Google's 200 Ranking Factors Part - 2 (Site Level Factors)

You probably already know that Google uses about 200 ranking factors in their algorithm… & I already gives you the 10 Factors about the “Domain Factors”.

Let’s again revise the main Factors which effects Google ranking:

·         Domain Factors

·         Page-Level Factors

·         Site-Level Factors

·         Back link Factors

·         User Interaction

·         Social Signals

·         Brand Signals

·         On-Site Web Spam Factors

·         Off Page Web Spam Factors

Now let's talk on the "Site Level Factors" in this Google's 200 Ranking Factors: The Complete List Part – 2

Site-Level Factors

1. Content Provides Value and Unique Insights: 

          Google has stated that they’re on the hunt for sites that don’t bring anything new or useful to the table, especially thin affiliate sites.

2. Contact Us Page: 

          The aforementioned Google Quality Document states that they prefer sites with an “appropriate amount of contact information”. Supposed bonus if your contact information matches your whois info.

3. Domain Trust/Trust Rank:

          Site trust — measured by how many links away your site is from highly-trusted seed sites — is a massively important ranking factor. You can read more about Trust Rank here.

4. Site Architecture:

          A well put-together site architecture (especially a silo structure) helps Google thematically organize your content.

5. Site Updates:

  

          How often a site is updated — and especially when new content is added to the site — is a site-wide freshness factor.

6. Number of Pages:

          The number of pages a site has is a weak sign of authority. At the very least a large site helps distinguish it from thin affiliate sites.

7. Presence of Sitemap:

          A sitemap helps search engines index your pages easier and more thoroughly, improving visibility.

8. Site Uptime:

          Lots of downtime from site maintenance or server issues may hurt your ranking (and can even result in DE indexing if not corrected).

9. Server Location:

          Server location may influence where your site ranks in different geographical regions. Especially important for Geo-specific searches.

10. SSL Certificate:

          Google has confirmed that they index SSL certificates and that they use HTTPS as a ranking signal.

11. Terms of Service and Privacy Pages:

          These two pages help tell Google that a site is a trustworthy member of the internet.

12. Duplicate Meta Information On-Site:

          Duplicate Meta information across your site may bring down all of your page’s visibility.

13. Breadcrumb Navigation:

          This is a style of user-friendly site-architecture that helps users (and search engines) know where they are on a site:

14. Mobile Optimized:

          Google’s official stance on mobile is to create a responsive site. It’s likely that responsive sites get an edge in searches from a mobile device. In fact, they now add “Mobile friendly” tags to sites that display well on mobile devices. Google also started penalizing sites in Mobile search that aren’t mobile friendly.

15. YouTube:

          There’s no doubt that YouTube videos are given preferential treatment in the SERPs (probably because Google owns it):

16. Site Usability:

          A site that’s difficult to use or to navigate can hurt ranking by reducing time on site, pages viewed and bounce rate. This may be an independent algorithmic factor gleaned from massive amounts of user data.

17. Use of Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools:

          Some think that having these two programs installed on your site can improve your page’s indexing. They may also directly influence rank by giving Google more data to work with (i.e. more accurate bounce rate, whether or not you get referral traffic from your backlinks etc.).

18. User reviews/Site reputation:

          A site’s on review sites like Yelp.com and RipOffReport.com likely play an important role in the algorithm. Google even posted a rarely candid outline of their approach to user reviews after an eyeglass site was caught ripping off customers in an effort to get back links.

          

Subscribe our Digital Marketing Blog

Read More

Google's 200 Ranking Factors Part - 1 (Domain Level Factors)

You probably already know that Google uses about 200 ranking factors in their algorithm… But what the heck are they?

Well today You will get to know all of them because I will explain all the factors in this series of "Google's 200 Ranking Factors".

Some are proven. Some are controversial & Others are SEO nerd speculation But they’re all here.

• Domain Factors
• Page-Level Factors
• Site-Level Factors
• Backlink Factors
• User Interaction
• Social Signals
• Brand Signals
• On-Site WebSpam Factors
• Off Page WebSpam Factors

Now let's start with the "DOMAIN FACTORS" in this Google's 200 Ranking Factors : The Complete List Part - 1

"DOMAIN FACTORS"

1. Domain Age :- 

     Matt cutts states that “The difference between a domain that’s six months old versus one year old is really not that big at all.”
In other words, they consider the domain age but its not very important.

2. Keywords appears in Top level Domain :- 

     Doesn’t give the boost that it used to, but having your keyword in the domain still acts as a relevancy signal. After all, they still bold keywords that appear in a domain name.

3. Keyword as first word in Domain :- 

     A domain that starts with their target keyword has an edge over sites that either don’t have the keyword in their domain or have the keyword in the middle or end of their domain.

4. Domain Registration Length :- 

     A Google states that “Valuable (legitimate) domains are often paid for several years in advance, while doorway (illegitimate) domains rarely are used for more than a year. Therefore, the date when a domain expires in the future can be used as a factor in predicting the legitimacy of a domain”

5. Keyword in sub-domain Name :- 

     Moz’s 2011 panel agreed that a keyword appearing in the sub-domain can boost rankings.

