What makes a page rank well?

Welcome back to SEO Series!

A blog series where I discuss and share my learnings in and around SEO - because its simple and really shouldn't be that hard to optimize your site to rank well on Search Engines. Before you begin, do checkout my previous blog, Introduction to SEO. In this blog, we will continue our knowledge of SEO and dive deeper into Page Rank and what that means. Specifically identify the 9 ways to make your site's page rank well.

Page Rank

“Just Google It.” That phrase has become ingrained in our society. Whenever we need to search for something on the web, over 80% of people choose Google’s search engine to find what they are looking for. It is how your site is typically discovered. Essentially, PageRank is an algorithm to measure the relative importance of web pages by computing a ranking for every web page. It helps search engines and users quickly make sense of the vast environment that is the World Wide Web.

According to Google, “PageRank works by counting the number and quality of links to a page to determine a rough estimate of how important the website is. The underlying assumption is that more important websites are likely to receive more links from other websites.” This theory can be boiled down to a simple formula below (where Σ means adding together):

Of course, the actual google algorithm is a lot more complicated but this gives you a sense of what affects the ratio and finally the rank of an individual site.

9 ways to make a page rank well

Now that we have discovered the formula, there are various tools and tricks to make sure a page ranks well.

1. Use of relevant keywords

Content-specific SEO guidelines will include a main keyword, secondary and additional keywords that reflect topical relevancy.

The main keyword reflects the main topic described as the generic term. This keyword should be used at least 3-4 times within the content, especially in prominent places like meta title, meta description, H1 heading, and if its an article or blog the first paragraph of the text. Keywords should be kept as close as possible to the beginning of the page title, heading, subheading, etc.
Secondary keywords are either synonyms of the main keyword or keywords that provide insight on a subtopic that is well-searched within the main topic. Try to use them within subheadings and text.
Additional keywords – are optional to use, but provide some synonymic or interesting-topic’s-angles keywords that can be used if you think there’s a good opportunity for them.

Keywords are meant to help to understand what people search around the topic but don’t dictate the whole structure of the content. If you think it’s important to include something on the topic that keywords don’t cover, please do so.

A list of Related questions is also often provided within an content-specific SEO guidelines, please use them within subheadings if you see a good fit for them. They have a bonus opportunity to bring organic traffic if being picked up for a Featured snippet, People also asked search engine results page (SERP) sections. Usually, content that provides a ‘good enough’ summary answer with 40-50 words (sometimes less, it should be short straight to the point answer) gets to be displayed there.

2. Good structure

Easily skimmable and readable text where each separate subtopic has its own subheading.

Use the H1 tag for the article headline (each article should have only one H1 heading)
Use H2-H6 subheadings to show off the main subtopics (H2) of the article and give more details on those with lower caliber subheadings (H3-H6). Overall, H4, H5, H6 subheadings aren’t used very often within the articles. Each article can have a few H2-H6 subheadings, it’s advisable to have at least three H2 subheadings within the article.
Don’t make paragraphs too long: one idea should correspond to one paragraph
Use ordered (numbered) or unordered (bullets) lists where possible

3. Enough visuals to support ideas in the text

Images, screenshots, diagrams, videos, etc.

Include alt text that describes the image, for example, strawberry cheesecake with cream
Make sure the image has a descriptive name (but can be more general and shorter compared to alt text). Example: (ex: strawberry-cheesecake.jpg instead of 12345.jpg)
Size images appropriately (https://squoosh.app/ can be used for this). Ideally, the size of the image should be kept below 100 KB.
Images should be a minimum of 1200px wide

4. Descriptive Page Title and Meta Description

Page Title length should be up to 60 characters including spaces otherwise it will be trimmed in the search result page
The meta description should contain a short description of what the article is about, length up to 155 characters (otherwise it also gets trimmed). It's good practice to include calls to action and trigger emotions into those, as the main function of meta description is to make a person want to read the whole article

5. Demonstrates signs of Authoritativeness, Expertise, and Trustworthiness

An author who has expertise in the field (photo and bio of a person)
Links to authoritative sources that support ideas in the post
Include quotes from the experts in the field
Share statistics where applicable to inform and validate your content
Based on correct information – using the data that isn’t aligned with scientific consensus/facts/evidence and/or aimed to manipulate readers’ opinion on something makes a lot of harm not only to a specific page, but to the website overall

6. Links to related sources, internal or external

Make sure you use anchor text for those linked sources that reflect what that linked page is about, so try to avoid one-word anchors or generic ones, like “click here”, “link”, “this page”, etc.

7. Better than the competition

In article-specific guidelines, some competitor’s articles will be provided, so it is good to think about how we can make our post better – what's new and unique we can add to what’s already out there, other angles, etc.

💡 Questions to think about to make sure we deliver unique content:

What's our unique point of view on this topic?
Do we have any unique data we can pull for this topic?
What experts (internal or external) can we ask for quotes to include in this topic?
What graphics would make this more visually compelling than what our competitors have?

8. Correct URLs used for the post and linked sources

Short descriptive URL that contains the main keyword or its variation
Please keep in mind that URLs https://blog/post and https://blog/post/ are two different URLs.

9. Unique topic within the site its placed

Having two or more very similar articles makes them compete with each other in SERPs, which usually ends up with lower rankings (or exclusion of one at all) for both. If there’s a need to add additional info on the topic covered before, it’s better to update the older post and not create a new one.

Additional reading:
https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2019/08/core-updates