5 Factors That Are Affecting Your Google Rankings & How to Neutralize Them

With everything that happened in the past year, almost every business has now shifted to the much easier and affordable online module and with such ups and downs in the trends of market and economy, every business is making a run for their bread and butter. If you are also an online business that is new to all the lingos of social media marketing, search engine optimization, etc. Or you are an established business firm but are struggling to gain the rank in search engine rankings due to the new advancements in Google’s algorithm than don’t worry as I have specially handpicked the factors that can possibly affect your rankings and in this article, I am going to discuss 5 of them and how you can neutralize their effect and grow as a business so keep reading.

SEO or search engine optimization has been around for a long time now and as time went by, things kept changing and newer advancements came into play. There was a time when Hit & Trial was the only method to decide whether an approach is working or not and in today’s day and age, every single thing that you might require to get your website’s ranking from nay to yay is not only available but can be accessed without having to go into deep lengths of trouble. There is no secrete in the fact that if you have a website that is well-optimized and maintained then it is going to get more traffic as it will always be higher in the search engine rankings. People often stay confused about what are the things that they should do to gain higher traffic and more visitors to their websites whereas they should focus more on things that they should NOT do.  

The rankings and exposure on Google is nothing less than a gamble, nobody actually knows what is going to happen until it actually happens. While there are some guidelines that you must follow in order to have genuine practices, there are also certain things that one must keep in mind while dealing with SEO and other digital marketing operations. Were you once on top and now nowhere to be seen? Well, let’s unravel the reason behind it by discussing the factors that might be causing your website to lose traffic. Let’s get started!

1. Security and Accessibility of Your Website

The very first thing that you should be concerned about, in order to improve your Google rankings is the accessibility and security of your website. The easier to access your website is the more users it will attract. The security on the other hand concerns an authorized SSL (Secure Socket Layer). It is nothing but a certificate that affiliates your website’s security on the servers of Google and other search engines so that it can recommend your website to its users. Your website should be easy to access so that the bots of Google can reach your website and crawl it in order to present it in front of the targeted audience.

In order to achieve great visibility on the Google search engine, here are the things that you can do -

a) First things first, create your website in a well-coded environment i.e do not leave any loopholes in the development as the algorithm checks the entire website to analyze its reliability and trustworthiness.

b) Always host a robot.txt file so that the bots can get an idea about where to look for. It is a very small step but can do wonders for you and your website.

c) Although it is not mandatory, try to host your website in HTTPS as it has been observed that having an HTTPS is quite lightly effective in increasing the rankings of a website.

d) Include a site-map on your website so that when the bots try to crawl your website they can get everything at a simple place. Having a site map is not only good for your rankings but it also increases the accessibility for a normal user as they do not have to keep searching for things on your website.

Other than these 4 factors you can always look for small developing issues in your website and resolve them. Keep in mind that a healthy website will always be the first choice of Google’s algorithm.

2. Quality of Content

As discussed earlier in this article, content plays a very crucial role in every aspect of your business be it creating an online presence, social media campaigns, or your website service pages, if you have accurate content with good quality information and just the right amount of promotional lines then believe it or not there is nothing that can stop you from ranking.

Understand it with an example, if you look for something as simple as who is the founder of apple and the search result shows you the name of Bill Gates what would you do? You would immediately switch your search engine as it is the search engine’s task to provide you with reliable information and Google never wants to lose their users that is why they have executed some algorithms in place which not only go through the content multiple times, but also checks the authenticity and quality of that particular information. If it finds your listed content useful for the reader ( Apparently Google knows what people might find useful), then it pushes your website up and if the content on your website is, in any way wrong or deviating, then sorry to say but you will not be able to see your website even on the last page of Google’s search results. 

You can implement the following practices to ensure that the quality of content does not become a reason for a decline in the rankings of your website - 

a) Always try to convey informational content. People on Google are looking for either the information or service and if you can serve them with the combination of both then your website is never going down.

b) Always focus on the keywords that you are targeting. A phrase or a word that a user might search for should be your priority but ensure that you do not fill your content with the same keyword as it will cause redundancy which will hurt the quality of your content.

c) Keep your content error-free and easy to read. Most of the time what people do is that they create content without thinking about the ability of their readers. If the language is too complex Google will not show it to the majority of people as it has a habit of adapting according to the requirements of its users.Optimize your content according to the needs of your users and make it more and more natural so that it attracts “humans”.

Keep these three factors in mind and there will be nothing that can stop you from crawling up to the top of the Google rankings.

3. Improve Your Page Speeds 

Page speed is something that goes unnoticed by the developers or the host, but is the first thing that is noticed by a user as well as the search engine. Google has always been an active way of learning new things and if your website is low on speed or it wastes the time of Google’s user then sorry to say but your website will not be recommended by Google, as the whole idea of the internet is to simplify access to information and keep it faster and faster for a user. Every page of your website should be able to open up in the quickest time possible as it will not only increase the traffic on your website but it will also increase the chances of its ranking. 

