Often people concentrate so much on keywords, getting their websites organised and all the basics of SEO that there are factors that influence ranking that are being overlooked. This is not because of negligence or a ‘can’t be asked attitude’. This happens easily because running a business is a full time job. Google uses over 100 factors when they rank a website and if there are issues that influence your website ranking, these issues must be addressed.

Sticky website

Google uses various tools such as the analytics, Google search and chrome and the Google toolbar to gather information about websites. These tools tell them a great deal about what is happening on your website. If visitors do not stay on your website for sufficient time and your website has low traffic it shows them that the website is not important when compared to competing websites. These factors influence the stickiness of your website. The longer site visitors stay and the more visitors you have, the sticker your website becomes and this counts for your ranking.

Link trustworthiness

Links are of paramount importance, but links have to be the ‘good’ type. You will be judged on where your links come from and bad neighbourhood links lump you as being one of the ‘bad boys’. Your website reputation will suffer if you constantly link to low-quality websites. The days when the more links you had, the better is was for you are long gone. It is no longer the top criteria to have huge numbers of links.

What is more important is that the source of all those incoming links must be considered trustworthy by Google. By constantly linking with websites that are seen as untrustworthy you can face being penalised. Your incoming links must show variation as well. If you’re incoming links form a trend, a pattern that points to unnatural link building; for instance such as the same term constantly used for linkage, it alerts Google. It points to unethical ways of harvesting links and you can again face being penalised for this.

Unreliability and spamming

Anything that smells of black hat SEO practices will result in penalties, so steer clear of being over-enthusiastic with your keywords. Stuffing keywords into content is considered blatant spamming, even if it is not being done deliberately. Never let anyone talk you into using invisible text or cloaking of pages, for this is not tolerated by the search engines. Your website will be deemed unreliable if the search engine spiders regularly are unable to access your website. Once may be accidental, but when it forms a pattern and may lead its importance being devalued and this will greatly influence the ranking of your website.

If your website has any or all of these factors, whether deliberate or accidental, they need to be addressed fast. Your business cannot afford to have your ranking dropped lower due to these factors. Internet marketing is simply too competitive. Incurring penalties means enormous effort and time to try to rebuild your credibility to climb back up the ranking ladder and no business can afford this.

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