6. Domain History :- 

     A site with volatile ownership (via whois) or several drops may tell Google to “reset” the site’s history, negating links pointing to the domain.

7. Exact Match Domain :- 

     EMD may still give you an edge…if it’s a quality site. But if the EMD happens to be a low-quality site, it’s vulnerable to the EMD update.
      Matt cutts states that "Small upcoming Google algorithm change will reduce low quality 'Exact match' domains in search results."

8. Public vs Private Whois :- 

     Private Whois information may be a sign of “something to hide”. 
       Matt cutts is quoted as stating in 2006 : “When I checked the whois on them, they all had “whois privacy protection service” on them. That’s relatively unusual. Having whois privacy turned on isn’t automatically bad, but once you get several of these factors all together, you’re often talking about a very different type of webmaster than the fellow who just has a single site or so.”

9. Penalized Whois Owner :- 

     If Google identifies a particular person as a spammer it makes sense that they would scrutinize other sites owned by that person.

10. Country TLD Extension :- 

     Having a Country Code Top Level Domain (.aus, .in, .uk, .us) helps the site rank for that particular country…but limits the site’s ability to rank globally.

           

Subscribe our Digital Marketing Blog

Read More

Benefits of Using Wordpress to Power Your Organization

WordPress has been around since 2003 and is the most popular blogging software. Over the last few years, WordPress has also become the content management software of choice for non-blogging websites. Here are the top reasons why WordPress is so popular and why you might want to consider switching to a WordPress platform for your organization's website.

1. Ease of Use

WordPress is very easy to use and has an intuitive interface.  Adding new pages, blog posts, images, etc. on a regular basis is a breeze and can be done quickly.  Because the technology is so simple, time spent on formatting is greatly reduced.

2. Manage Your Website from Any Computer

Wordpress is browser-based. You can login from any Internet connected computer and manage your site.

3. No HTML Editing or FTP Software Required

Wordpress is a self-contained system and does not require HTML editing software (such as Adobe Contribute or Dreamweaver). You can create a new page or blog post, format text, upload images (and edit them), upload documents, video files, image galleries, etc. all without the need for additional HTML or FTP software.

4. Search Engines Love Wordpress Sites

The code behind Wordpress is very clean and simple, making it easy for search engines to read and index a site’s content. In addition, each page, post, and image can have its own Meta tag keywords, description, and title, and be optimized for specific keywords, allowing for very precise search engine optimization.  You can also use tags to further enhance your search engine optimization efforts.

5. You Have Control of Your Site

No more waiting for your web designer to make simple updates to your site. With Wordpress, you have control of nearly every aspect of your site and can easily make those simple updates yourself.

6. The Design of Your Website is 100% Customizable

Wordpress acts as the engine for your website. The look and feel of the site can be 100% customized so your brand can shine through on your site and provide a unique experience to your visitors.

7. A Blog is Built-in and Ready to Go

Since Wordpress was originally created as a blogging platform, blogging capabilities are built-in and are easy to integrate, if desired. Setting up RSS / email subscriptions to your blog, commenting capabilities, and automatically adding the most recent blog posts to other pages of the site (your home page, for example) are also very simple to set-up, and help to extend your company’s reach and make your site more dynamic and interactive.

8. Extend the Functionality of Your Site with Plugins

Want to add an event calendar, video gallery, Twitter Feed, Facebook Fan Box, and more to your site? WordPress makes this possible with plugins, most of which are free or very reasonably priced.

9. Your Site Can Grow as Your Business Grows

WordPress sites are very scalable. You can have hundreds of thousands of pages or blog posts on your site and the performance of the site will not be compromised in the least.

10. Have Multiple Users

As an administrator of a WordPress site, you can set-up multiple users for the website and assign access levels and capabilities to each user.

                

 Subscribe our Digital Marketing Blog

Read More

WORDPRESS – A BEST CMS FOR ANY WEBSITE & BLOG

Wordpress is a free and open-source content management system (CMS) based on PHP and MySQL. Wordpress is installed on a web server, which either is part of an Internet hosting service or is a network host itself. Features include a plugin architecture and a template system. Wordpress was used by more than 23.3% of the top 10 million websites as of January 2015. Wordpress is the most popular blogging system in use on the Web, at more than 60 million websites. Another benefit of using Wordpress is it not required a high level Technical skills in developing. Wordpress is a very unique & ready to use platform for such kind of users. Wordpress is also very Easy to optimize for the SEO as Wordpress now comes with the very great plugins for SEO like “YOAST”, “ALL IN ONE SEO plugin”, “Broken Link checker” & many more.

