Factors That Affect Google Rankings

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http://www.paridhiinfotech.com

What is Google Rank

Google Rank is an algorithm used by the Google web search engine to rank websites in their

search engine results.

Google works because it relies on the millions of individuals posting links on websites to help determine which other sites offer content of value. Google assesses the importance of every web page using a variety of techniques, including its patented PageRank™ algorithm which analyzes which sites have been “voted” the best sources of information by other pages across the web.

Some of the components that impact Google Rank:

Factors That Affects Google Ranking

Google Places Page:

Claim your Google Places listing.

A no-brainer but the majority of small businesses still haven’t done this, and probably the majority of your competitors haven’t either.

Set proper categories for your business.

Make sure you add the specific business categories relevant for what you do. You can add up to 5, so make full use of them if you need to.

Product/Service and location in business name.

Always include your product/service with your business name.

Add some photo’s.

You can add up to 10 photo’s, but Google likes you to add at least 5. These are to sell your business to potential customers when they see your Google Places listing in search, so put some nice, high quality photo’s that really showcase your business.

Product/Service and Location in Business description

As with your business title, make sure your product/services and location are also included in your business description text.

On your web site:

Domain Authority of your web site.

Your web site authority is increased by (1) optimizing your web site for Google to crawl effectively, (2) external links and references to your business.

Business city, region in the title of the web page your Google Places page points to.

If you only have one location you’ll probably have your Google Places page point to your web site home page. If you have multiple locations, you should have a page for each location and your Google Places page points to the individual location page. Whatever your setup, put your City, Region in the web page title of the target page.

NAP on web site matches NAP on Google Places page. Name, address, phone number (NAP) should be consistent

across your web site and Google Places page.

NAP mark-up in hCard / Schema.org. This is one for your web designer. hCard and Schema.org

and methods to tag your name, address, phone number so Google can easily identify your NAP information.

Off Site:

Quantity of structured citations. Typically these will be Yellow pages type listings, business

directories, data aggregators. Making sure your NAP is listed and correct in these sites is critical to your Google Places ranking.

Quality/Authority of structured citations. The more authoritative the web site your business NAP is

listed in, the better. Note that Quality is below Quantity. This is probably the only situation in optimizing your web presence for Google where quantity does beat quality

Consistency of structured citations.

This means having the same NAP across all your structured citations. Incorrect/inconsistent NAP information across citation sources will hurt your ranking. Note that this will cause you some headaches if you decide to move your business, change phone number, etc.

Quality/Authority of unstructured citations.

Unstructured citations refer to mentions of your business in places like blogs, news articles, etc.

Quality/Authority of inbound links to your web site from locally relevant sites.

Local web sites that link to your web site gives makes your site more trustworthy to Google for local searches. e.g. a local blog or local news site that links to your website.

Reviews:

Quantity of Google Places reviews.

Customers can leave reviews on your Google Places page and it’s the quantity that matters. Obviously you want good reviews for your business credibility, but Google places much more emphasis on the number of reviews you get than how high your average rating is. ‘Encouraging your customers to add reviews is a key strategy in boosting your Google Places ranking.

Product/service in review text.

You don’t have much control over this, but mentions of your product or service in the review text help in your ranking.

Quantity of 3rd Party reviews.

This is the number of reviews on external review sites, e.g. Qype.co.uk, Urbanspoon.com, Tripadvisor.com, Yelp.co.uk, Yell.com. Google does use review data from these sites as a ranking factor for your business. Note again that it’s the quantity of reviews that matter.

Location in review text.

You won’t have much control of what reviewers write about your business, but any mentions of your location will help.

Velocity of Google Places reviews.

This refers to how many reviews you get on average over time. Note that if you’re looking to boost your ranking quickly, it’s tempting to go all out and get a large number of reviews straight away. This will be detected as a spam attempt by Google, so a better approach is to start soliciting for reviews with your customers and over time, they’ll start to grow organically.

US Ranking Factors

Experiments on Twitter & Google+ Influencing Search Rankings

Within a few short hours of the campaign kickoff, the URL was tweeted 300+ times. As a secondary effect, the URL also received a handful of additional Facebook likes and LinkedIn shares.

The page ranked #2 in Google for its targeted phrase, “Assist a Mom.” The URL reached #1 status by day’s end. As of this writing it remains the number one ranked page for this target keyword phrase.