While there are more and more ways for people to find your website today than there were even a few years ago, it's still true that Google can impact its success or fuel its failure more than any other single platform.

The key is to ensure that your site is well optimized so that it plays nice with Google's search algorithms, and to do this you need to know about what factors influence how this engine ranks web pages. So let's look at the most important aspects of optimization, and what you can do to achieve them.

The Quality of Content on the Page

When it comes to SEO, content is still king. Google will reward webpages with high-quality content that provides true value for users. This means avoiding keyword stuffing and writing concisely about topics related to your website or niche in a way that educates, informs and entertains readers.

It also helps if you use strong formatting, such as headings and bullet points, to break up text and make for more pleasant reading overall.

Additionally, try to incorporate multimedia elements, such as images or videos, into your page's content. This engages visitors and keeps them around longer, which in turn will lead to ranking higher in search engine results pages (SERPs).

How Fast the Page Loads

Page load time is another important factor when it comes to SEO. Google rewards pages that load quickly, as this improves user experience and keeps visitors on your site longer.

To check your page's loading speed, use a tool such as GTMetrix or Pingdom to identify areas of improvement. These tools can help you optimize images through compression, minimize redirects/HTTP requests, and enable browser caching, all of which contribute to faster loading times.

For further tweaking, look at reducing any large scripts or code bloat that may be slowing down your website. Getting rid of unnecessary elements will go a long way. And of course working with a provider like NameHero that provides simple web hosting packages at good prices will ensure you aren't hampered by any server-side issues from a page load speed perspective.

The Use of Keywords and Meta Tags

Using the right keywords is essential for Google to understand what your page is about. It's crucial that you target relevant keyword phrases in the body text, titles, headings and subheadings throughout your website.

Then, use meta tags to describe each page on your site. These are brief descriptions that search engines can read which help them identify what a web page is about without having to crawl through all its content. Make sure they're unique per page however, because duplicate meta tags could result in penalties and lower rankings within SERPs.

Inbound Links From Other Sites

One ranking factor you definitely can't afford to overlook when it comes to SEO is external links from other sites. These tell Google that your page is popular and trustworthy, thus making it more likely to get recommended higher up among the results for your target keywords.

Try encouraging other websites in your niche, or authoritative sites in related fields, to link back to yours. This could be done through guest blogging, or offering them content that can benefit their audience too.

Also look at creating social media accounts for your site and sharing its content as much as possible. This builds up a larger audience over time, which will lead to more inbound links being found on third party sites.

Conclusion

The core tenets of SEO haven't changed in a long time, even if the strategies used to achieve them have evolved. Get to grips with these ranking factors, and your site's quality and visitor numbers should increase.