There are many, many factors that will influence your search engine position, some even suggest that Google has 200 signals that it uses to rank a website by. Unfortunately very few people are privy to this information, and in this post we will explore some of the on site factors that have an influence on your search engine positions.
Keywords in the domain name
The domain name is the very first thing that a search engine robot will look at and if there is a keyword within it, then it stands your website in good stead. In addition if somebody links to the website and just uses the domain name as the anchor text, the keyword is still prominent. However, there is more than SEO benefit that you can receive from having a keyword in your domain name. When a search is carried out the keywords that have been used in the search query are bolded in the snippet which also includes the domain name and potentially this could increase the number of clicks through to your website.
Age and history of the domain name
The age of a domain name can be influential because search engines will perceive older domains which have had the same website on it for many years to be an authoritative and established source for information. Therefore it is harder for new websites to hold a consistent search engine ranking and avoid the ‘Google Dance’ because the search engine is trying to calculate where they should position the website within the results. In addition, if a website has a history of being penalised by a search engine then the chances are that this could be held against you which is why it is important to carry out a domain name history check prior to buying it.
TLD of the domain name
TLD is an abbreviation for Top Level Domain, and is the .co.uk, .com or one of the many other suffixes to the main part of the domain name. For the best results in UK versions of search engines a .co.uk will hold a greater weighting as the search engines are able to easily identify the source and country of origin of the website.
Location of the hosting server
In order to achieve a better search engine results position in UK versions of search engines, the search engine needs to know which country your website is targeting. This can be achieved through the TLD, but also through the location of your server. For example if you have a server that is based in Germany, your IP address will be reflected in this and consequently the search engine will believe your website to be most beneficial to German Internet users. Therefore having the server based in the UK will play a significant role in your search engine positioning. Although Google now has the provision in its Webmasters Tools to specify the country, many of the other search engines do not have this facility.
Website loading speed
If your website takes a long time to load (anything over a few seconds is slow) then you are being perceived to be slowing down the Internet and so this will have some bearing on your search engine position. There are free online speed tests that can be used to check this, but the general thing to look out to counter this are to reduce the size of any assets (videos, images, etc.) that may take time to load and the speed of your server.
Amount of Internet downtime
If a search engine robot visits your website and it cannot find it because the website is down, it will mark this against you. If this repetitively happens then the search engine will think that there is a problem with your website and as a result this will have a detrimental effect on your search engine positions. To combat any downtime that you may incur you should try to resolve the problem immediately to know when your website is down install a server monitor which will send you an alert.
Use of keywords in the title tag
The title tag holds a lot weighting in regards to your search engine position. Therefore it is important that it includes your most relevant keywords and the one’s that you want to rank for the most. When you write these keep your human audience in mind as not only will they read them but they will also form part of the search engine snippet. There is a delicate balance on how to write the title tag, do not overload it with keywords and keep within the confinements of the number of characters that the search engine results title can display.
Use of keywords in the meta description tag
The meta description tag should summarise for a search engine robot what content is on each specific page. It should be written in a manner that combines an explanation of the products or services that your company offers along with a clear call to action for the customer. The reason being that the meta description tag can play a significant role in creating the snippet that is displayed by the search engine in the results pages.
Use of keywords in the meta keywords tag
Many argue that there is little point in completing the meta keywords tag as Google doesn’t make use of it anymore. Originally it did, however people cottoned onto the fact that if they stuffed it full of their keywords they could rank for as many terms as they wanted which is why Google changed its algorithm. However, many other search engines still use them and so this tag is definitely worth completing. In addition, if the keywords are used in the tag then it can only improve the relevancy that search engines place on your website. For more information on the use of keywords in the meta tag, please view our previous blog post on The Importance of Keywords.
Uniqueness of the meta titles, descriptions and keywords on each page
Each and every page on your website needs to be individually written in order to maximise your chances of ranking well in the search engines. This is because the search engines could perceive your website as containing duplicate content if all of these tags are the same, but also having a diversity of tags and keywords within them can only increase your chances of ranking for a greater range of keywords.
Use of keywords in the H1, H2 and H3 tags
Since the inception and growth of style sheets, the usage of H1, H2, H3, etc. tags has declined. Initially they were used to inform the search engine robot that that the content within these tags held greater importance than that on the rest of the page. If you website doesn’t use style sheets then it is important that these tags are used correctly.
Keyword density of content
Search engines are looking for websites that are authoritative on the subject matter that a user is looking for information on. Therefore it is imperative that your content on the website includes your relevant keyword and is written in a manner that it reads well for the human end users. Ideally you should be looking to use your keywords once in every twenty words written. If you are too liberal in their usage then you may be penalised for keyword stuffing which will negatively impact your search engine position.
Original and unique content
It is important that the content of your website is well written and original. If a search engine indexes a web page and comes across another website that has exactly the same content, or slightly adapted, it will determine which website had the content first and rank it accordingly whilst the second website it will receive no SEO benefit from the content.
Website structure and internal linking
The objective for any website is to provide human readers with information and this should be presented to them in a logical manner when navigating around the website with clear links. Search engine robots are looking for this and the better that it is done then it will increase your search engine position.
How often the website is updated
Search engines look more favourably on websites that are regularly updated and it also gives you the opportunity to increase your keyword density with new posts and information.
Deletion of pages without 301 redirects
If you update or change the URL’s of your website it is important to redirect the old pages to the new ones with 301 redirects. This is important for search engine optimisation as search engines may have indexed the original page and if they cannot find it then this will be reflected in the search engine positions which will drop. In terms of usability, if a search engine has indexed a page and displays it in the results pages, when a web user clicks through to the website and the page no longer exists and a 301 redirect hasn’t been set up an error message will be displayed so they will return to the search engine and click through to your competitors website.
This concludes some of the on site factors that can influence your website. For the off site factors which influence your search engine position, you can find this in the blog post 8 off-site factors that influence your search engine position
