100 + Google SEO
January 25, 2023 | Author: Anonymous | Category: N/A
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Source: https://zyppy.com/seo-success-factors/
Contents O ve r vi ew . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 SECTION 1: C r i t i c a l F a c t o r s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 1. Content that Targets Targets User Search Queries. Querie s. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6 2. Crawlable + Accessible to Search Engines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7 3. Quality & Quantity of Links . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8 4. Satisfies User Intent Intent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8 .8 5. Uniqueness of Content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 6. Expe Expertise, rtise, Auth Authorita oritative tiveness, ness, and Trustw rustworthin orthiness ess (EA (EAT) T) . . . . 11 7. Freshness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 8. Click-through Rate (CTR). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 9. Speed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 10. Built for Multiple Devices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
16 SECTION 2: I m p o r t a n t F a c t o r s . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 1. Layout & Design. Design. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 2. Us Use e of Re Rele lev van antt Keyw ywor ord ds, Ph Phrras ases es,, & Top opic ics s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 3. Use of Optimized Images and Video Video . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 4. P Pe ersonalization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 5. Authority + Trust of Links . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 6. Relevance of Links . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 7. Social Sharing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 8. Page Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 9. Content Depth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 10. Topical Authority . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 11. St Structured Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 12. 12. Hreflang for for Internationalization Internationalization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 13. 13. Volume of Brand Searches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 14. 14. AMP AMP.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 15. HTTPS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
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28 SECTION 3: I n f l u e n t i a l F a c t o r s . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 1. User-Friendly URLs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 2. Parameter Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 3. Quality of Supplemental Content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 4. Real World Business Informatio Information n. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 5. Robots Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 6. Link Velocity Velocity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 7. Si Sitemaps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 8. Linking Out to High-Quality Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 9. Site Architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 10. Pagination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 11. Domain Age . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 12. Website & Business Re Reputation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 13. Use of Semantic Content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 14. Domain Extension . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 15. Se Ser ver Location . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 16. 16. Multiple Sources of Traffic Traffic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 17. Readability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 18. Factually Correct . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 19. Author Re Reputation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 20. 20. Accurate & Consistent Consistent Registration Info Info . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
SECTION 4: M y t h F a c t o r s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 40 1. Using Google Analytics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 2. Domain Expiration Length . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 3. Google Adsense. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 4. Keyword Density . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 5. W3C Validation Validation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 6. Multiple H1 Tags . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 7. SEO Site Submission . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 8. Dedicated IP IP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 9. Meta Keywords . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 10. Magical .Edu and .Gov Backlinks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
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SECTION 5: N e g a t i v e F a c t o r s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 45 1. Sp Spam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 2. Manipulative Links . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 3. Thin Content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 4. Non-unique Content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 5. Cloaking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 6. Meta Noindex Errors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 7. Canonical Errors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 8. Robots.txt Blocking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 9. Keyword Stuffing Stuffing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 10. Hidden Text or Links . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 11. Piracy / DMCA Notices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 12. Rich Snippet Spam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 13. 13. Blocking Important JS / CSS Files . Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 14. Overly Long / Complex URLs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 15. Linking to Bad Neighborhoods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 16. Slow Speed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 17. 17. Aggressive Ads Ads / Intrusive Interstitials Interstitials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 18. Ov O ver-Optimized Anchor Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 19. Hi H igh Quantity of Crawl Errors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 20. False / Misleading / Offensive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 21. Po Porn / Explicit Content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 22. Re Redirect Chains . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 23. UG U GC Spam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 24. Sneaky Redirects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 25. Ba Bad Domain History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
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Overview —and —a nd sometimes—a little bit dangerous. That is, chasing minor ranking factors can lead to a dangerous waste of resources, while at the same time neglecting holistic that actually leads to higher rankings and better traffic. Google uses s of signals to rank web pages. Nobody pages. Nobody knows what they all are a re (and (and anyone who claims otherwise otherw ise is fibbing). In fact, since the rise of machine learning, not even Googlers can tell you all the elements elements that influence in fluence rankings and how they interact with one another in search results.
