What Google looks for with SEO
When it comes to SEO it might as well be called GO as when people are talking about search engines, they are really just talking about Google. The incredible company won the race to be the most used search engine a long time ago. Others may have improved, but Google is still the leader and by an incredible distance.
When it comes to ranking in Google, a lot of people get fixated on keywords and making sure they get enough of them in their content so that Google can pick up on them. While it’s true that keywords play a huge role in search engine ranking, there is a lot more to SEO than that.
Backlinks
Backlinks are a huge part of what makes a good website for Google or not. Before it pushes your website up the rankings it wants to know whether it’s offering quality content. One way to prove this is to have other great websites hosting links to your website and vice versa. The bigger, more reputable and relevant the website, the better it is for you.
Content
Your content isn’t just about stuffing keywords into any old nonsense. Google changed its algorithm in 2015 to place more of an emphasis on quality written content. Not only should the content be good, but it should be long enough to satisfy the reader. In a nutshell, short but well-written content won’t rank as highly as lengthy well-written content.
Website quality
Google’s crawlers will go through all aspects of your website and turn it inside and out in ways that you may never have even thought possible. It checks for the speed of the page, whether it is mobile compatible, how many times pages were clicked by users and all manner of other checks. Creating great content on a terribly formatted website won’t get you anywhere, so be sure to prioritise intuitive navigation, media-rich pages and well-formatted copy with plenty of white space.
Google is getting better and better at becoming human. It is reading websites and dismissing those that a human user would find difficult to navigate and difficult to read. Keywords are vital to SEO, but it’s also vital to not forget about the rest of your website as well.