Search Engine Optimization is not an easy job. Everybody is making effort to grab the page one rank and those who are already there working continuously to stay there.

Google Algorithms are changing every next day and affecting the ranking factors. The traffic drove by search engines is exceptionally higher than any other source.

If you are looking for the ways to get better ranking, there are more than 200 ranking factors. But some of the ranking factors are more important and have higher affectivity compared to others. Relevancy, for example is the biggest factor today. Say your business is targeted to UK and you have a UK street address for your business, then that is a strong relevancy factor. You can rank better by focusing only on top 10 or 20 ranking factors. Yes, you can.

Thus this post is featured with 10 most important search ranking signal in 2018.

1. Content

The content was king, content is king and content will remain the king in the future too. User experience is one of the priorities for all search engines thus you must make great effort to create great content.

No matter if you are a blogger, vlogger, internet marketer or a graphics designer, it will be really impossible for you achieve expected success without quality content. You can’t afford to ignore the essentiality of content.

Are you looking for the ways to create quality content? First take a look at the things you should avoid to make your content good.

    Avoid keyword stuffing

    Avoid spin content

    Avoid content scraping

    Avoid writing thin content or content having less value

    Avoid short content

Now it’s time to look at the list of ways to create SEO friendly content;

    Have diversity in your content

    Create resonating content

    Add humor

    Include great infographic, memes and videos

    Let your content speak

    First write for your readers and then for the search engine bots

    Make your titles more interesting and eye-catchy

    Be a good storyteller

    Include interesting facts

2. Backlinks

Backlinks are still the most crucial ranking signals but nowadays link building isn’t an easy job. After the Google’s Penguin update it has been difficult to build organic backlinks. Before that update backlinks were easily created by keyword stuffing and link exchanging in the previous days.

Bloggers and internet marketers do several practices for creating backlinks without getting penalized such as blog commenting, guest posting, using question answer sites and social media etc.

You must make great effort to look for the ways to create backlinks from authority sites to get higher ranking on search engines. An appropriate amount of backlinks will help your site in better indexing on the search engines.

3. Site Loading Speed

The loading speed of your blog or website is also a very important ranking signal. You can’t ignore it, seriously.

If your site takes more than 3 seconds to load then most of your blog’s visitors will leave. After many updates, Google has now a deep concern for users experience and if you fail to provide the best user experience then it will be almost impossible for you to rank your website.

You can check your site loading speed using many online tools and plugins. If your site takes more than 3 seconds to load then you must work on it and resolve the issue. Here I have featured few ways to increase the loading speed of a site.

    Choose a great hosting provider according to your need

    Enable Compression

    Reduce blog’s image size

    Go with browser caching

    Minimize redirects

    Use CDN

    Apply JS at the bottom and CSS at the top

4. Mobile Friendly

If your website is not mobile optimized then it is directly going to affect your website’s search ranking.

After the announcement of Google on November 4, 2016, about mobile indexing, it has been necessary for a website to be mobile optimized for better ranking in search engines.

These days WordPress themes of every genre are mobile optimized and if you own a very old website you must work on making it compatible with mobile devices as soon as possible.

Nowadays the usage of mobile devices is surpassing desktop and website owners should give priority to mobile version to provide the better user experience.

5. Keyword Research

If your blog isn’t ranking well then you must look for the ways to rank your website and keyword research is one of the most crucial practices bloggers do to rank their website.

If you are a solo blogger and want to rank better in search engines, trust me you have to do great keyword research. It will take time but keyword research is not a rocket science, you can do it and you can do it in a better way.

Here I have listed top 5 ways to do better keyword research and I think this list will surely help you.

    Go with long-tail keywords and good head terms

    Don’t do unnecessary keyword stuffing

    Analyze the market and figure out your consumer’s needs

    Also, work on individual keywords

    Always keep an eye on your competitors

6. Embed Social Media Widgets

Nobody can afford to ignore the importance of social media and you must embed social media widgets to your blog to boost SEO. Linking back your website to your social media accounts will not only bring traffic but also benefit your blog from the SEO point of view.

One of the best parts of social media backlinks that they can be easily created and are highly trusted and reputed in Google’s eye and doing this will also not take much time as other link building practices take.

In the list of world’s most visited sites, there are multiple social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn etc. The better use of social media can help you in increasing your reach and will also make your brand more recognizable.

7. Write for Readers then for Bots

You have applied great SEO tactics and got ranked on the first page of the search results, great, congratulations. This could be a perfect reason to celebrate but before celebrating have a look at your content. Is it fine, enough compelling to satisfy your readers or it is just a bunch of words with keywords stuffed everywhere?

Every blogger should make effort to write for their readers first then for the search engine bots. Making your content more SEO friendly may help your blog to crawl on search engines easily but it can upset your readers and you may lose your audience base.

8. Work on Links

The whole web and internet is built on links, thus you have to work on links to boost your SEO. You have to work on basically three types of links and they are as follows;

i)Inbound Links – When your blog gets linked to a relevant authority site it makes your website more SEO friendly.

1. ii) Outbound Links – When you link a keyword to a relevant website in your blog’s content helps you in making your content of higher quality and readers friendly.

iii) Internal Links – Interlinking your own pages add more value to your content and also boost the search engine ranking of the interlinked page.

9. Image Optimization

You have done many things to optimize your site but are you optimizing the images too? If your answer is yes then congratulations you are doing well and if the answer is no then you must do image optimization for better search engine rankings.

Better image optimization techniques not only enhance your reader’s experience it also makes it possible to crawl your website easily on search engines.

I have featured few ways to do better image optimization;

    Include relevant images

    Include Alt tags

    Include keyword in images too

    Provide correct caption

    Reduce image size and use correct image file type

    Provide rich snippets

    Put anchor text

10. Be Patient

SEO practices may take time to show results, all you have to do is to keep patience and work continuously. If you are new to blogging and making great effort rank higher on search engines, it may be possible that you may not succeed after many attempts.

Be patient, work hard and figure out what’s not working. Make better strategies and never give up.

Final Thoughts

As I have said above that SEO practices aren’t a rocket science and if you are not a professional then you have to give some time to achieve success.

I have listed 10 most important search engine ranking signals here. If you want to give suggestions regarding this list please comment below, it’s your turn.