Referencing guidelines: The list of the most important SEO factors in 2019
Referencing guidelines: The list of the most important SEO factors in 2019
SEO is a complex universe where you have to be on the lookout for the latest changes. Indeed, search engines are required to evolve regularly to provide updates to their algorithms. The consequence is that today's requirements will not necessarily be the same as those of tomorrow.
What you need to know about SEO criteria
It seems that Google uses about 200 different factors to rank a website/page on its search engine. Some of these factors are essential for a good positioning, but others have a less significant impact than in the past.To help you see more clearly, here is a list of about thirty of the most important criteria to consider when referencing your website on Google. Although some of them can contribute to debates, I have relied on sources such as Searchengineland, Moz or SearchMetrics, which is renowned for its annual reports in the field. This list is therefore intended to change as Google's algorithm is updated.
On-page criteria Today, how your page is optimized is the most important point for SEO. Here are the on-page factors that can affect your rank on search engines:
1. Content quality:
High quality content is today essential for your SEO. Indeed, if your articles are appreciated by Internet users, it means for Google that your content is worthy of interest and will therefore be considered as a guarantee of authority and trust.
2. Keyword in the Title tag:
The Title tag is one of the strongest signal for a search engine. It gives the most accurate description of the content of the pages. Search engines use it to display the title of your page in search results. This is why it is extremely important to integrate (ideally at the beginning) in this tag the keyword on which you want your page to be positioned.
3. The H1 tag:
The H1 tag is another relevance factor, used to describe the content of the pages. Despite ongoing discussion about its importance, it is always recommended to include your keyword in an H1 tag on a page, as long as it remains unique.
4. The meta description tag:
The importance of the meta description tag is nowadays often discussed in SEO circles. However, it remains relevant to obtain more clicks from Internet users on search results pages.
5. The recurrence of the main keyword in the content:
The number of the keywords used is a very important point in order to rank your page in Google's search engines. However, you shouldn't exaggerate. You need to find the right balance of keyword density in your content by also varying with synonyms.
6. The lexical field of content:
The lexical field now represents a significant part of the positioning criteria. Indeed, it is important that your content be as semantically rich as possible in relation to your main keyword.
7. Content length:
Internet users always want to know more and will not be satisfied with basic information. It makes sense that the longer your content is, the more likely it is to cover all aspects of a topic. Google obviously takes this criterion into consideration and favours the pages that are the most exhaustive.
8. Content uniqueness:
Having duplicate or "Duplicate Content" in English means copying all or part of other content, whether within your site or from other external content sources. Many websites are penalized by search engines because of the considerable number of duplicate pages. So make sure you have a unique and original content for each of your pages.
9. The Canonical Tag:
Sometimes, having two URLs with similar content is inevitable. You need to prevent this from becoming a duplicate content is to use a canonical tag on your website. This tag does one simple thing: it tells Google that one URL is equivalent to another, and that among all these pages with very similar content, only this canonical URL should be taken into account in search results.
10. Image Optimization:
It is not only the text that must be optimized on a page, but also other media. Images, for example, can send relevance signals to search engines through their "alt" tag, caption and description. It is also a good way to be positioned on Google Image.
11. Content freshness:
Google's algorithm prefers regularly updated content. This does not mean that you have to modify your pages all the time, but doing a little update from time to time doesn't hurt.
12. Outgoing links:
Outgoing links to external content with high authority send signals of trust to search engines. Remember to make your outgoing links so that your visitors want to learn more about a topic. In addition, this study showed that outbound links had an impact on positioning. However, having too many outbound links can significantly reduce the PageRank of your page.
13. Internal links:
The internal mesh, thanks to your internal links, allows you to interconnect pages of your site in order to create synergies. Internal links therefore play an important role in SEO since they make it possible to transfer the popularity of the home page to deeper pages, but also to increase the PageRank of strategic pages through "link juice".
14. Keyword in the URL:
Domain names that contain precisely the keywords, called "Exact Match Domain" were very popular at the beginning of the Internet era, because they were favored by search engines in their results. Fortunately, this is no longer the case today.
On the other hand, Google takes into account the presence of the targeted keyword in the URL, but this criterion has very little influence on the ranking. This can therefore give a slight boost in the event of strong competition.
On-site criteria
15. Mobile First:
It is no longer necessary to demonstrate that a responsive site is more likely to be well positioned on mobile. Well, this will soon also be important on Desktop since Google will soon launch its "Mobile First" update by the second quarter of 2017. It will therefore be the content of the mobile pages that will be used to analyse and classify the content and no longer the text of the "desktop" pages as is currently the case.
16. The Sitemap:
A Sitemap, or site map in French, allows search engines to index all the pages of your site. This is the easiest and most effective way to tell Google which pages are on your website. You can tell Google your Sitemap with the help of Search Console.
17. Notoriety:
The notoriety of a page or site is linked to the PageRank developed by Google, which assigns a rating to a web page according to the quality and nature of the external links pointing to it. The PageRank therefore always contributes to the page's position in Google results, even if it is now difficult to know the score of your PageRank.
18. Server location:
According to some SEO experts, the location of a server would help to stimulate positioning for the country or region where it is located.
19. Integration with Google Search Console:
Finally, having your site checked by Google Webmasters Tools helps to index your sites. In addition, the tool provides valuable data that you can use to optimize your site.
20. The speed of loading your pages:
The speed of the website is one of the most important elements to do for On-site optimization. It is not clear whether the impact of speed is direct or indirect. In any case, having a fast site allows you to have a lower bounce rate, which will improve your positioning.
Off-page criteria
For the positioning of your pages, Google also examines factors external to your site. Here are some of the main criteria:
21. The number of links:
According to many SEO experts, the number of links pointing to your domain name and pages is always an important factor for positioning.
22. The quality of the links:
Having lots of links is good, but having quality links is even better. A link from a high authority page will be worth much more than a link from a low authority page.
23. The number of referrer domains:
It is preferable to have a number of links to your site. However, it is still preferable to have several links from several domains rather than a single domain.
24. The relevance of the reference domains:
Not all pages are equal. Links to pages with higher domain authority will be a more important factor than those in low authority domains. Therefore, you must ensure that you create links from sites with higher authority.
25. Contextualization of links:
Links in the page content are worth more than isolated links at the bottom of a page of a site for example. In addition, the link must be consistent with the content of the referring page to have even more weight.
26. The diversity of types of links:
The anchor used in the link is an important positioning factor depending on the keyword you are targeting. On the other hand, having too many similar links can be considered spam and have a negative impact.
Domain name criteria
Finally, your domain can also have an impact on your SEO. Some of the domain signals are no longer as important as before, but still deserve attention:
27. HTTPs:
The fact that a website is encrypted and secured with an HTTP URL is a relevance criterion taken into account in Google's algorithm. Secure sites will therefore have a slight advantage in the search results of the engine.
28. Domain registration date:
Google considers domains registered for more than a year to be more trustworthy than recent sites. This is why a change of brand or domain name is often problematic, as it will have negative repercussions for several months.
29. Domain name history:
You may not be the first person to register your domain name. And if your domain has been penalized in the past, its history could affect your current positioning.
30. Domain name extension:
If you are trying to target a particular local market, it is important to anticipate your domain name extension. If you have a domain name in.com you will generally have no worries about being well referenced everywhere. On the other hand, it will be more difficult to be positioned in Spain with a .fr extension.
This list is not exhaustive, as the algorithms of the main search engines are not communicated. However, a SEO audit can be very useful to help you decypt and understand the main problems of your site. If you see other factors that you think are important and relevant to add to this list, feel free to comment on them.
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