Everyone wants their web content to rank high in SERP. A primary way of doing so is by posting authoritative content. But how do you do it? 

By understanding what makes content authoritative, you can improve the quality of your online content and thus improve your SERP rankings. Here are five factors to consider:

• Relevancy. When you’re searching online for information, you want your search result to take you directly to the page that will give you that information – you don’t want to have to dig through several pages to find what you’re looking for. Your web visitors want the same thing. When creating content, be sure to thoroughly research the topic first to learn specifically what your target audience is looking for. By discovering who your target audience is and what information they want, you can improve your content and SERP ranking. Google and other platforms use term frequency-inverse document frequency (TF-IDF) to determine what words/phrases are of primary importance to a page. Make sure that keywords and relevant phrases are used in the content in a manner that comes across as natural.
• Readability. It’s not enough to provide the information your web visitors are looking for. If your content is not well written, free of typos and grammar errors, easy to read and organized, visitors won’t stay on the page for long. It also needs to be written at a reading level appropriate for your audience.
• Page load speed. Slow-loading pages affect your SERP rankings. If your page takes longer than a few seconds to load, the chances are high that the user will leave the page quickly. Optimizing all the elements in the page will help to decrease bounce rates.
• Credibility. You want your site to be a trusted source of health information. To do this, consider steps such as:
  • Providing content that is always factually correct to establish trust with your users.
  • Giving attribution to the content team, including providing bios and photos of all authors, editors and others on the content team. Show your users the real people behind what they see on their screens.
  • Maximizing your “About Us” page.
• Links. Both internal and external links are crucial to your web content’s authority. Internal links to other related pages on your site help Google to understand the page’s content, which helps determine search query relevance. External links out to other reputable sites lend credence to your content. Backlinks to your site from outside sites also improve authority. But don’t make the mistake of buying backlinks – search engines mete out severe punishment for this.