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What matters is success. SEO Success Factors are Factors are those elements you can take action on to improve your rankings, traffic, and visibility visibility in Google search. Many Succ Success ess Factors— Factors— but not not all—are based based on ranking factors, factors, and a number number of of them delive deliverr bigger results than others. As an example, example, while meta meta descriptio descriptions ns aren’t aren’t a Google Google ranking factor, factor, crafting well-composed descriptions that improve your click-through rate (CTR) can have a positive, outsized impact on your SEO efforts. Using a combined analysis of: • Ranking actors studies
• Experimentation data • Expert opinio opinion n surveys • Patent filings • And statements rom Google … we’ve aggregated agg regated the most popular SEO Success Factors in one place. Our goal is to show you not only what w hat works, but how to use these factors to improve your rankings and traffic. Use this information is to prioritize the most critical factors first, while working your way towards less important importa nt elements. elements. You You can safely ignore the “Myth” factors, while being sure to stay away from the “Negative Factors.”
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SECTION 1
Critical Factors Sites at the top of Google search results typically score well in most, if not all, of these critical seo success factors.
1. Content that Targets User Search Queries In essence, this is the very heart of SEO. The magic that makes it work. Instead of traditional marketing where you push your message upon a user (thin think k television commercials), commercials), SEO allows you to deliver exactly the t he content the user is searching sea rching for, at exactly the moment they search for it.
To make this happen, you need data on what users are searching. This is why almost all SEO starts with Keyword Research. Keyword Research takes many many forms, but it typically t ypically consists of 3 types of o f data: . Query: Query : What are people searching or?
. Volume: How many are searching or it? . Difficulty: How competitive is it to rank or this term in Google?
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Once you know what terms are worth pursuing, you can create content that targets those t hose topics. We’ll We’ll cover this th is in later success factors.
How to Leverage: There are 100s of o f guides on getti getting ng started star ted with keyword key word research. researc h. A few of the best include: • Keywords and Keyword Research
• How to Do Keyword Research • Keyword Research for SEO: Te Definitive Guide
2. Crawlable + Accessible to Search Engines All the t he keyword research in the world means nothing if i f search engines engi nes can’t crawl or understand your website. Notthe surprisingly, technical crawling and accessibility often represent both biggest SEO challenge and biggest opport unityissues opportunity for a majority of sites. From making sure your robots.txt file doesn’t block important pages or resources, to providing machine-readable text, building machine accessible contentt is a critical SEO success factor. conten A few technical areas that SEOs must master: • Making sure search engines can discover + crawl all important URLs
• On page content is readable by by search engines • On-site signals the relative importance and uniqueness o each page
How to Leverage: Most Technical SEO Audits cover crawling and search engine accessibility as priority #1. One of the best resources is Benjamin’s Estes’ Technical SEO Audit Checklist Checkl ist for Human Beings Bein gs and An Annielytics nielytics Site Audit Aud it Checklist. Checklist . Most major SEO audit tools uncover a number of crawling issues very effectively effec tively.. A few well-respected tools you can use/try use/tr y for free: • Google Search Console
• SEMrush • Ryte
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Critical Factors
3. Quality & Quantity of Links When Googlers Larry Lar ry Page and a nd Sergey Brin wrote w rote the original origina l PageRank patent in 1996, they had a novel idea: Instead of ranking web pages based on human editors, why not rank pages based on the number of links pointing at them from other web pages? Links are votes. Today’ss Google goes far Today’ fa r beyond simply counting the raw number of links a site receives. Factors Factors that play into this th is popularity popularit y contest are believed to include factors like trust, relevancy, position, and many more. And while whi le internal links lin ks (links (li nks from your own ow n website) website) may not be as powerful as links from trusted external sites, internal linking and site architecture play an outsized role in your SEO efforts. Although many speculate specu late that the power of links has h as declined, or that Google may someday drop them altogether a ltogether,, Google statements and many experiments continue to prove their value as one of the t he strongest SEO success factors that we know. A link is more than a navigational navig ational element. Each Each individual indiv idual link on the t he web conveys multiple signals that Google can interpret for ranking purposes. These include: inc lude: • Te Authority Authority + rust o the Link
• Te relevance o the Link • Anchor ext • … and Many More
How to Leverage:
If you want to rank, you need good links—from both inside and outside of your site. For external linking strategies, we highly recommend the resources at Point T he Complete Complete List. For Blank SEO, in particular, part icular, Link Building Strategies — The insight into internal linking, chec check k out the linking resources at Hobo Web.
