In the last part of 2022 , in all likelihood, the Panda and Pengüin algorithms will be updated, so we must be aware of all the factors that we can work to have an Ideal positioning. That is why I wanted to gather in a sngle document the most important SEO Factors that are being crucial to achieve the objectives that a website should have in terms of Positioning and that every SEO Consultant should know.
53 Most Important SEO Factors in 2022
OnPage SEO Factors
Number of Words
Without a doubt “Content is the King“. That’s why we must pamper it as much as we can. Google only wants to index quality content, and one way to identify that type of content is by the number of words written in the post, in addition to others. The number of words must be more than 1000 to get an optimal positioning. It should also be written with a homogeneous theme throughout the web.
Keyword Density
The keyword density is the differential result of the number of times that keyword appears per 100 words. Therefore, the ideal for a content of 1000 words is not to have a keyword density higher than 1.5%. An ideal tool to measure keyword density in with SEO Quake, which can be found as an extension for both Firefox and Chrome.
Using H1 Tag
The H1 (Text) tag also called Heading 1, is the most important text on each page. It is often identified as the title or main idea being advisable to be different from the title tag, but optimized with keywords inside. There can only be one H1 tag for each URL.
Use of H2 Tag
The H2 tags (Text) also called secondary ideas or paragraph 2, will be distributed throughout the web. It is not advisable to put them in the structure of the template, or web structure to be repeated in all URL’s, as in this way we lose notoriety. It is important that they are personalized in each content. The number we should use should be between 2 and 5.
Use of H3, H4 and later tags
Normally they are the typical tags that go in the structure of the web, and are exposed in all URLs. However we must use them inside the contents to structure them properly. There is no limit to their use, although they should not be over-optimized.
Use of Bold
Bold is used to give more relevance to a word or phrase in particular, as long as the bold is because if it is only style. Therefore we must put in bold those parts of the page that are considered more important or relevant. Do not abuse the bold, because it loses its effectiveness. Bold also serves to improve reading and, therefore, get readers to stay longer on our website.
Use of bullet points
It is necessary for articles with a lot of content to be well structured for perfect reading. The use of bullets is perfectly adequate to be taken into account by Google to position what your bullets list.
Mobile Friendly
Today is one of the main factors of positioning. The blog must be totally friendly for mobile devices. Google launched on April 21 an algorithm to penalize those websites that are not properly adapted to different mobile formats. Therefore it is a factor to take into account.
Internal links
Internal links are links whose origin is a page of your site and the destination is another page of the same site. Internal links are used to distribute the linkjuice and the strength of the website throughout the page, in addition to being able to concentrate Domain Authority and to adequately promote the page we are interested in.
Number of images in the post
It is essential that our articles have multimedia content. That is why it is ideal to have images in our post. But what is the right number of images for our articles? The ideal is one image for every 300 words, so if we write a post of 1000 words I would place 4 images.
Characteristics of the image
The images should be as original as possible, therefore, we must choose images that are not already indexed in Google. One way to check is to drag that image to the Google image search engine and it will tell us if it is already indexed on another website. The problem is that it is very difficult to find images that are not already indexed, especially in free image banks, but not even in paid image banks. That’s why the ideal is to use infographics or create the images ourselves. We can take an image, cut it, add a text and that way we have achieved a totally original image. Although it is best to opt for an infographic or an image made by ourselves. It must also be a quality image, which has to do with the theme of the post. We must complete all the data of the image: Title, Description, Alternative Title (ALT), caption … If we can also geolocate it will be great to rank very quickly.
Type of video
Continuing with multimedia content, it is important to include a video in our articles. It is preferable that the video is embedded from Youtube of a similar theme. Remember that although the embedded YouTube video is an iframe, it is the only iframe that can be used with full guarantee, since the rest are penalized. Therefore we must choose an HD video of the same theme and include it in our post. Ideally, the video should be in our own channel, although it is not essential.
Characteristics of the video
The video must be of the same topic, it must contain a description of more than 400 words. It must also have a good positioning and a large number of tags on YouTube. The quality of the video will be HD as far as possible and with all the data and geolocation completed.
