The world of search engine optimization may be complex but easily understandable, once you learn the basics. After that is ‘contagious’ and makes you hungry for success. Once you step in this world there is no way out, it is engaging and interesting, and makes you eager for learning and acquiring more.
How Usability & Content Affect Search Engines
The engines improve the speed of providing the results that fit best in the search you make. Those sites are somehow different than the others that Google is not showing to you. Although the machines have advanced insanely in the past years, they are not as smart as the human.
The search engines do not distinguish the articles like a human would but they rely on the meta description and title. Those that landed on the list of top 10 on the first page, have three things in common:
- Relevant and useful information
- Easy to understand
- High-quality content
All of these three things are important for consumers and the search engine optimization as well. Although humans can see things much clearly and in a much smarter way than the search engines, they rely on the information the engines deliver to them. Once they land on your page, their experience is questioned.
Source: www.blurbpoint.com
Usability & Engagement
The engines take into consideration several variables which lead to user engagement. In order to lead a consumer to a website and increase the customer engagement, they make a reasonable number of intuitions about that particular website.
- Engagement metrics
- Machine learning
- The linking patterns
- Usability
- User experience
All of these factors benefit a website in the battle of ranking, quality, and popularity. Creating an attentive experience attracts more visitors to your website which will read content on your site, share it and will come back. These three search engine optimization factors not only lead to a higher ranking but create a customer loyalty as well.
Source: www.reliablesolutionscorp.com
On-Page Search Engine Optimization
The success of the rankings depends strictly on the so-called “long click”. Search engines seek for a type of content where the users would stay. If a page has a good content, the user will stay longer. For example, there are situations where you click a link and then immediately go back on the Google page and click the second link.
If you do this, search engines assume that you were not satisfied with the first result. Therefore, they seek an inspiring content with reliable information. They seek a page which makes you not return back to Google page in order to find another source.
Source: www.udemy.com
Why Do You Need On-page SEO?
A page where a user stays longer is considered as a quality page of the search results. Additionally, having users that stay on your pages, leads to increased engagement metrics.
A few years back, Google introduced the ranking algorithm. The algorithm consists of human evaluators which search for the quality content and then rank it higher in the list. Along with the algorithm, there is a machine learning which mimics the human evaluators. They recognize which site they like and the one they don’t, while ranking the ones they like as quality content.
The engines, discover the popularity of a website with the help of the link analysis. The websites that have quality content and useful information, earn more links than the low-quality ones. Therefore, creating a quality content is useful for the variety of searches.
Source: www.adroll.com
Off-Page Search Engine Optimization
Off-page refers to all the things happening outside your website in order to increase its ranking. On-page is every strategy happening on the site, while this one, is everything happening outside of it. It is a kind of optimization that is more than just linking. It tells you what other people think about your website and they only link to pages they like.
Why Is Link Building Important To Google?
Not only content is taken into consideration by the search engines, but the linking is a factor as well. You cannot just work with on the content and leave the link building behind. They both matter and they are connected. If you want to rank higher, you have to have a well-thought strategy for both. You cannot go up if you only work on one of them. The importance of the link building has increased drastically.
Source: www.searchenginejournal.com
The Art Of Link Building
Link building is the interaction between websites, linking from one page to another. This linking process includes hyperlinks that crawl the web. Many would agree that it is the hardest and the most fundamental part when it comes to SEO. It depends both on your site and your personality and requires creativity. There are three types of link building:
- Natural links – created by sites that liked your content and linked it.
- Manual Links – present in emails, value propositions or submissions.
- Self-created links – these are visitor links which have the lowest value.
Once the search engines discover the types of links, they look at the number of links. Links are important in the search engine optimization because the engines discover the relation of the pages, their authority, and population. With the help of the link algorithms, the websites gain attention and traffic.
Source: dejanseo.com.au
The Values Of Popularity:
- Global value
- Local value
- Anchor text
- Link value
- Fresh rank
- Social media value
The global popularity comes along with the popularity of a website. For example, New York Times is a website that is trusted. Therefore, if you post links in your content from already popular, highly ranked websites, your page will rank higher.
Local links lead to a website with the same topic. For example, if your website offers IT services, then you need to link to another popular website with the same services. If you link to another website with a topic out of yours, ranking possibility is low.
Making anchor text links is the strongest signal of the engines. If you have links that bring your users to another page, the possibility of high rank is great.