4. Satises User Intent The pieces piece s are coming together. toge ther. So far we’ve: . argeted content with relevant user search queries
. Made your site crawlable and accessible to search engines . Obtained relevant links pointing to your content
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But now, perhaps perhaps one of the biggest questions of all: Does this content satisfy user’s intent? It’s not enough enough to target ta rget your content with key words and phrases (more on this later). The important important question Google wants w ants to know is “does the content give the user the most are looking Google doesn’t wantsatisfying to simply answer deliver they answers to users;for?” they want to deliver the best answers and experiences, ones that satisfy user intent without requiring additional searches. SEOs refer to this in different ways: dwell time, the long click, return-toSERP,, and more. In essence, they all SERP a ll mean this: th is: Does the user find the most satisfying answer to what they are looking for without searching further? If the user has to click the back button, modify their search, or spend more time with results from other websites, this may be a sign that your content doesn’t deliver the best experience.
How to Leverage: Delivering content that satisfies user intent is one of the most challenging aspects of SEO, in part because it’s difficult to measure. That said, there t here are a number num ber of practices pr actices that can improve your you r chances signicantly signicantly..
. Deliver content with the ormat and eatures Google expects. E.g., i the top ranking sites or your keyword in Google all contain video results, it’s a good indication that users (and Google) are looking or videos to satisy intent . Answer the query as completely as possible, giving the user zero excuses to hit the back button. A good way to do this is to incorporate the answers to additional questions, i.e. “people also ask ” into your content. . Measure and work to improve your engagement rates, including: • Bounce Rate • ime on Site • Pages per Visit • Goal Conversion Rate Rand Fishkin has covered the topic of user satisfaction in depth. For better understanding, check out his articles: • Is the New, Most Powerful Ranking Factor “Searcher ask Accomplishment?”
• How to Beat Your Competitor’s Rankings with More *Comprehensive* Content
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5. Uniqueness of Content If your content is exactly the same sa me as multiple other copies copies on the web, why should Google rank it above all the others? Put another way—if your content isn’t uniquely valuable, it doesn’t doesn’t mean Google will wil l necessarily punish you for it, but it does make it much, much harder to rise to the top. When your content isn’t unique, two things happen: . Google has to filter out all the duplicate content to deliver the best result – and there’s a good chance your content will be in the filtered group.
. Duplicate content can’t target those unique topics and answers that the competition isn’t targeting Duplicate content issues generally take two forms. First is content that actually copies content content from another site or page. The second is caused by duplicates of your own content when 2 or more more URLs create the same (or (or very close) close) content. content.
Content that directly copies content from another site is obviously problematic. But also consider the problems created with your own original content when you have URLs like these: • https://example.com/product
• https://example.com/product?color=deault In theory, both of these URLs may create the exact same page. Not only does Google need to crawl each one (which could waste precious crawl budget) but
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the two pages may split split link equity and other ranking rank ing signals. This makes it very difficult for Google to decide which page—if any at all—to show in search results.
