8 Main SEO Indicators in 2020 - According to Google, 88 percent of consumers conduct online research before making a purchase. This situation requires business owners to have a good online presence to be discoverable in the digital world. One of the best ways to build a good online presence is by improving SEO quality.

Before discussing tips for optimizing your website’s SEO, you should understand what factors or indicators influence SEO quality. SEO indicators continue to evolve following Google’s algorithm updates.

Google uses various indicators to determine which website pages appear most frequently in top positions. These indicators function to evaluate all website pages in Google’s index and determine their position in Google search results. Here are eight main SEO indicators for 2020.

URL Structure

A good URL structure makes it easier for search engines to recognize your website and the main topics you discuss.

It’s best to create a simple URL structure that contains just the domain name and article title. Here are examples of structured URLs.

Domain Security

Security is crucial in the digital world. Internet users must be careful when providing their personal information to websites to prevent misuse of personal information.

To address this issue, Google directs searches to websites with better security standards. Since 2014, Google has prioritized websites with good domain security. Good domain security can be seen from SSL (HTTPS) ownership.

Additionally, since January 2017, Google Chrome has implemented a policy that marks websites using only HTTP as unsafe for submitting personal information such as email addresses and accounts. If your website domain still uses HTTP, now is the right time to switch to HTTPS.

Content Topics

In the first point, I briefly explained about good website structure. You must have several related main topics to build a good website structure.

After determining several main topics, you need to create content about these topics. The more content discussing a particular topic, the greater the possibility of appearing on the first page of search results for that topic.

For example, if you create a culinary blog with restaurant reviews as one of its main topics, if your blog has 30 pieces of content discussing this, the likelihood of being in the top position of Google search results is higher compared to a blog with 5 pieces of content on similar topics.

Search Intent

Search intent is what most searchers want from a particular keyword. One keyword can be intended for two or more different things.

For example, when entering the keyword big bang theory, the top page in Google search results is the American television series The Big Bang Theory, not pages discussing the scientific theory (big bang theory).

Why does this happen? Because most users searching for the keyword “big bang theory” intend to find the television series, not the scientific theory. So Google prioritizes website pages that match the search intent of the majority of users.

Before writing content, make sure you align it with user search intent first. Content that doesn’t match search intent has a very small chance of getting high positions in search results.

Content Structure

You must create content that is structured and easy for readers to understand. Make it easy for readers to find answers in your content.

The way to do this is by using headings and subheadings for the most important points in the content. Additionally, you can add photos, illustrations, infographics, or even videos to help readers understand your content.

Readers will spend more time on your blog if they like your content. The longer they spend on your blog, the greater the chance your content has of getting high rankings in search results.

Meta Tags

Meta tags help Google understand the overall content on a website page. Meta tags consist of title tags and meta descriptions. First, the title tag is your article title that appears in search results. The article title shouldn’t be too long because Google will trim it according to its standards.

Second, meta description is a short text that explains your content in search results.

This text is located right below the article title and URL. Meta descriptions typically consist of 120 to 130 characters.

Backlinks, also often referred to as external links or inbound links, are links placed on other blogs/websites that direct to your blog/website pages. Backlinks remain one of the important factors for SEO.

The more backlinks to your website, the more Google will consider your website to have high credibility. However, these backlinks must also come from quality websites or blogs, not low-quality websites.

Website Speed

Last but not least, the final SEO determining factor is website speed. Website loading speed plays an important role in your SEO quality. Google has made page speed a ranking factor since 2010. However, at that time Google only focused on loading speed on desktop devices.