Title
The title of the Post is the most important factor for positioning. If the title is also included in the url, the chances of success are multiplied. The title should not contain more than 75 characters and must contain the keyword. It must also be unique and should not be repeated in any other URL.
URL
The url of the post is crucial for positioning. We must remember that Google differentiates the url’s with accents and without accents, as well as the ñ or umlaut and the rest of non-ASCII symbols. It is therefore important to know first the volume of searches that have one form and another and adapt the url to the larger volume.
Underscores in URL’s
The URL’s of a website should not contain underscores. And as far as possible will be friendly URL’s, with text separated by hyphens.
Meta description
The meta description is not a factor that directly influences SEO although it does indirectly. Since an inadequate meta description causes a decrease in CTR (difference between Views and Clicks), and the CTR is an important SEO factor to position a particular keyword.
Text/Html Ratio
The page must have text content, especially the front page. The text / HTML ratio is the amount of text on the page relative to the HTML content. This factor must be higher than 30%. Anything lower than this may be considered as SPAM by Google.
Author – Google Publisher
It is of utmost importance to identify who is the author of the content of a website. This is done with the tag rel=”Publisher”. This way Google can identify the authorship of the content and relate it to your personal brand. It is also a way to show that it is not SPAM content.
Use of flash
Fortunately, this technique is no longer used. Although today there are still websites of companies that have not been modified that are made entirely in flash. In addition, in others you can see banners and content made in flash. This is totally counterproductive, and is highly penalized, since, in addition, it can not be seen on most mobile devices.
Use of iframe frames
The use of iframe is also a highly penalized technique. Previously it was used for advertising banners, and even to display updated content from other websites. You cannot use iframe, except for YouTube videos that use this technique.
OffPage SEO Factors
Domain Registration
It is normal that a domain that is used to SPAM is registered for only one year, because the website will be used for a short period of time in order to earn as much money as possible before suffering the penalty of Google and then use another domain. Therefore for a serious project we must register the domain for more than 4 or 5 years. That way we show that it will not be a temporary domain, but a domain that we want to have for a long period of time.
CTR
The CTR is the relationship between the number of times a search result appears in Google and the number of times that result is clicked. Therefore the better CTR you have, the better Positioning you will have in the near future.
Cadence of publications.
It is important to know that we must be natural in our publications. Publishing 3 posts in three days and then not publishing anything for the next month is not a natural practice, although many would argue otherwise. However, Google is increasingly taking into account the updating of content, positioning more recent content before less recent content. It is therefore crucial to always generate new urls on a regular basis.
Page speed
It is undoubtedly one of the most important SEO factors to take into account for Web Positioning. A slow loading speed of the web makes the SEO is getting worse. A fast loading speed, makes for Google is identified as a quality content, and therefore will boost it more and more.
Bounce Rate
The bounce rate is the percentage of people who enter a page of your website and leave without visiting any other page of the site, regardless of the time spent on it. The higher the bounce rate, the worse the SEO of a website and vice versa.
Time spent on the website
The time spent on the web is the time that a user is on your page, so the more time spent, the better the positioning of the Web rated by Google. Note that Google does not take into account the time spent on the web when only one page of the site is visited. Therefore the time spent on the website in the bounce is zero, unless the code is modified. This is because Google is not able to know when a session has left the page. Therefore the dwell time of the last page visited is also 0. You can find more information in this post on web analytics.
Number of Visits.
It has always been said that the number of visits is not an SEO factor. But the truth is that tests and experiments say the opposite. A website with 10,000 daily visits is going to rank better for a particular keyword than one that has 100 sessions a day.
Number of URL’s and update.
The number of pages on the Web is not a very relevant data but it is taken into account for SEO Positioning. Therefore it is important to know that there should be new URL’s every so often to improve positioning.
Original content (not copied)
Do not copy or duplicate content. For this, decisions must be made at the level of philosophy and structure, so that it is understood that if the content is duplicated the page is in danger of disappearing.