How to Leverage: . Make sure your content, including all text, offers unique value rom all other sites and pages across the internet. . Control duplicate content on your own site. ools and techniques include canonical tags, parameter handling, robots.txt, redirects, and more. Tese guides should help: • Duplicate Content (Search Console Help) • Duplicate Content Advice from Hobo Web • Duplicate Content Best Practices
6. Expertise, Exper tise, Authoritativeness, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (EAT) You can target key words, build links, and You a nd maybe even satisfy user intent i ntent – but but do you have a site both Google and users should trust? In the earlier days of SEO, it was easier to game the search engines, eng ines, and lowquality pages flooded the results. To combat this, Google introduced Panda into its algorithm, which uses machine learning to separate high and low-quality pages. Guidelines, the principal According to Google’s Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines qualities that define a high-quality page are Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (EAT). It’s believed that Google uses the results from its human quality raters as training data in its machine learning algorithms. Other qualities that dene a high-quality page—according to evaluator guidelines—include:
• A satisy satisying ing amount o high-qualit high-qualityy content • A clear indication o who is responsible or or the content, content, i.e., author inormation, “About Us” Us” and contact inormation i normation • A positive reputation
How to Leverage: A good place to start is Google’s G oogle’s own published Panda questions, which many assume form the basis of their machine learning model. Since you likely don’t don’t have an army ar my of Search Quality Raters at your disd isposal, Distilled created a helpful Panda Survey that that you can use with your own test group g roup..
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7. Freshn F reshness ess Does fresh equal success? Since the early days, Google has filed patent after patent on evaluating content freshness for its search results. This typically involves two parts. First, Google devised a system known as “Query Deserves Freshness” to determine the types of search terms that most benefit from fresh results. Examples include: • News and current events – “Seattle protest” “Grammy “Grammy Awards” Awards”
• Recur Recurring ring events – “Full “Full moon” moon” “World “World Cup Schedule” • Frequently Updated Updated – “iPhone Specs” “Mac “Mac Revie Reviews” ws” • opics with a recent spike in search volume or social media coverage Other systems determine how fresh and relevant your content is for the search query. q uery. Signals which whic h may indicate fresh fre sh content include: i nclude: • Age o the content
• Updates to the content, including which sections were updated (important or unimportant) and how much content was updated • How requently your content is updated • How ofen people link to your your content (lower link requency may indicate content that has grown stale) • Changes in engagement metrics (worsening engagement may mean content is out o date) Fresh content isn’t always better, but the idea is to deliver the most relevant content.
How to Leverage: Updating your content for the sake of freshness isn’t necessary, but keeping your content content relevant and up-to-date is. Updating old content is also a way to earn new links and fresh engagement. engagemen t. A couple of resources to help: . Illustrations of How Fresh Content May Influence Google Rankings
. Evergreen Content: How Updating An Old Post Boosted Pageviews by %
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8. Click-through Rate (CTR) For ages, SEOs and Googlers have debated if Click-through Rate is a ranking factor. ex perimentss show that when more people click your On one hand, SEO experiment result in Google search, then your rankings typically rise. Google, on the other hand, usually argues that CTR would be a “ noisy ” signal to use for ranking (without actually denying denyin g it.) it.) The truth? tru th? It doesn’t matter. mat ter. While there may be convincing convincin g evidence that earning earn ing higher a Click-through Cl ick-through rate may improve your rankings, it simply doesn’t matter if Google uses it as a direct—or even indirect—ranking signal. The truth tr uth is i s that when you improve your C TR TR,, you get ge t more traf c. Period.
There are potential downstream benefits as well. A higher CTR means more people are looking at your content, which means more potential shares, more potential links, and more potential opportunities for engagement. All of these may have a positive influence on your Google rankings, either directly or indirectly.
How to Leverage: Fortunately Fortu nately,, influencing CTR C TR is one of the areas a reas you have the most control over as an SEO. That is, at least you have the opportunity to experiment! The three main tools you have to help he lp raise C TR are: . itle ags
. Meta Description . Rich Snippets The good news is that all of these are under your direct control, at least partially. Google may choose to display your information however they want in search results, but you can greatly influence this with your copy and structured data markup. A few resources to help you master the game: • My Single Best SEO ip for Improved Web raffic
• Ridiculously Effective Ways to Boost Your Organic CR • Google’s Rich Results est • Rich Results Gallery
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Optimizing for Featured Snippets is another option, which we’ll cover in the next section.
