what order of importance.  Well, to figure out the exact number of determining SEO ranking factors for 2018 isn’t very important, since we shouldn’t be concerned with touching every single one.

What’s really significant for your organization and the Digital Marketing Agency that handles your SEO Management (yes, we really hope you have an SEO Agency), is the handful of factors that make a difference for you.  Not all SEO ranking factors have equal weight in determining your placement in search engine results.  There are only a small number of significant criteria that truly matter when it comes to boosting your position.  That’s a good thing because this methodology is hard enough already.  There are some good free SEO tools out there, but matters first are figuring out which of those factors are most important for your online presence.

Let’s discuss the most important SEO ranking factors you need to be aware of in 2018.

Local Presence is Major

If you own a small local business, you’re not trying to compete Wal-Mart on a national scale, so focus on what’s important and beat them in your own neighborhood.  Your type of organization relies heavily on a local search engine optimization presence to generate web traffic and bring in potential customers.

Local SEO is the specialized, targeted method to grow ranking power within a particular community. This strategy entails a special mix of elements that are unique to your local consumer.  One of the biggest local SEO ranking factors is tied to Google My Business (GMB).  Google offers this as a page for locally owned companies to publish their photos, videos, customer reviews, short description, and contact info (which creates a map display).  Being issued by Google itself, it obviously becomes vital as an SEO ranking factor within a certain radius of your storefront.  Make sure to claim your company’s GMB page and fill in those details thoroughly, with the current data.  Otherwise, who knows what their system will enter in for you.

Citation Signals on your Local Page

These work in tandem with your GMB page and are also crucial to an effective local SEO strategy.  This is like a barometer of how well your business details have been accurately verified.  It may also include review sites like Yelp and Angie’s List, and business directories like Bing Places for Business, where your information might already be listed.

Citation signals are necessary for local SEO since they validate that your business really exists and is active.  For small local organizations, every indication that this is a legitimate and credible operation is crucial.  It serves as reassurance to consumers.

Backlinks: Still worth it

Backlinks are like votes of confidence from the surrounding community, a way of gauging your popularity.  However, they only matter if they come from a quality source.  These happen when other sites reference yours through links included in their own content.  The challenge is in getting high-quality sites to acknowledge your stuff and create that backlink.

One smart way to achieve this is a strong social media presence.  Though Google doesn’t officially list social media indicators as SEO ranking factors in 2018, the more your content is shared on social media, the more your visibility increases.  The results are increased odds of well-regarded sites sharing and linking to your content.

On-Page SEO

Do you spend enough time thinking about each individual web page on your site?  They count in the results too, not only the overall site.  And these should be optimized to rank higher in searches. 

On-page SEO is comprised of various ranking factors, related directly to search queries.  The components of on-page SEO that warrant the most attention are Keywords in URLs,  Header tags, Title tags, and Alt-image tags.  Each of your pages and every single piece of content that’s featured there had better be optimized using these elements.  This will greatly lift your search result performance, as well as a more targeted profile of visitor that ends up on your page.

High-Quality Content is Still Tops

“Content Marketing” is only gaining in importance with time.  It provides that satisfaction and intangible value that web users are hoping for when they land on a site.  Because delivering superior content is one of Google’s (and Yahoo’s and Bing’s) main missions, then it should be a priority for you too.  High quality, relevant, and attempting to meet the needs of their search engine users.  It has to be fresh, engaging and useful or the search basically failed.  Content has always been the predominant way to make good on the 2 things a user wants most: a satisfying online experience, and matching the keywords they entered.

But the best-written content is useless without a keyword strategy that gets your site ranked higher and pulls in more traffic.  When composing content, it isn’t enough to randomly drop high demand keywords hoping they attract attention.  They need to serve a specific purpose and add value for the searcher.

Keyword Research

You have to know and to unlock the keywords and recurring phrases that web users are currently using to find their answers and do their “shopping”.  These should be the same answers that your business provides, and the products and services they are actively looking for.  This portrays your business as the solution to all their needs, especially when your pages come up over and again in search results.

Every time you publish new content, establish a primary keyword and a series of secondary keywords that match these web searchers’ desires.  These primary and secondary keywords are used for targeting the right demographic in your optimization efforts.  Long tail keywords and voice search optimization that make searches more relevant is an excellent example of this.

Keep Mobile-First Indexing in Mind

Mobile search has already surpassed desktop web searches, and the gap will now start to widen. The people at Google have been referring to its mobile-first index for the last couple of years.  It’s not in full effect yet but is currently being gradually rolled out and implemented, so we all better be ready.  A total mobile-first implementation will be upon us soon.  Still, the current pertinent ranking factors being used are already established with mobile optimization in mind.

Website optimization for mobile browsing and a responsive design are a must the modern mobile consumer.  That pretty much includes everybody.  Potential clients want websites that are easy to use and load quickly their mobile devices.  They will penalize you by going somewhere else if your site is frustrating to use, and Google will penalize you with your ranking score.  And guess what?  Google is the search engine of choice for the vast majority of mobile searches, so it’s only logical that mobile optimization is fast climbing into a top-ranking factor in 2018.

Crawlable, Accessible URLs

You want Google’s web crawler Googlebot (aka “spiders”) to access your pages, understand the content contained there (in a readable format), recognize the graphics, images, and video or anything else on the page.  This way they are able to put it all into their web index. This process is critical and essential because, without that, nothing else you do will matter much.

Conclusion

On an increasingly complex subject, it’s necessary to have a solid understanding of a wide variety of SEO ranking factors.  There’s more than just basic keyword placement to master the critical SEO ranking factors in 2018 and beyond.  The digital landscape is dynamic and hard to put your thumb on.  Each year brings new challenges that marketers must adapt to.

None of us will ever see the official complete list of Google’s ranking factors, and it keeps changing.  So a professional custom web design and content, optimized for the known SEO ranking factors are paramount in the modern era.