Redirection from www to www
A domain has two different addresses: http://midominio.com and http://www.midominio.com. In theory they are the same page, but they have different domains. This is interpreted by the search engine as two equal pages with different url’s, so it would be Duplicate Content. To avoid duplicate content you should do a 301 redirect from the first domain with www to without www second globally.
Canonical Redirection
Often we find that, not wanting to show all the content of a category on a single page, we need page2, page3 … as happens on the front pages of blogs and especially in categories of Online Shops. These pages 2, 3, 4… are detected by Google as duplicate content, so we must tell the Great Search Engine to index these websites but keep in mind that the main url is another. This is done with a Canonical Redirect: Rel=”canonical”. This way we will be able to reduce the percentage of duplicated contents of our web page.
Outbound Links
When we write a post talking about a specific topic, sometimes it is necessary to be able to refer to other articles, blogs or news related to it, especially Wikipedia. In most cases we put as a Nofollow link. However, a follow link to one of the references mentioned above is very positive to give credibility to the result. Therefore it is not bad, when we really need it, to include a couple of outbound links to high authority websites.
External links
External links are, together with the Content, the biggest factor in terms of SEO Positioning. The strategy and process of creating links on other websites pointing to the one you want to position is called Linkbuilding. Depending on the strategy, one type of linkbuilding will be carried out or another. Independently there are a series of tips on how the links should be to avoid being penalized:
- We must mix follow and nofollow content to show naturalness.
- The Anchort Text can not exceed 2% globally.
- Never put an Anchor Tex with Keyword, but with brand.
- Do not exchange links
- Do not buy links
- Do not request links from guest post.
- Etc…
Incoming links from Sildebar or Footer.
Google keeps a terrible fight against SPAM and low quality content. Therefore it understands that a content whose recommendation is paid is not a naturally recommended content and is penalized if the link of the recommended content through payment (advertising) is follow. Since the Penguin update in 2013, the links that appear in the Sidelbar or in the Footer are considered as purchased links, as advertising, and therefore, if the link does not have the tag (rel=”nofollow”), the destination website will be penalized.
Number of external links
The number of external links that reach your website will depend on the strategy you decide to take regarding Linkbuilding. For some time now we have known that the quality of these links is more important than the quantity of links obtained.
Toxic or purchased links
External links should never be from any sidelbar or footer of any web page, as we mentioned above. Nor can they be links from sites considered vulnerable or have been breached and are qualified as Spamer, whose links acquire a toxicity difficult to maintain. Therefore it is best to avoid unofficial directories.
Links of similar subject matter.
These are the ideal links to place. If we have a baby shop and we have a product that is super interesting, we should think about how we would link a blogger who writes about the baby world who has no idea of SEO. This is the trend that Google is pursuing, that everything is done in a natural way. That’s why you should look for natural links, from sites with similar subject matter and with natural anchor text.
Anchor Text of inbound links
The Anchor Text is the text that links to a website. The Anchor from a blog (Tier1) to the Money Site will always be placed with Brand text, ie, if your page is calzadoslaviuda.com we can not put original shoes in the Anchor Text, we must put only brand links with the word calzadoslaviuda. It is also necessary that the Anchor Text is not repeated more than 2% in the process of link building. In addition, we must avoid linking to texts with Spameable or sexual content.
Broken Links
Broken links are those that the destination website returns a 404 error (Page Not Found). It is therefore important to modify any link with this problem.
Inbound Link Domination
The domain of the inbound links is also a factor to take into account. Ideally, the links should be from domains with high authority, although they should always be combined with domains of medium or low authority, to show naturalness. However, you must properly analyze the domain from which you want to get a link, because a link from a domain with a bad reputation, can turn the link into a toxic link.
Ip of the incoming links
The Linkbuilding strategy must be in line with the Money Site. Therefore, as far as possible, the links you get should have an IP from the same country. And above all be different IP’s. If we have 200 incoming links, the ideal is to have them from 200 different IP’s, although it is not always usual.
Toxicity of the links.