9. Speed Fast is in. Speed is a confirmed ranking factor. When Google first announced it in 2010, they said it only applied to a small smal l number of slow-loading pages. Since then, multiple studies have shown a significant correlation between speed and rankings across all sites, not only the slow ones. Additionally, Additional ly, Google announced annou nced site speed as a ran rankin kingg factor for mobile results.
How to Leverage: For many, improving your page speed can be a technically challenging experience. Plus, there are so many factors (time to first byte, waterfalls, download time, etc.) etc.) it can be difficult d ifficult to know k now what to optimize for for.. Fortunately, Lighthouse is a free tool that both Google and the SEO community have rallied around. Its Performance Audit scores your page speed into a single metric and breaks it down into actionable steps. Another easy optio option n for impr improving oving speed is utilizing a Cont Content ent Delivery Delivery Network (CDN) which can speed up delivery of images and files to your users. Cloudflare offers a highly recommended starter plan which is both free and easy.
10. Built for Multiple Devices How big is the device you are reading this on? Whether it’s a desktop computer computer,, tablet, or phone, phone, hopefully everyth ever ything ing is formatted okay and you can read it with ease. Today,, most modern content is built to be multi-device Today multi-dev ice and mobile-friendly, but this factor can still stil l play a huge in influencing your SEO performance. performa nce. Yes, Y es, mobile-friendliness is an actual Google ranking factor. But more than that, your mobile (and (and desktop) desktop) design can influence engagement, sharing, shar ing, satisfaction, and quality metrics. A poor mobile experience can have a negative cascading effect on your rankings and visibility down the line. Likewise, a positive experience can help.
Google recently rolled out its Mobile First Index. The upshot is that Google will now mostly rank your pages based ba sed on your mobile site. site. So if your mobile site is missing content from your desktop site, you may be in i n trouble.
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How to Leverage: Put simply: at a minimum, min imum, you should have a mobile-friendly site. Most modern platforms today do this by default with w ith ease, but some older and many custom Content Management Systems may struggle. Additionally, with Google’s Mobile First Index, you should should make sure your mobile site doesn’t doesn’t strip str ip out important content. Here’s a tool from Russ Jones that can tell if your mobile site is stripping out any links (beta): http://www. thegooglecache.com/mobile-links.php Additional resources: • Google’s Mobile SEO Guide
• Mobile SEO: Te Definite Guide • Mobile-Friendly est
Feell free to use this infographic Fee infogr aphic with proper attribution. Click here for high-res version. version.
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SECTION 2
Imporr tant Fac Impo Fac to tors rs Not only are the following followin g factors important, importa nt, but combined, they are hugely important. It’s possible not every factor will wi ll apply to your site, but the vast majority will have a big influence your rankings and visibility.
