Important Google Ranking Factors in 2017

Important Google Ranking Factors in 2017

Google is constantly improving their search algorithm and results pages. So what is new in 2017? Google have already confirmed a mobile-first index and prioritisation on local searches.

Local Search

Local results have already been more prominent in the past. This trend will continue as more people use the search engine on mobile phones than desktops. This means that google automatically present search results based on your actual geographic location. It is now more important than ever to have a Google My Business setup so you can appear for local searches.

Mobile First Index

More important than ever is to have a mobile friendly website which means desk top is no longer their priority.

Content

To rank well you will need quality and unique content for your site.

Google explicitly advised to avoid:

• tomatically generated content
• Participating in link schemes
• Creating pages with little or no original content
• Cloaking
• Sneaky redirects
• Hidden text or links
• Doorway pages
• Scraped content
• Participating in affiliate programs without adding sufficient value
• Loading pages with irrelevant keywords
• Creating pages with malicious behaviour, such as phishing or installing viruses, trojans, or other badware
• Abusing rich snippets mark-up
• Sending automated queries to Google

Feature snippets

Google are displaying more feature snippets these days and we’ll expect these to increase. Feature snippets appear above the organic results with a link to the source.

Links

Backlinks from quality websites will remain important.

Social media authority

The more your content has been shared into social channels like Google+, Facebook, Twitter, etc the better for your ranings.

Page Loading Speed

It’s simple the quicker your site loads the higher your site will be ranked. Make sure to optimise image sizes, minimise JavaScripts and CSS files.

Pop-ups Will Hurt Your Rankings

From January 10th 2017 Google will start to penalise sites with those annoying pop-ups, starting with mobile websites.