In today’s day and age, every other person has a smartphone in his hand which can access every single thing on the internet. You too should keep in mind that your website should be able to open up in minimal timings even if the user is using a smartphone to access it. It should be mobile friendly and user friendly. In Google’s algorithm release of 2018, they specifically mentioned that if the websites don’t open up in a particular time frame or take longer to load then they will be penalized. 

If you are facing such problems with your website then it is really important to fix them as that might be the reason for your website ranking low. What you can do to overcome this is -

a) Use Google’s mobile testing tool to understand the performance of your website. This will give you insights into how your website is performing on a smartphone so that you can work on it accordingly.

b) Look for insights on Google’s search console to improve your page speed as it offers various tools that can help you achieve minimal loading speeds. 

c) Follow all the practices that can help you enhance the page speed such as using different formats of images that do not take up space to make your website lighter, do not go for heavy to load WordPress templates.

This low mobile loading speed seems like a really small issue but these small issues affect the rankings of your website and you don’t want that now do you? Follow the above steps and you will be okay.

4. Keep Track of All Your “Links” 

Links are the foundation of any website. You might be familiar with the concepts of inbound links, outbound links, and internal links. The inbound links are those links that are used to determine your domain authority. What it means is, that if some other reputable website has cited your link in their work then Google thinks that your content is reliable and therefore provides you with better reach and ranking, but the catch here is that the website that is providing you with such links should be associated to the niche of your particular website.

Similarly, Outbound links are those links that you have used in your content. While creating content about any field or topic, the very basic thing to do is carry out research and in that research, you might find some good content that you make the base for your work. To help people get more insights about the work, you can easily provide a link to that particular website as it will help you increase the authority of your website. Keep in mind that an increase in authority due to outbound links does not mean that you can just keep giving free links to others. Google checks for the authenticity of data and realizes whether you have done research or not. If you have by chance promoted the wrong sort of data then your rankings might take a hit marginally.

Interlinking of all your pages on your website is also an important aspect to increase your website’s authority which in turn results in increased Google rankings. It is a common practice, however a lot of new businesses skip them which is not a good thing to do. Understand it in this way, when you have a page that is performing well and the other which is not, you can interlink the 2 so that when the better performing website is visited by a user, they can discover that link too.

All these links can help you to grow the visibility of your website and help you get better search engine rankings. All you have to do is make sure that there are no broken links involved and every outbound link that you use is informative and good in quality.

5. Strive for the Audience, Not for Algorithms

Believe it or not one of the biggest mistakes that online business owners usually make is that they keep putting their efforts into satisfying Google’s algorithm without thinking twice about their target audiences, which completely defeats the purpose of having a website as if you are not trying to capture your audience with it why are you even there? Keep your website user-friendly and make it more and more compelling for your target audiences, not for the bots of Google although it is the same thing as Google tries to serve the best to its users, people usually stop targeting their clientele and start working to win over the algorithm and that is where they loose.

What Google wants is to ensure that your content solves the query of a common user as well as helps them get the answer in a better way. But with the emerging SEO techniques and requirements, people are often confused and end up losing engagement and what will you do if your website ranks on top but still isn’t getting any traffic? Nobody wants that and that is why some of the major things that you must do to avoid this from happening are - 

a) Keep your answers direct to people, address the problems, and keep it simple.

b) Use genuine sources and give more priority to information than keyword stuffing as, if you have the required information user is bound to stumble upon your website.

c) Don’t forget to give your content a “human touch”, making your content error-free is one thing and making it sound like it was written by a bot is different.

d) Allow your users to interact with the website. Leave a feedback form or a comment section as these small things help Google’s algorithm realize that users are getting what they want from it which in turn helps you gain better rankings.

All these practices can help you take your rankings from the bottom to top, provided you work according to the requirements of your business and website. 

Final Words

All the above points are well trusted and highly recommended practices that you can apply and gain results. Hope this article helps you gain a better spot in the search engine rankings.

Working on Google rankings and improving them is no rocket science, it just requires you to stay consistent and keep trying new things as you won’t succeed if you don’t try. Always keep in mind that your website is no less than your identity, a home that shows what you are and what you do, and how you do it. There are many different ways that you can use to gain top rankings on Google but the real question here is are you doing everything right? 

Author’s bio - Max Fisher is a digital marketer, a content creator, and an academic writer in homework help services of Assignment Prime. He has a keen interest in providing solutions to problems and that is why he is involved in the field of assignment help. He is also an avid reader and likes to read frictional novels in his free time.