Many businesses and web developers are constantly working to figure out how to get web pages to rank high in Google search results. Many throw around the term SEO which stands for Search Engine Optimization. However, Google is the go-to search engine so how your website does on Google is key. The things that factor into ranking high in Google search results may surprise you.
Learn how your website can start ranking high in Google search results so that your web page gets the traffic it deserves.
If someone searches for something you have on your website for specific content, and your web page ranks high in Google search results, your website will be on page one or two. In July of 2018, Google announced that site speed matters to your ranking. After that announcement, research was done on what keeps a website ranking high in Google search results. That research has shown that the highest ranking sites had an average load time of 1.19 to 1.29 seconds. The Searchmetrics Google Lighthouse Ranking Factors 2019 white paper expands on those results. The top 20 search results on Google for 10,000 keywords were tested to prove these numbers.
The paper added that 80% of the search results had what they called Time to First Byte. Time to First Byte represents the time it takes for a website to send the first byte of data to the browser of whoever is searching. On average, Time to First Byte took 0.6 seconds. However, speed wasn’t the only factor the research had uncovered.
Having modern web technologies also helps with ranking high in Google search results. In fact, 86% of the page one results and 85% of the page two results used newer image formats on their websites like WebP, JPEG2000 and JPEG XR. These image formats load faster which helps with the overall time to fully upload a web page. Beyond the images, higher ranked results also used HTTP/2 web protocol instead of the more traditional HTTP. Of the results, 71% on page one and 66% on page two used HTTP/2 web protocol.
Unfortunately, it would appear that having great accessibility doesn’t factor into ranking high in Google results. The study also found that the majority of the highest ranking sites neglected accessibility features for the visually impaired or blind. Out of all of the analyzations done in this study, accessibility was the lowest trait of all of the highest ranking results. This proves that site ranking is based on site performance.
