SEO is constantly changing, and what worked last year may not work this year. As we move into 2022, there are a few key ranking factors that you need to be aware of if you want your website to rank well in search engines.
1. Mobile-Friendliness
With over half of all web traffic now coming from mobile devices, it’s more important than ever to have a mobile-friendly website. This means ensuring that your site can be easily viewed and navigated on a smartphone or tablet. If your site isn’t mobile-friendly, you’re likely to see a significant drop in your search engine rankings.
2. Page Speed
Another important ranking factor is page speed. Users are becoming increasingly impatient and if your site takes too long to load, they’re likely to click away and go to a competitor’s site. Google also takes page speed into account when ranking websites, so it’s important to make sure your site is as fast as possible.
3. User Experience
Creating a positive user experience is essential if you want your website to rank well in search engines. This means ensuring that your site is easy to use and navigate, with relevant and useful content. If users find your site difficult to use or the content isn’t relevant to what they’re looking for, they’re likely to click away and go to another website.
4. Keywords
Keywords are still an important ranking factor, but it’s important to use them in a way that is natural and relevant to your content. Stuffing your content with keywords is likely to do more harm than good, as it will make your content difficult to read and could get you penalized by Google. Instead, focus on using a few carefully chosen keywords throughout your content, making sure they flow naturally.
5. Backlinks
Backlinks are another important ranking factor, but they need to be high-quality links from reputable websites. Getting links from low-quality or spammy websites can actually hurt your rankings, so it’s important to be careful who you link to.
6. Social Shares
Social signals are becoming increasingly important, especially since the Google algorithm update known as “Hummingbird”. This update puts more emphasis on the meaning of a query, rather than just the individual keywords. This means that social media activity can now influence your search engine rankings. If your content is being shared and liked on social media sites, it’s likely to rank higher in search engines.
7. Fresh Content
One of the best things you can do for your SEO is to regularly add fresh, relevant content to your website. This could be in the form of blog posts, articles, infographics or even videos. Whatever form it takes, new content will help to keep your website fresh and improve your rankings.
8. Schema Markup
Schema markup is a code that you can add to your website to help search engines understand your content better. This can be used to provide information about your business, products or services, and can even be used to display rich snippets in the search results. using schema markup can give your website a boost in the search engine rankings.
9. SSL Certificate
An SSL certificate is now an essential for any website that wants to rank well in Google. This is because Google has announced that they will now be giving preference to websites that are secured with an SSL certificate. If you don’t have an SSL certificate, you’re likely to see a drop in your rankings.
10. Security
Ensuring that your website is secure is becoming increasingly important, both for ranking well in search engines and for providing a positive user experience. This means using a strong password and keeping your software up to date. You should also consider using a security plugin, such as Wordfence, to help keep your site safe from hackers.
These are just some of the most important SEO ranking factors that you need to be aware of in 2022. By making sure your website ticks all of these boxes, you’re likely to see a significant improvement in your search engine rankings.
