SEO rankings refer to a website’s position on SERPs. Many factors go into ranking a website, all of which Google in particular and others keep secret. However, as an SEO consulting agency our testing has shown that content relevant to the audience, sitemap, internal link structure, backlinks, site speed, keyword use, and other factors play a role in ranking.
It is important to emphasize that various search engines work differently. For instance, what ranks on top of SERPs on Google may not rank on top on Yahoo.com and Bing.com. The difference in ranking is mainly because all search engines use their unique algorithm designed to provide their users with the best results.
The SEO rankings will also vary based on language and the geographic location of the person searching. Usually, we’ve noticed that pages get ranked higher based on the traffic it gets and if they cater to user intent measured by bounce rate (amount of time visitors spend on a website). So, aligning the website to a potential user’s intent is essential for doing good SEO work.
Rankings give us insight into how well our strategy is working. If your page is ranking low, the ranking variables will need to be tweaked to boost it. For instance, we will change metadata and add better alt tags to images. More importantly, it is important to figure out what’s not working via a comprehensive audit and then make changes.