33 Things To Consider For Your 2022 Google Rankings

From having the highest quality content to how many (or how few) keywords you have in which places, this guide will walk you through what you can do on your site pages to rank higher on Google in 2022.

1. Put a Keyword in Title Tag

The "title tag" is the HTML code tag that gives a web page a title.

2. Title Tag starts with a Keyword

Put your most important keywords first. Title tags that start with a keyword perform better than title tags where the keyword appears at the end of the tag.

3. Keyword in Description Tag

Your description tag directly impacts click-through rate, a significant key ranking factor.

4. Keyword in H1 Tag

H1 tags (Heading 1 Tag) are secondary title tags. If you haven't guessed, Google loves keywords.

5. Content (and its length)

Notice how this article is roughly 1,400 words? Smaller articles, blogs, and other content have a severe disadvantage to rankings. Semrush conducted a study on 15 Content Optimization Practices that showcases the importance of length and quality.

6. Topics In-Depth

Hitting the above-mentioned extensive word count should come much easier as you cover your topics in depth.

7. Duplicate Content

Having similar content on the same site (even slightly modified) can negatively impact a website's search engine ranking (or even make it invisible to the public).

8. Content Recency

Google rewards recently published or updated content, especially for searches happening right now. What's more, Google shows the exact date of a page's last update.

9. Keyword Prominence

Having a keyword appear in the first 100 words of a page's content correlates to first page Google rankings.

10. Grammar and Spelling

Not only does Google take proper grammar and spelling into account, but users notice it as well. In making your pages user-friendly, you'll find that accurate grammar and spelling go a long way.

11. Stolen Content

Don't steal work. Google can recognize when you copy and paste from other websites; it's indexed.

12. Reading Levels

Google, in the past, has displayed a page's reading level. Despite not showing it anymore, experts suggest a lower reading level is more appealing to the masses. You know your audience, so catering to them is vital.

13. References and Sources

Citing references and sources, as research papers do, is a sign of quality. Using references signals to Google that you are doing research and builds trust with your users.

14. Numbered Lists

Hey! We are doing this one right now as well! Numbered lists break up your content for users, leading to more interactions with content and boosting your rankings.

15. Table of Contents

Google better understands the content of your pages when you table it as such.

16. Page Loading Speed

Google uses page load speed as a measurement to decide site rankings. Google uses Chrome user data to evaluate loading speed.

17. SSL Certificate

According to Cloudfare, "an SSL certificate displays important information for verifying the owner of a website and encrypting web traffic with SSL/TLS, including the public key, the issuer of the certificate, and the associated subdomains." It's a free and straightforward process that affects your Google ranking tenfold.

18. Images

The name, alt text, title, description, and caption of an image on a webpage are almost as important as ensuring that all your photos look pixel-perfect to the user.

19. Content Updates

The significance and size of edits and changes matter! Adding or removing sections of a webpage impacts rankings more severely than just "fixing" certain areas.

20. Page Updates.

Be sure to consistently update the pages of your site so that it is viewed as a more recent and adequate answer to any search happening on Google. Being most recent/frequent directly affects your page ranks.

21. Outbound Link Quality

A recent industry study suggests that linking out to authority sites helps send trust signals to Google.

22. Mobile-Friendly

Page optimization of any kind is excellent, but optimization for mobile is a different ball game. Prioritizing mobile optimization first for a site lessens the chance the ever-increasing mobile use will be subpar.

23. Mobile Use

Be ahead of the curve with web pages and websites that mobile users can easily use. From buttons to "call now!" or opening up the site navigation menu, be sure to have a mobile site users don't mind using.

24. Mobile Users Deserve to See!

Don't hide anything on mobile! Content that is hidden on mobile devices may not get indexed. However, fully visible content from mobile to desktop and back will!

25. Multimedia

Any form of multimedia (images, videos, audio) needs to be clear and easy to load. Videos can do wonders for your page ranking, but a bad quality or irrelevant one can do more harm than good.

26. Check Your Links

The Google Rater Guidelines uses broken links as one was to assess a homepage's quality. Broken links on a page are often a sign to Google that your page is abandoned or unmanaged.

27. Coding Errors

Doing anything sloppy is terrible, but when the fabric of your site is poorly woven, it can lead to worse issues. Experts in SEO suggest that a well-coded page is used as a quality signal to Google.

28. URL Length

Excessively long URLs may hurt a page's search engine visibility. Several industry studies have found that short URLs tend to edge Google's search results slightly.

29. Priority of Page

The priority that a page is given in the sitemap.xml files will influence the google ranking. Higher priority often correlates to higher page rank.

30. Page Age

An older page that's regularly maintained and updated can outperform a newer page even though Google prefers fresh content,

31. User Friendly

This should go without saying but, we are saying it anyway. If users can't properly navigate a webpage, they will leave and go somewhere else, which is highly damaging to your ranking.

32. Parking on Domain Names

A Google update decreased search visibility of parked domains. Parking on a site domain is registering a domain name without it being associated with any services (i.e., email or a website.)

33. Does Your Content Answer User Questions?

We can talk about keywords, images, domains, and all the technical hoopla you can imagine, but more important than all of those is this:

Does your webpage, business, and employees alike answer the questions your consumers have?

If you are constantly asked, "why does x cost so much more than x?" does your site answer it? Structure your business and its marketing efforts to respond and anticipate any questions an individual can ask.

Our recommendation to you is to keep a list (preferably easily accessed by all customer-facing employees) of all the questions you have been asked by users, leads, or existing customers. One that can continuously be updated so that you can prioritize what content goes first.

Check back soon for more things to consider for your Google Rankings.