1. Layout & Design Appearance matters. So does page layout. In SEO, everything is connected.
Not only is page layout a confirmed Google Ranking Factor in more ways than one (aggressive ads and page segmentation, to name a few) but having a clean, modern design with clear navigation and site elements can lead to: . Better engagement
. More shares + links . Increased conversions
How to Leverage: While there no single “right” way to design and organize a page, a handful of guidelines go a long way in helping to get your message across, and to rank. . Clear navigation
. Prominent main content – typically above the old . Helpul supplemental content . Clean UX and design . Non-aggressive ads . Legible ext (at least px)
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2. Use of Relevant Keywords, Phrases, & Topics Well, duh. If you want Well, wa nt to target users who search using usin g specific words and phrases, it’s 100% helpful to include those phrases and a nd topics in key sections of your site. In the early days, “keyword stuffing” might have been your entire SEO strategy. Today, the importance of individual keywords has fallen dramatically while Google has gotten amazingly a mazingly better at figurin fig uringg out the meaning of your content, including synonyms, variations, topics, entities, and intent. Keyword stuffing is out, but it’s still helpful to include phrases, synonyms, and topics that your audience is looking for in i n key places. These areas include include:: . Te page title
. Meta descriptions . URL . Domain name (sometimes) . Page headings
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. Body text . Image alt attributes (when appropriate) . Metadata
How to Leverage: . Use on-page SEO best practices to target your content towards specific phrases and topics: • A Visual Guide to Keyword argeting and On-Page SEO . Move beyond keyword to optimize or complete topics and entities: • https://moz https://moz.com/blog/-advan .com/blog/-advanced-seo-concep ced-seo-concepts ts
3. Use of Optimized Images and Video It’s totally possible to rank in Google without using images or videos. That said, sites that use different forms of visual media, on average, typically outrank sites that don’t. Images and media can make content more engaging and shareable, and the data they add through optimization can be used by search engines to help with rankings for relevant terms.
How to Leverage: Aside from adding original orig inal and a nd unique images and video v ideo in your text, it’s important to ensure the media both ads to the user experience, as well as follows basic optimization guidelines. Here are a couple of guides covering both video and image SEO: • Wistia’s Guide to Video SEO
• Image SEO: Optimize images for search engines
4. Personalization In 2009, Google turned on personalized search for everyone. If you visit a site, and Google thinks you had a good experience, they are more likely to surface that site again in your search results. Other factors that inuence personalization include:
• Location • Mobile App use
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• Email history • Shopping history • Maps history • Device • … and many more more (rumored to be over + signals) The basics of personalization pers onalization are two-fold: t wo-fold: . Te more a user interacts with your website + brand, the more likely Google may surace you in the users search results
. Te more relevant you are to a user’s immediate need (i.e., location + intent), the more likely or Google to connect you
How to Leverage: For websites, increasing engagement through all available channels is the key to increasing visibility through personalized search. This means positively engaging your visitors/customers through all points of possible contact including your website, emails, app installs, and even your physical location, when applicable. applicable. To put it simply: make sure To s ure they want to engage with you again! again ! Forr a business with Fo w ith physical locations, local intent is a huge factor in personalized search. Make sure your Local SEO is dialed in as tight as possible .
5. Authority + Trust of Links Authority and trust are subsets of link quality. Link Authority may encompass many things. While we don’t know all the ingredients in Google’s secret sauce, Link Authority is mostly thought of as the raw power all the links pointing to a page. The more high-quality links a page has pointed to it, the more authority it has to pass to other pages through links. For example, Wikipedia has significantly more link authority than a typical personal blog. Link Authority is often referred to as PageRank PageRank.. Trust is another aspect of authority worth consid considering. ering. A spam website website may have a ton of links pointing at it (through manipulation), but because Google wants to consideration. factor out spam, it can take the t he trust of the website into consideration It may do this by starting with a set of trusted seed sites (government, uni versities, newspapers, etc.) etc.) and measuring measurin g the number of link “hops” “ hops” between
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sites. Sites further away from trusted sites are more likely not to be trusted.
