5 Factors affecting SEO rankings in 2013

Search Engine Optimization is a game with forever changing rules and regulations due to the regular updates in search engine algorithms. What was beneficial in search engine rankings last year is no longer a higher priority now to current SEO strategies. To help internet marketers understand the changes and trends related to rankings in 2013, we have correlated the factors affecting the rankings in 2012 to the current rankings in 2013.

Keep in mind 80% of the backlinks to your website should always be your brand name or url.

1.) Keyword links and domains are relevant, but only have a small impact

These two factors are considered as the losers because presence of the keywords in domain or URL has lost its relevance. This affects the back links when it comes to plain text keyword links. So gone are those days of hard keyword optimization. Google now emphasizes on natural link profiles. Hard keyword can have negative effect because Google updates its algorithms which devalue the bad links. The keyword would be inserted in the content in a natural way.

2.) Social signals will be working well with better rankings

Studies show that the sites having large number of shares, likes, tweets and+1s stands at the top in search results. This means that social media continues to increase because the content is shared often on these social networking sites and hence affects the ranking in positive way.

3.) Quality content is always important

Content factors affects ranking in the same way as in 2012 but the difference is that it has now been upgraded. The websites having higher rankings, found to have more texts and more media integrations as compared to 2012. An excellent internal link structure appears to be more important in 2013. Quality content is the content which is informative, solves the problems of audience, have relevant links and have definite proximity and density of keywords.

4.) The measure and quality of back links

Back links continues to the important SEO metric. It has been found that not only measure of the back links matter for ranking but quality of them also matters. Therefore, you should try to make as many back links as possible but keeping in mind quality reason. In other words, you must get the links on quality websites. Some more factors which play a role in analysis of back links are:

• Balanced mix of follow and no follow links
• Multi word anchor texts
• Quality of link source (not necessarily page rank, but the Page Rank Quality)
• 80/20 rule for backlinks (80% of backlinks should be your brand name while only 20% focused keywords)

5.) On-page SEO factors

The on page factors matters a lot in websites ranking on search engines and this will continue in 2013. Certain on page factors are important and would be considered for achieving favorable ranking. Web pages would be designed after the search engines algorithms for effective Internet Marketing and to meet the search engines criteria. Therefore on page factors are considered to be an important prerequisite for higher ranking in search engine results pages.

Summary: The above mentioned are the factors which we have analyzed and consider them relevant. The site having higher ranking follows the above features where as the websites with lower ranking do not have or have less of these features. Remember change is the name of the SEO game and you need to stay current!