If you are implementing a comprehensive digital marketing strategy, then SEO is something you cannot overlook. SEO plays such a huge role that it cannot be overlooked even a little bit. Organic search has been found to be responsible for driving between 30 to 50% of the entire web traffic and conversions resulting from its scalability. Your website’s ability to achieve sustained growth over the years should be founded on SEO because it sets the foundation for the success of internet-based businesses. SEO is vital because it can lead to huge incremental growth in web traffic and conversions. Optimizing your web content also helps you to establish brand loyalty and visibility earlier in the sales funnel. SEO also helps you gather information from consumers so that you can adjust your digital marketing strategy accordingly.

How are SEO keyword rankings determined?

Google and other search engines depend on crawlers to rank your website in search results. Google uses spiders/robots that crawl your website on a daily or weekly basis to determine what your business is about, your level of popularity, and what searches are most suitable for your website. How many times within a given time frame the crawlers crawl your website will depend on several factors. As a result of this, your ranking will usually fluctuate over time. Google is very insightful into user behavior because they have been in business for a long time and have collected a lot of user data over the years. Thus, they are able to rank websites accurately.

The information that Google collects is then input into search algorithms. There are several search algorithms developed by Google to suit different kinds of searches.

Are rankings different on desktop vs. mobile?

Of course yes. Google looks at search on different platforms differently based on user experience standpoint. However, cohesiveness across platforms plays a central part in how search results are ranked. As a result, you will see search results appearing differently on desktop and mobile devices.

Android and Chrome have allowed Google to collect a lot of user data so that they are able to optimize search results based on the device one is using to do a search. The use of voice to conduct searches is also improving fast and as a result, Google is working hard to incorporate this capability into their search algorithms.

Why do rankings change?

There are several reasons why search rankings for websites change over time. Some of the reasons for change originate from the user side while others are caused by Google itself. For instance, machine learning is playing a big role today because search engines are now capable of deducing what the user is searching for and what they are expecting to see when they type a search query in a search engine. Websites changes over time and when they do, their ranking in search engines also change. Websites change for good or for worse. If your website isn’t changing, then maybe your competitor’s is and if it happens to become better than yours, then Google will rank it higher. New sites and webpages may also be introduced with better content so that they are ranked higher than yours.

Because of these changes, it is important that you use a free rank tracking tool to know where your site ranks every once in a while.