Planning to take your brand to the top in 2023? Whilst we’re sure you’ve got lots of goals to score this year, you’ll want to make sure your brand is topping the rankings on search engines like Google. Google’s algorithm applies different weighting to different factors, so your SEO strategy needs to be about much more than some nice keywords.
Don’t move mountains to achieve your goals, just start climbing them. We know with KPI’s to be met, SEO can sometimes get forgotten about – so don’t worry, we’re here to help! We’ve done our homework and chosen the top 5 SEO ranking factors you’ll need to nail in 2023.
Consistent high-quality content
Like we love cups of coffee in the morning, Google loves websites publishing high-quality content. But what does high-quality content even mean?
For Google, high-quality content is useful to the user, trustworthy, and provides them with additional, relevant information.
Think of it like choosing a restaurant for your next date night. You’ll pick somewhere that’s useful to you – it’s not too far to travel, it’s the type of food you like, and it’s perfect for couples. You’ll pick somewhere that’s trustworthy – the reviews are positive, your best friend's mum’s a big fan. And you might pick Ask Italian over Bella Italia because they’ve told you about the deals they’ve got on.
Publishing consistent high-quality content is exactly the same as that, only you’re creating the kind of content your target audience wants and needs to know.
Keywords in meta title tags
Title tags help your users understand what your website is about when they’re scanning through search results. But they also tell search engines the same thing – so if your tags aren’t in tip-top shape, it’s time to change that.
Title tags are elements required in HTML documents as <title>. The information they provide is only visible in web browser tabs, search engine results and social media networks. It’s what your users see first, so first impressions are important.
But you also need to make sure that your title tags fit the bill. So here’s our top tips on writing good title tags for SEO:
1. Google only shows the first 50-60 characters, so keep it to that length!
2. Be unique but make sure your primary keywords included
3. Want to separate keywords and USPs? Don’t use pipes, use dashes
4. Steer clear of brackets – Google will change your title tags
5. Avoid looking like Spam – nobody likes Spam.
Backlinks
Backlinks have been the backbone of SEO for years now. They were Google’s building blocks for their pyramid of search engine ranking factors. They’re just links from one website to another, but search engines see them as votes of confidence.
If you’re looking to increase traffic to your website, and build domain authority for your SEO, you’ll want to generate healthy backlinks to overcome your competitors.
Don’t be fooled though, high-quality links from websites in your industry or niche are all you want. Stay away from spam sites, and avoid black hat SEO methods, because if your link velocity increases dramatically, you’ll be penalised.
Getting backlinks can be a lot like shuffling around networking events. It’s also about making sure that high-quality content you’re publishing consistently has purpose, so other sites want to link to it.
Niche Expertise
Having a niche isn’t nerdy, it means you’re an expert in your field. One of our niche’s is behavioural science, and we’re experts on it. And having niche expertise for SEO simply means your site should have at least 10 web pages talking about the same topic, where the pages all revolve around the same primary keyword.
So out of all of the top-ranking factors, this one’s a lot easier to catch up on. You just need to publish quality content that really drills down into what you do and why you do it.
User Engagement
User engagement should not go under your radar. Sure, surfing through spreadsheets and statistics to measure some metrics isn’t the most exciting thing to do, but it’ll set you in good stead as Google cares about it, a lot.
Engagement, which thinks about the time users spend on a page, the number of pages they view per session, and your overall bounce rate, is a good indicator of the quality of your content. Because if people aren’t spending time consuming your content properly, then something needs changing.
This is where knowing your audience matters. Because if you know what they like, you can publish content they like, and they’ll stick around to read it.