What is Search Engine Optimization (a.k.a. SEO) ?
Search Engine Optimization is the sum of all processes that focuses on putting your website (or a specific landing page) higher ranking on search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Bing, Baidu, Yandex, DuckDuckGo, etc. The biggest being Google.com with 92% of the global market share. All of these search engines crawl and index millions of websites and billions of web pages. Imagine how much competition there is! Since there is enormous competition, of course, the Search Engine algorithms are trained to rank websites when somebody searches for a specific keyword, so that they show the best ones according to their criteria. But, they are not human, they are machines/bots/robots that look for some specific things in websites to decide if it should rank higher or lower in the search results.
How do I show my site on the first page of Google?
Google is the most advanced search engine that exists, so it is a complicated process to optimize your site to show it on the first page of the search engine result pages (a.k.a SERP). There are so many factors that the algorithm looks and it keeps changing every day. It is reported that Google makes 500-600 changes every year. Therefore, it requires a lot of effort to keep track of new trends.
It’s difficult, but no need to panic!
Google is a service that tries to bring the best results to its users. So, if you improve your page to give the correct information in the clearest way, if you optimize your website for nice user experience, improving speed and design, then you have nothing to worry about! And I can help you do that!
So what are the main factors that Google is checking to rank my website in 2020?
Even though we don’t know all the factors that search engines look for in a website, we know the main factors. Think how would a typical user would enjoy the website?
- Page Speed: First, it should load fast. Nobody likes a website that is slow, nor does search robots.
There are many ways to increase the speed of your site such as:
- Using a caching mechanism
- Compressing your code and text
- Using images that are not too big but fit perfectly to screen.
- Trustworthiness: Then, it should give you the information/product/knowledge you are looking for. If it is a page that tries to trick people to sell/promote other things than what the user is looking for, then that website is not trustworthy. Neither for users and definitely not for the algorithms.
- Secure Connection: Something that not enough people put attention on is having an SSL. So you should have an HTTPS:// link rather than HTTP://.
This is good for the security of the information transformed between the website and the end-user. As well as your reliability in the eyes of the algorithms
- Responsiveness: Desktops are not the only place people surf the web anymore. Your website should look perfect also on all mobile phones and tablets. This way it reaches many more people and gives the information in the most efficient way.
- Age: How long has been the website up and running? The older the better.
- Backlinks: How many sites are there on the internet that is linking to it / backing it up? How many of them are quality websites?
- Up-to-dateness: If your website is not updated regularly, how can it have reliable information?
- Image Optimization: The quality and relativeness of the images, as well as the loading times.
- Social Signals: Yes! As well as improving your credibility among the audience, social media shares and likes are helping your SEO as well.
- and so many more…
Free Search Engine Optimization Analysis
If you would like to have a Free SEO analysis on your website or get a quote on how I can improve your search engine rankings you can easily contact me through the contact & quote form.