In a previous point we said that links from domains with a bad online reputation can be toxic and generate the opposite of what we expect. What links can be toxic? Links from very spammy directories, from sites with sexual content, forums where SPAM is performed…
Type of Hosting
In addition to the place of hosting, it is important to know the technical characteristics of hosting a website. A website hosted in a dedicated hosting or a VPS will have more chances to be better positioned than the same website with the same domain in a shared hosting. We must also know that in a shared hosting you share machine, RAM memory and IP with a multitude of domains. If one of them has a code problem and causes a server error (error 500) this error will also affect your page that will no longer be seen. In addition, if any of them performs massive e-mail marketing and SPAM actions using the domain itself, it will intoxicate the IP and, therefore, all the domains that are in it.
Hosting location and IP
If we want to position a website in Spain, it is very important that the hosting and IP are also Spanish. Firstly, from a technical point of view, when the hosting is in another country, it accumulates higher server waiting times and download times, which increases the loading time of the website, which is a key factor for SEO. On the other hand, it is not acceptable that a website with an IP, let’s say Finnish, wants to position itself in another country. That’s why Google is going to boost before websites with IP from the same country from where it is being searched.
Social Network Sharing
Social networks are taking some prominence during 2015, and this is just the beginning. Some SEO techniques already use social networks as boosters of the blogs and websites from where the links have been obtained. Other techniques use social channels as an intermediary between a Tier 1 and the Money Site. We could create a post on the influence of social networks in SEO, sure that some of the fellow experts pick up the gauntlet to delve even deeper into this interesting topic. If anyone wants to publish it here or tell me and we can link it from this post.
Wikipedia references
Not all links should be Follow. To show naturalness to Google it is important that part of the links are Nofollow. A nofollow link, although it does not transfer linkjuice, it does transfer part of the authority of the source domain to the target domain. A site from where you can get Nofollow links is Wikipedia. The best method to get a link from Wikipedia is through Referrals. To give credibility to the published articles Wikipedia needs to make references where it shows that the content shown is real and accurate. It is a good method to place a link as a reference, as long as it is a real reference.
Other Important SEO Factors
About Us and Privacy Policy pages
For a page to have an ideal positioning Google must be absolutely clear that it is a “non-temporary” website, a serious project and not SPAM. For this it is essential to demonstrate the seriousness of it. Therefore the Privacy Policy, the Legal Notice or the About Us page is very important if you want to show some credibility and seriousness.
YouTube channel
Another key factor is the YouTube channel, where all the video tutorials and corporate videos of the Project are uploaded and from where they are embedded in each article. It is crucial that the YouTube channel is complete in a high percentage. It would also be interesting that the videos posted on the channel are original, not copied. In addition, links should be placed in the right section of the channel, both to the money site and to the, Twitter or Facebook profile.
Local SEO (Google My Business)
Local SEO is not only to include your company in Google My Business, but we must also adapt the web and Google+ profile properly to show a synchrony between them. You must put the same contact details in each of the profiles, and on the web itself, respecting commas, spaces and so on.
Local directories
When we want to work the local SEO is also essential to be able toinclude our website in the different local directories that have not been spammed. It doesn’t matter if the domain authority is not very high. Be careful with spamed directories that can be lethal for our website and get the opposite result.
Contact page
It is also important that the contact section of our project is completed to the maximum, and show the same data that have been placed in Google My Business and Google+. Respecting spaces and commas. There should also be internal links to the contact page to give it more domain authority.
Sitemap
It is important to provide as much as possible to Google of the structure that has the web and all the url’s that are generated and we want to take into account. Therefore it is mandatory to add the Sitemap to the Google Webmastertools account. This does not mean that Google indexes everything as we ask in the xml document, as some pages will not be indexed and will have to be done manually, and others that are not in the sitemap because we do not want to index them, Google may index them if there are links from other sites pointing to them. So it is not a panacea, but it is a good guide for Google to take into account.
Robot txt.
It is important that if there is a page that we do not want to index we tell the search engines in an appropriate way. This way is with the robot.txt file, where we will include the URL’s that we do not want to index in any way. When the Google spider enters our page the first thing it does is look for the robot.txt to know what it can and cannot crawl. So it is really important to have it if there are URL’s that we do not want to appear in Google.
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