What Signals Does Your Site Send?

Search Ranking Factors

Is it possible your site could be tweaked to perform better with Google and Bing? Yes, it is. Turning the knobs on certain elements of your website can increase or decrease search ranking. SEO improvements transform your website so it has the best chance of succeeding for competitive keywords. These improvements also make your site friendly for all site visitors, not just automated ones. There are many factors that go into determining a website's overall search rank. Let's take a look at a few of those signals:

  • How credible is your site content for your business' targeted keywords? For instance, a framing store would want to target the keyword "picture frame" or "buy picture frame" so they show up in the search results. But if their site focused on the pictures inside the frames, then it likely wouldn't float to the top of search results. It's important to create content using proper formatting of text, web standards page code, and quality internal linking.
  • What does your link profile look like? Do you have links coming from other sites? Maybe you have some social media mentions or a newspaper article written about your business. Each link pointing to your domain gives your site credibility in the eyes of search engines. But that doesn't mean all links are good. High authority domains pass the most credibility on to the link target.
  • Are social media users linking to your site? A big part of online marketing is attracting attention. Mostly from bloggers and social media mavens. If you can get the word out about a unique event, blog article, photo, video, or other site attraction, then you can gain valuable links back to your site. Strategies abound on how to improve your visibility within the social media circles. Search engines have become more aware of social media mentions. Look for social media to play a larger and larger role in your site's performance with search results over the next few years.

That's a taste of the considerations to be made regarding your site's search performance. Google considers around two hundred different ranking factors when looking at a website. How does your site measure up against the competition? Could you be doing things better? If you would like a free website consultation, please use the contact form to contact Jason Frye today. He can help diagnose what ails your website and work with you to improve the rankings.

Jason Frye's picture
About Jason Frye
Jason Frye is the Digital Marketing Consultant on the Digital Services team. Jason has been helping small businesses be successful online since 2000. He's the resident expert on search marketing. You can connect with Jason on Twitter @ng_digital or through the Digital Services Facebook Page. He writes about search, social media, and design practices as they affect small businesses.

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