SEO is an integral part of digital marketing, though always positioned as long term strategy for most marketers, when done right you can keep reaping the benefits of SEO for a very long time.

Here are three very important factors for ranking on Google in 2017

Create Amazing Quality Content

Content is king, having amazing content that your audience can connect with and positions you as an expert within your industry. Content that appeals to the needs and wants of the reader and audience will always win.

When creating content in this day and age, it’s important not to stuff your business with useless keywords that have no impact to the reader and to grow the interest of your audience while still maintaining your keyword structure in an acceptable manner.

Let’s take an example of two types of content for a konga store merchant trying to rank washing machines.

Merchant A’s Copy

CYZ is a lagos based washing machine startup that deals in washing machines, refrigerators and kitchen appliances that you need. Our services include washing machines, repairs, maintenance and washing machines and more.

Merchant B’s Copy

If you need washing machines, kitchen appliances and other appliances, you’ve come to the right place. CYZ are major distributors of washing machines in the lagos metropolitan area.

Merchant B’s Copy incorporated all of the targeted keywords, but did so in a way that reads and flows well. The copy obviously had much more content on their webpage, but hopefully this gives you an idea of how to incorporate keywords and still sound natural.

And guess what? Merchant B’s copy will outrank Merchant A’s.

Links

Backlinking needs to be taken seriously, because in 2017, backlinks leading to your website will be considered negative and will damage rather than help your ranking factors.

However, gone are the days that low-quality and crappy backlinks take your website to the first page of Google. In fact, having bad links pointing to your website will often times result in a penalty. So just like content, quality backlinks are extremely important. It is better to have 2 or 3 solid backlinks coming from authoritative & legitimate websites than 1000 backlinks that come from spammy websites that could include forums, low-quality blogs, and potentially dangerous websites.

A solid backlink goes a long way. If a highly respected and authoritative business links to your website, then it tells Google that you are also respected and in turn improves your ranking on Google. In the same regards, you want to make sure that you are only linking out to credible websites.

Internal Linking

Internal linking is a very strong component for growing your SEO, having contextual links within the text of your post is a great factor to ensuring the growth of the business.

Some checkpoints to ensure you’re doing SEO right include:

• Inserting sitemaps within the business
• Easy navigation flow. Users should be able to access pages on your website easily by adding links to guide them to the next page.
• Linking in-text keywords to their respective page. This is ultimately sharing “link juice” between your pages.

Authority

The authority of your website is the third most predominant factor used in determining the ranking of a website, these include the following below:

• Quality Backlinks
• Age of website/domain
• Social Media presence
• Amount of traffic

Other factors include social media management, paid advertisements and so much more, but these are the most important factors for ranking your website.