THEMES:
Wordpress users may install and switch between themes. Themes allow users to change the look and functionality of a Wordpress website and they can be installed without altering the content or health of the site. Every Wordpress website requires at least one theme to be present and every theme should be designed using Wordpress standards with structured PHP, valid HTML and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). Themes may be directly installed using the Wordpress "Appearance" administration tool in the dashboard or theme folders may be uploaded via FTP. The PHP, HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) and CSS code found in themes can be added to or edited for providing advanced features. Wordpress themes are in general classified into two categories: Free themes (wordpress.org) & Premium themes (Theme forest, Studio Press, Elegant Themes, cyber chimps etc.) All the free themes are listed in the Wordpress theme directory and premium themes should be purchased from marketplaces and individual Wordpress developers. Wordpress users may also create and develop their own custom themes if they have the knowledge and skill to do so. If Wordpress users do not have themes development knowledge then they may download and use free Wordpress themes from wordpress.org.

PLUGINS:

Wordpress plugin architecture allows users to extend the features and functionality of a website or blog. Wordpress has over 40,501 plugins available, each of which offers custom functions and features enabling users to tailor their sites to their specific needs. These customizations range from search engine optimization, to client portals used to display private information to logged in users, to content management systems, to content displaying features, such as the addition of widgets and navigation bars. But not all available plugins are always abreast with the upgrades and as a result they may not function properly or may not function at all. In sort we can extend the functionality of our website very easily.

Features of Wordpress: 

Wordpress also features integrated link management, a search engine friendly, clean permalink structure, the ability to assign multiple categories to articles, and support for tagging of posts and articles, Automatic filters are also included, providing standardized formatting and styling of text in articles (for example, converting regular quotes to smart quotes). Wordpress blog posts can be edited in HTML, using the visual editor, or using one of a number of plugins that allow for a variety of customized editing features.

Migration / wp-config.php:

Wordpress makes migration from one server to another relatively simple due to its use of a configuration file (wp-config.php, usually located in your root). This file controls the base settings for a Wordpress website including your database connection settings. Due to the use of a configuration file, migrating from one server to another can be accomplished by the following basic steps:

Step 1: Download WordPress. Download the WordPress package to your local computer from http://wordpress.org/

Step 2: Upload WordPress to Hosting Account.

Step 3: Create MySQL Database and User.

Step 4: Configure wp-config.php.

Step 5: Run the Installation.

Step 6: Complete the Installation.

So now get ready with your Content & Download, Run & install the Wordpress.

           

Subscribe our Digital Marketing Blog

Read More

How To Optimize Blog for Search Engine Using Search console Tool

Google Webmaster is an amazing tool, and if you are a serious blogger you should never avoid Google Webmaster tool. From SEO perspective, it’s a life saver as it gives you the complete detail about your site in Google search engine.

Webmaster tool offers many tools that will let you analyze your blog thoroughly, and you can work on that to make your blog ranking better in the search engine. Remember search engine optimization is a gradual process and doesn’t happen overnight. Sometime it take weeks, months to get proper search engine ranking. I will not be taking about back-links and other strategy for your ranking, instead in this post I will be sharing about how you can use best free SEO tool call Google webmaster tool to optimize your blog for search engines.

How to Make your Blog Search friendly using Search Console tool:

This is the first thing that you need to do. Generate a sitemap of your blog and submit it to Google webmaster tool. This will eventually help Google to crawl your site effectively, and you can keep a track how many links are being indexed by Google.  If you have not submitted your sitemap till now, go ahead and submit your sitemap to Google webmaster tool.

Webmaster settings enable you to configure some important things like Geographical target. If your blog or service is limited to one particular region, configure it for that. For example one of my client WordPress blog is for UK Web Development services, so I configured her blog Geographical target as UK. Same goes with your blog or service. If your blog targets globally, leave it as it is. WordPress take care of WWW and non-WWW though I suggest use Google webmaster tools to configure this setting as well. Crawl rate depends on how often you update your blog. I always leave it on Google, though if you update your blog many times a day or once in a week time, you might like to play with this setting as well.

Site link are the pages from your site and website which Google find useful and from my experience pages you link the most define your site links. Sometime Google add less useful posts or pages like disclaimer and privacy policy as site link. In this case you can use this feature of webmaster tool to configure your site links. You can’t add links to be included into your site links from here but you can always block unwanted links.

When it comes to maintaining your search engine ranking and improving it, finding the top ranking keywords is one of the crucial parts. Search queries feature of Google webmaster tool, will show you which keyword you ranking for, your Google position and link to the post. They recently revamped this and added post link and search engine placement feature. You can use WordPress plugin like SEO Smart link to auto link such keywords to maintain your ranking and also try to push posts on the second page to first page in search engine. This is so far one of the top features that you should be using now.

Ranking for the right keyword is more important than ranking for the wrong keyword. If your blog is about shoes, and you rank for keywords like shirts and trousers and you are on the first page, such traffic is useless. Google webmaster keyword tool determine which keyword they found while crawling your site. If you are ranking for a wrong keyword, your strategy should find the cause and try to show the related and useful keyword to search engine.

There are many other tools like website speed, internal links, crawl errors that are equally important. I suggest you should spend some time inside your Google webmaster tool today and come back with your queries. Let’s make a good discussion thread about SEO using Google Webmaster tool.


Also, let us know which feature of Google search console tool you find most useful?

Let's Find:  some important SEO Checklist for New Website/Blog

           

Subscribe our Digital Marketing Blog

Read More