Page Rank Tips – What Google Isn’t Telling You

“If you don’t know it, just Google it.” Many people live by this mantra. The days of searching for something in the Encyclopedia or “phoning a friend” are long gone. Almost everyone has access to an infinite amount of information right in the palm of their hands. The Internet is made up of millions of different websites. It becomes crucial to figure out how to stand out against the competition to ensure people are finding your website. The chances of someone finding your website depends highly on how well your page ranks on a search engine’s displayed results. Let’s break down what search engine page ranking is, why it’s so important, and how you can use it to your advantage.  

What is Search Engine Ranking

Ranking is the process search engines use to determine where a particular piece of information or content should appear on a search engine results page (SERP). Search engines have three main functions: crawling, indexing, etching. Search engines use spiders or bots to crawl from site to site or page to page. These bots search for several factors both on-page and off-page.

On-page factors are fundamental for ranking. These factors are within the publisher’s control. On-page factors include keywords, on-page content, metadata, and alt tags. At least 1.25% to 1.5% of your content should be keywords. By using varied high-quality keywords, your search engine page ranking is likely to increase as the search bots crawl the page, collecting and categorizing what your page topic and intent are.

Additionally, it’s important to maintain proper on-page content. The phrase “Content is King” holds true. By continuing to update your webpage’s content, you will be able to maintain or improve your page rank. Search engines penalize websites that are not updated regularly. Each page should also have its own metadata, especially a Title tag. Metadata is data about data. Developing meta title tags helps increase your SEO. Lastly, making sure to provide alt tags will ensure that search engines can find relevant content within your photos and images, further helping increase your search engine ranking. Alt tags describe your images textually and help make it possible for search engines to find the content. They serve a dual purpose of helping the visually impaired to know what photo is being displayed.

Off-page factors help to improve your website’s ranking outside the boundaries of the web pages. These factors are not directly controlled by the creator or publisher of the site. The primary off-page factor is backlinks. Backlinks help search engines determine the quality or authority of your site. Quality sites linked to your site help increase your value. Utilizing social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn  help to further drive traffic from external sources back to your site as well.

Why is it so Important?

Think about the last time you went to the second page of results when you were searching for something. What about the third, the fourth, or the tenth? Most people when searching for content will not proceed past the second page of results. They’ll refine their original search, figuring out another phrase to type into the search engine and move on.  Your page rank plays a crucial role in many search tools. If your information is not showing up near the top of those search results, you’re missing out on possible site visitors.

How Can You Use it to Your Advantage?

Understanding how to optimize various aspects of your website, both on and off-page, you will be able to increase your page ranking. You should put time and effort into making sure the content on your website is of high-quality and remains up-to-date. Continue to add attention-grabbing, informative blogs and updating on-page content. It becomes imperative to have a functional page design. If visitors cannot easily navigate your website, your page rank will be impacted negatively.

Taking the time to optimize your on and off-page factors will help improve your search engine page rankings, which is a critically important aspect of SEO and will only increase the success of your website. For more information and tips about how to increase your search engine page rankings, contact us at Stellar Blue Technologies. Our stellar team is always excited to help you reach your SEO goals.

Are you interested to learn more about how Stellar Blue Technologies can help your website achieve optimal results? Contact us today!