Google & Bing Search Engine Ranking Signals

Google & Bing produce over 2 trillion search results a year, which in turn drive hundreds of billions of dollars in consumer spending. Is your brand seeing its fair share of this massive online market? Are you happy with how you’re appearing on search engine results, or would you like appear higher?

You want to appear on the top of search results with the main search terms of your product and services. With so much content out there nowadays, you can find your way to the top of search results with Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Just keep in mind that it takes dedicated time & attention to your SEO strategy to generate a long-term increase in visitor traffic, but given the consistency of leads generated and low cost of leads, the payoff is worth it.

Here are key ways to improve your SEO ranking on Google & Bing:

1. Website Security: Search engines love secure, always updated, and easy to read websites. Ensure that your WordPress or other Content Management System (CMS) plugins are installed properly and regularly updated. Ensure that your website is safe with a strong SSL certificate.
2. Accessibility: Are the links spaced too close together on your pages, or are they missing “alt” tags to describe images in more detail? Accessibility has become a larger part of the web, and the search engines pay attention to it. Make sure to take this into account to optimize the performance of your site for visitors of all types.
3. Desktop & Mobile Page Speed: Search engines take into account how fast your website loads on browsers and on mobile smartphones. Use Google PageSpeed Insights to understand where your website stands. To optimize your website’s speed, enable compression tools, like GZip, to reduce the size of your images and code. Improve your server response time and leverage browser caching.
4. Responsive Design: According to Google, in the USA, 94% of people with smartphones search for local information on their phones. Interestingly, 77% of mobile searches occur at home or at work, places where desktop computers are likely to be present. Check to see if your website is mobile-friendly. What makes a website mobile friendly? The work involved in making a mobile-friendly site depends on your developer resources, business model, and expertise.
5. Domain Authority: What is domain authority? This is a search engine ranking score determined by several analytics companies’ algorithms (think of it like your website’s credit score). Websites with a very large number of high-quality external links (such as Wikipedia or Google.com) are at the top end of the Domain Authority scale.
6. Optimized Content: Understand the fundamentals of keyword and user intent research. Your website will rank higher with pages deemed as having high-quality content. This is based on an understanding of your audience. Use the same language as that of your audience to provide the information they’re actually looking for (the who’s, what’s, when’s where’s, why’s.) Your articles and blog posts should be longer in (high quality) content (between 800 to 1,000+ words). Longer articles tend to rank better in organic results. Include captivating calls-to-action or clear next steps. By understanding the readers and your buyers’ journeys, they will read your content and stay on your pages longer, which helps your domain authority!
7. Keywords: When we’re talking about “keywords”, we’re really talking about “search terms”. You want to use these in your website and blog articles to help target them to your intended audience. One reason to do this is simple SEO: the more Google finds relevant keywords in your page, the higher it will rank for a particular search. Another important reason is to ensure that you are in fact targeting a market niche that people are looking up. If you’re selling “carpets” but people are looking up “rugs”, then you’re not aligned with the consumer. Doing keyword research beforehand can nip this problem in the bud.
8. Content Hierarchy: Use the correct heading hierarchy (H1, H2, etc.) in the content body of each page. There should only be a single H1 tag on each page, and it should contain a keyword or phrase related to the content for the entire page. You can think of the H2 tags as “chapters” that fall below it, each one focused on a sub-topic. Other headings, such as H3 to H6 follow the same nested structure below the H2 tag, but designers often use them for links and other page elements as well. Your Heading 1 tag is the most important tag on each page – make sure it tells Google & Bing what the page is about.
9. Titles & Descriptions: You need to have a great meta setup for your website. Meta titles, meta descriptions, and meta tags are the language and content that search engines, like Bing or Google, look at first and display on search results. You include this in your page’s hidden code so that search engines have a clear understanding of the abstract of your content, as well as how you want to display pages in search results for viewers.
10. Social Signals: Your new content should accompany features from social media as well as other websites. The more your links appear on other high-quality pages and content, the higher your rank.

As you can see, ranking in Google & Bing is not simply about content: it’s also about page structure, speed, efficiency, and mobile responsiveness. This is a rapidly evolving part of the modern web, driven by the rapid growth in mobile devices. Make sure your site meets all the specifications for high-ranking and watch your traffic soar. If you need help optimizing your website and growing your business, schedule a free consultation now & learn now Agency Digital Marketing can help!