What affects your website rankings?
There are many factors that can affect the rankings of your website, both positively and negatively. They include; on-page text content, off-page text content (backlinks), code optimisation, image optimisation, etc. Below is a list of points and explanations that can help contribute to improving your website rankings and overall performance. I will also give you the knowledge you need to make your own informed decisions on how you can improve your rankings and website traffic.
How many times does a page have to be linked from other sites/pages for it to have an effect?
There is no exact number but at least 20 positive backlinks to a specific webpage is where we have noticed it starts to have an effect on search engine rankings. The more links that are pointing back to a specific page can only be a good thing for your website.
Is it better to include images and videos rather than just text?
Yes and no; this depends upon what you mean by “better”. If you want more people visiting your website then having images and videos are definitely important. You need to remember that what you put on your website is vital. Google will give more weight to websites with fresh content so it is best if your site has text for people to read. Remember, Google is a search engine so they want their results to be based on words typed by people when they search for something.
Having said that, images are important because they break up the text. Your website visitors will have a better user experience if your site includes images so it is worth investing some time into finding the right image to include on your page. This goes for videos as well.
How important is a meta description?
A meta description is the short paragraph of text that appears under your title when you do a search at Google or any other major search engine. You must have an understanding of what your webpage is about and summarise it in one sentence/paragraph. This will tell people what content they can expect on your page so it is important that you use your meta description to your advantage.
People will be more likely to click on a webpage if it has a good, relevant meta description and the right image/video in place. It is therefore vital that you include effective meta descriptions.
How do you find good keywords for search engine optimisation (SEO)?
Finding appropriate content/keywords to use on your website is key. Google’s keyword planner tool is one way that you can find related keywords. It may take some time to do this for yourself as you need to find out what people are searching for and how much competition there is for those words. Also finding the right words can be difficult as many keywords have an extremely high number of searches per month without a lot of competition. You must experiment with different methods and see which one works best for you.
