2023? Whoa, what? You got the right one! It’s amazing to think that another year is about to come to an end. It’s still early enough to consider what new methods you want to include in your content marketing plan for the following year as we wave goodbye to 2022 and get ready for the last few weeks of the year. One of the most crucial things to take into account? ranking criteria for Google.
SEO best practices alter and develop over time, just like web design trends do. Google is continually assessing the elements that visitors perceive as being on a high-quality page. If you want to maintain your position at the top of the search engine results pages, staying on top of these ranking variables (SERPs) is critical.
Nobody (apart from perhaps Google itself) possesses a crystal ball that can predict what these ranking variables will be in 2023. However, we may still assess the available data, consider the most recent trends, and use Google’s official guidance as a guide.
It’s crucial to understand that Google considers 200 ranking factors when deciding how to rank websites. But what about posting content that is prepared for each of these 200 signals? Impossible. Fortunately, not all of these signals are equally significant, and you may tailor your content to the elements that have the greatest impact.
The 2023 Google Algorithm Ranking Factors
Regular Publication of Interesting Content
Five years have passed since backlinks were eclipsed as the most important factor in Google’s search algorithm by engaging content. The previous year unequivocally established that Google evaluates recently released content to see if it matches the keyword’s search intent. The page gets promoted if the behaviour of the searchers suggests that they are finding what they are looking for on the page. Generally speaking, Google’s AI favours high-quality content that is published at least twice a week.
Meta Title Tag Keywords
Since the late 1990s, including the keywords your page is seeking in its meta title tag, has been crucial for ranking. Although any seasoned SEO marketer should be able to see this reality, keyword strategy is a demanding intellectual activity that can easily take 20 to 30 minutes per page. It’s also vital to remember that a title tag’s placement and keyword density matter. In theory, your title tag should just contain the keyword you’re trying to target, but in practice, adding articles and adjectives to the title tag is crucial for readability.
Backlinks
According to the research paper that formed the basis of Google, backlinks were the initial algorithmic building block. However, the two aforementioned causes started to work against them in 2018: Regular Publishing of Keywords and Engaging Content in Meta Title Tags. While backlinks continue to play a significant role in Google’s judgment as to where to place a website in its search results, the quality of your content should be your main priority as it both naturally draws links and is the most significant ranking criteria in and of itself.
Website that is Optimised for Mobile
Your website must be simple to use on mobile phones and tablets if you want to attract visitors in 2023. The benchmark used to be “mobile friendly,” but Google has moved to a mobile-first world and now anticipates that mobile users will be your website’s main target audience. A desktop version of your website is not necessary in the ideal world. The layout should be pretty straightforward, and the site navigation should be optimised for a mobile user experience so that it appears precisely the same on mobile and desktop.
Internal Links
This aspect, which is frequently mentioned in conjunction with hubs, was given substantially more weight by Google in 2017. As long as there are internal links connecting the pages, the site will rank higher for the keyword the more frequently sites with the same keyword in their title tags are found on it. Publishing 25 articles on all facets of a subject and linking them all to one authoritative page would be a potent way to demonstrate the worth of that page and give it the chance to rank better.
Final Wrap Up
In 2023, the once-complex Google Search algorithm has stabilised into a smaller number of elements that call for awareness but not a preoccupation. Google is considerably better equipped to achieve its goal of giving its consumers the best search experience by providing them with quick, pertinent, and high-quality search results thanks to its ongoing eradication of low-quality SEO—an effort that initially took shape in 2009 and is now all but complete. This means that for marketers, a proper plan must direct your SEO efforts, with each page focusing on a particular keyword that potential customers for your company might use to search.
The finest possible treatment of the topic should be provided on each page. Links, engagement, credibility, and other crucial algorithmic criteria ought to naturally start to build up in your favour from there.