What Doesn’t Actually Affect Your Rank?
If you have a business website then your Google ranking will always be somewhere on your mind. You’ll probably spend hours tinkering with headings and back-room tech in a bid to rise up a notch or two, as well as wondering if that new post will knock you down.
What has no effect on your ranking? What can you stop worrying about from now on? Let’s find out.
Your website’s age
It doesn’t matter if your site is 20 years, 20 months or 20 days old; all Google cares about is how good your content is and how many people use it and link back to it (as well as who does this). In fact, the longer your site has been going, the more authority it will probably have. However, you can accrue this authority in a couple of years, in which case Google will take you even more seriously. So, all things considered, age really is just a number.
If you don’t use Google apps and other services
Google doesn’t monitor your Analytics account, or your Gmail or Google Docs so whether you use them or not, it won’t affect your ranking.
Your likes, shares and retweets
If a post gets 20,000 shares then that’s great – you’re out there! However, Google isn’t even looking at this number; what it is looking at is what people go on to do after they’ve shared your post, as well as what the people who’ve been sent it do. Do they search for your products? Do they spend some time on your site? That’s what Google will be looking at, so it’s not worth buying a load of likes as they’re not organic or dynamic.
Your bounce rate and visit time
Your visit time is an odd one. Your average on-site time is three minutes, which is maybe below industry average. This isn’t necessarily a cause for worry, as your site may load much faster than normal and your content may be easily found and easy to read, all of which are great advantages. Your high bounce rate isn’t the kiss of death either, if people are happening upon you after coming in from elsewhere, as some of them will stay awhile.
The backroom tech
If you’re using different coding or different JavaScript libraries it doesn’t matter, as all Google is interested in is the content, not the delivery system used to get it out into the open. Content is king, right?