When you link to a page, you need to make sure that its ranking is fresh and still of value. If a website was once reliable and popular it doesn’t mean that still is.
Another important factor to have in mind is sharing on social media. Although engines distinguish those links from those on Google, the linking from those networks is crucial for your pages.
Source: www.hireclerks.com
Metrics
Since the innovation of PageRank by one of the Google’s founders, Larry Page, website owners are in a constant race with the competition for a first or a higher rank. As mentioned before, there are several factors that can help you take the spot you want to, but that is not all. You may have developed a great strategy to acquire that but you need to track your results. In order to do that, you need to use metrics.
Tracking Visitors
The number of visitors is important. You need to have a reliable information of your audience to know your weaknesses as well as the improvements. Knowing this data is extremely helpful for traffic acquisition. Thus, you can improve the weaknesses and continue with the plan that increased your traffic.
This helps you to acquire unique visitors which is the crucial and leading moment to users that will continually come back to your site. Having this kind of visitors leads to customer engagement which actually leads to customer loyalty.
Referral
The referrals give you an information where do your visitors come from. With every click of the users, you get information where does the click come from, on your website and the social media as well.
Having an information about your traffic helps you become better in what you are doing and be ahead of your competition. Additionally, you can see which other sites mention you and you can contact them to build a stronger relationship with them which brings more traffic.
Source: www.argumentodigital.com
Bounce Rate
This metric helps you track where do the visitors click the back button on your page or worse, closes your website. Knowing this information is important in order to improve your website because Google gives the first spot only to those websites with a long click. In order to improve this, you need to know that with each click on the X in the browser is a lost opportunity and a lost visitor.
Conversion Rate
According to some SEO experts, this is the most crucial moment of all. This metric shows you when a user has achieved a goal on some of your pages. Knowing this leads to a high possibility of winning the race and ranking your website in the top 10 websites on the first page on Google.
This metric tells you what stops your website from ranking higher. For example, if a page of your website breaks down, you will be given an exact information where the problem you need to solve is happening.
In the search engine optimization, tracking the metrics leads to success. The analytics give a comprehensive look at the percentage and number of visitors. Knowing this data is helpful for traffic acquisition because it shows you the results.
Source: www.trepmetrics.com
Search Engine Optimization Tools
If you want a quality strategy and create a successful business, then every webmaster needs search engine optimization included in their marketing plan. Once you start implementing it, you need to track the results. In order to find out what the results of your strategy are, you need a quality analysis tools to track them.
Ahrefs
Ahrefs is one of the most powerful social media and search engine optimization tools. It is an intelligent analytics tool with many useful features. Having a complete result metric, allows you to improve your position.
- Keywords – It helps you find new and see the rank of your used keywords.
- Url Rating – Check the quality of any of your rankings of all the URLs that your domain has and appear in the search engines.
- Domain Rank – With the help of its impeccable services, you can track the rankings in any location, no matter if your product is only for desktop, mobile or both. You can track the quality of the rankings of all the URLs on your domain, compared with the others in the search engines.
- Backlink – Currently it is considered as the best tool that checks the rank of your backlinks. This process of tracking is called web crawling, which is a type of bot that identifies the hyperlinks on a certain page.
- Content Explorer – Another beautiful feature that has is the discovery of the best and the most popular content for any topic. You can search for content that attracts backlinks, gets social shares or traffic from the search engines, it is incredible for copywriters.
Source: www.trellis.co
Moz
Moz has the best link building tools and analysis for keyword research, website performance and more. The set of tools is made professionally and allows you to constantly get a higher rank in the search, track the crawl issues and rise before the competition does. All in all, Moz offers you a better way to handle the search engine optimization strategy and results.
- Target Keywords
- Open Site Explorer
- On-Page Analytics
Source: www.bojjamnaresh.com
Google Analytics
Google analytics is a tool which gives an overall perspective to your visits. It gives metrics about everything that is happening in the world of online marketing and gives exactly the information that you need. It tells you the right numbers of the daily, monthly and yearly visitors.
With the information you see, you can easily understand the results of the campaign you are running. There is also a referral traffic feature which also allows you to see where the people that visit your website come from.
Conclusion
As mentioned previously in the beginner’s guide to search engine optimization SEO Part 1, success takes great strategy. Once you understand the basics and the meaning of this branch and take the steps one by one, you will find yourself in the top 10 pages.
