The role of search engine optimization is massive in online brand awareness and reach. While some entities rely on paid efforts via social media to generate buzz, most brands rely at least in part on local or specialized search results to achieve meaningful visibility. This visibility in turn delivers all the clicks, sales, likes and subscriptions that brands want.

To properly be seen in search results, though, you need to be aware of ranking factors. With Google specifically, these elements help the search engine determine authority, trustworthiness and relevance.

To make the process a bit smoother for you, we’ll look at a few ranking factors that may be getting overlooked – but that nevertheless are important in achieving optimal visibility in SERPs.

Content Freshness

If your website, blog or business is targeting search engine users with time-sensitive information, then content freshness is an immensely important ranking factor. Obviously useful for news websites, pinging users with up-to-date content helps you outrank competitors. However, even for websites not directly on a print deadline of sorts, content freshness as a ranking factor can still be major. For instance, somebody searching for “latest luxury shoes” or “best hard drives of 2020” will be more likely to see content that is fresh, so consider this factor carefully.

User Experience

Beyond a shadow of a doubt, how users interact with your website – and how easy they find it to use – is an important ranking factor. User experience can refer to a variety of different interactions on a website, and can include other related ranking factors as well. Concepts such as page speed, mobile responsiveness and page speed all impact user experience. Likewise, design and navigational elements are other examples where user experience can be impacted. If people find your website unappealing or difficult to use, then this is likely translating into behavior that makes Google frown.

Search Intent

What people are expecting to find in search results is as important to Google as what they type explicitly. This is one area where Google has been refining its algorithms consistently for over two decades; search intent is the number one measurement of relevance to end users, broadly-speaking.

What does search intent generally cover? Elements such as the style of your content (format), the type of content being served and the angle from which the content is being covered all have meaningful impacts on search intent. If your content’s style, format and type all align with the intent of the user, then your ability to rank prominently in those SERPs will improve.

Security

How secure is the framework of your website? Security as a meaningful ranking factor cannot be ignored; its importance can be measured in several forms. Perhaps most commonly, whether a website has a HTTPS certificate (as opposed to HTTP) can impact performance. Additionally, poor security measures that result in malware or other forms of backdoor code being installed on your website can affect SEO and even lead browsers to block access to your website, making this ranking factor very important.

If you’re pinging users and obsessing over content quality, then you know that Google cares about a litany of criteria. However, the above criteria don’t get the attention they often deserve: by evaluating your performance in each of these areas, you’ll undoubtedly be able to improve rankings and visibility in each of your targeted SERPs.