The SEO landscape has undergone a tremendous transformation in the past few years and is continues to be in a state of flux. Unfortunately, a great many website administrators and owners are yet to embrace the changes and the fact that they’re still carrying on with backdated or obsolete SEO strategies corroborates this assertion. They’re yet to come to terms with the fact that short-term or stop-gap tactics adopted in order to improve a site’s ranking don’t pay off anymore but rather backfire.
Google has gone in for massive algorithm updates in the recent past which have rendered black hat SEO techniques (resorted to by unscrupulous elements to perk up ranking by hook or by crook) redundant. In the following paragraphs, some significant search engine optimization components that you can take into consideration to earn a better rank on SERPs have been elucidated.
1. User experience influences rankings
Does your website have an unusually high bounce rate? Or, does your portal tend to attract more users with a high dwell time? Bounce rate is the proportion of users that want to move out or exit the moment they log into your site. On the other hand, the dwell time is associated with the duration or length of time a user spends navigating through your website. Understandably enough, you’d prefer your site to have a higher dwell rate (as high as possible) and a negligible bounce rate.
Simply put, you’d need to make the site incredibly user-friendly if you want it to attract traffic (read users) that instinctively wants to spend a few moments more on your online platform. Focus more on updating creative and original SEO-oriented content that can engage the readers or users. Alternatively, restructure the blog design by developing content using large and legible fonts, and clearing pop-ups that can adversely affect the attention-span.
2. Backlinks still matter a lot
Don’t pay attention to SEO strategists or specialists who’re of the opinion that backlinks don’t carry any weightage nowadays as far as a site’s standing on Google’s SERPs is concerned. In fact, they strongly feel that backlinks end up doing more harm than good. If the unrealistic and pedestrian outlook of such online marketing experts has influenced you, then you’ll be pleasantly surprised to know that backlinks still count as one of the most significant parameters for determining a site’s acceptability to Google. Therefore, you should concentrate on building quality contextual backlinks.
3. Developing and posting lengthier content is becoming a trend
Studies and trials carried out by agencies that conduct research on the intricacies and trivia associated with website rankings have indicated that blogs and posts on sites with a word count exceeding 1,500 words tend to earn a higher standing on search engines. If you click on the top six or seven URL links on the first SERP page associated with your brand, you’ll see that the web page or web pages of such links have content made up of over 1,500 words. Lengthy blogs or articles that are original, quality-oriented, and express relevant info tend to be shared more extensively across automated social networks like Facebook and Twitter.
4. Your site has to compete with the top-ranked portals
You’re aware that your site has to compete for ranking (and ultimately customers and revenues) with countless other portals. This, in turn, implies that the site needs to be very user-friendly enabling users to navigate smoothly from web page to another or from section to another. Also, the site should be speedy that is users should be able to log into your portal quickly (should load fast). Take advantage of online tools like CloudFlare and W3 Total Cache.
5. Make your site mobile-friendly
While devising your SEO plan or strategy take into consideration that a significant proportion of those who’ll be logging in will be smartphone users. Hence you should thrash out a web marketing technique that makes your site mobile-friendly.