How to Leverage: Many types of links are valuable, but generally, you want to seek links from trusted, high authority sites. Many SEO tool providers offer link metrics. Both Moz and Majestic offer link metrics (althoug (although h limited at the free level) • Majestic: Important metrics are rust Flow and Citation Flow
• Moz Link Explorer: Important metrics are Domain Authority and Spam Score
6. Relevance of Links Imagine you own a pizza shop in Honolulu. If you were Google, which of the following would you give more weight? • A German plastic manuacturer manuacturer links to you with the word “website”
• A Hawaiian Hawaiian restaurant critic links to you with the words words “best pizza in Hawaii” Hopefully, you chose the latter. Google would too. Link Relevance may be inuenced by many things, among them:
. Anchor ext . Te relevance o the linking page (through means such as phrase-based indexing) . Local interconnectivity, i.e., links rom pages that rank well or your term can help you to rank
How to Leverage: By researching your link targets properly, work to secure links that are relevant to your topics. Remember the Golden Rule of Link Building: Will this link bring engaged, highly qualied visitors to my website? Topical Links Impact Rankings Ran kings Read: 7 Illustrations of How Topical Read:
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7. Social Sharing If you want to watch SEOs argue, bring up social sharing as a ranking factor. But we’re not going to argue today because this isn’t about ranking factors. This is about success On one hand, factors. Google has consistently stated they don’t use raw social counts in their ranking algorithms. On the other hand, study after after study shows shows a strong correlation between social sharing and higher rankings. It doesn’t matter how it works. It’s It’s widely agreed that t hat broad social sharing sha ring can help a page to rank, either directly or—more likely–indirectly. The reason is simple: regardless of algorithms, social sharing can put your contentt in front conten f ront of more eyeballs. Marketing 101. Content Content with wide w ide social sharing enjoys greater distribution in front of influencers, and social sharing aggregators can often create downstream links to the page.
How to Leverage: No magic bullets here. They key is to build your social influence and create content that encourages social sharing. It’s not a strategy everyone can master, but it’s it’s powerful. powerful .
8. Page Structure Similar to Layout and Design, Page Structure helps you to organize your content in ways that Google can better understand it and display in search results.
How to Leverage: Best practices for Page Structure include: . Organize your content into clear hierarchy o titles, headings (h, h, h, etc.), body text, lists and tables t ables
. Use subheadings when called or . Group thematically related ideas together, i.e., within the same content blog, paragraph, list, etc . Use an Inverted Pyramid style o writing . Optimize urther or or Featured Snippets
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9. Content Depth Consider these two seemingly opposed concepts: • Content length likely isn’t isn’t a ranking actor
• Longer content tends to rank higher SEOs have been debating this for years, and empathetically stress st ress that content doesn’t need to belong to rank. Case in point: Consider this page from the US Navy , which ranks ra nks for 1000s of searches a month. It doesn’t need extra content because it satisfies the user intent. On the other hand—all things being equal—longer content tends to rank higher. Nearly every SEO correlation studies ever performed confirm this. Why? Longer content typically: . May have have a better shot o o showing topical topical relevance
. Has a better chance o containing content that satisfies the user’s query . Is likely to contain more images and video . On average, tends to earn more links and shares than shorter content
How to Leverage: In reality, realit y, it’s it’s not the length lengt h of your content, but the depth of your content that matters. Content that fully explores a topic, including related questions, is likely to earn more visibility that content that only lightly covers a subject. Rank ing Factor You You Can Influence in an Afternoon A fternoon More: The Google Ranking More: [Case Study]
10. Topical Topical Authorit Author ity y It’s hard—typically—to rank for a competitive search query with only a single page website. Sites that do well in Google search sea rch results tend to publish regularly in specific areas of expertise over time, building content, links, and authority. We don’t don’t know if Google uses a specic authority metric in its algo rithm, but several possible mechanisms may make this concept work:
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Sites that rank well for a particular topic often find it much easier to rank new content on that same topic, even with few external links.
How to Leverage: coveringtopically the topic thoroughly • Become an authority on a topicand by earning over time, creating multiple posts/pages, relevant links. over
• Organize your topic using smart URL structures, i.e., i you were writing about “link building,” place all your link building post in the /link-building/ older, so that Google can associate these posts together. • Build Topic Clusters, leveraging smart internal linking. HubSpot created a great overview o how to accomplish this: https://research.hubspot.com/topic-clusters-seo
11. Structured Data While Structured Str uctured Data isn’t an explicit Google rankin ra nkingg factor, it can add content+con conten t+context text to your page to not only on ly help it to rank, ra nk, but also a lso become more visible in search results. Structured Data is the content behind your content, and provides search engines with explicit information as to what your content is about. For example, Product Schema is extremely extremely popular in eCommerce. With Product Schema, you can define aspects a spects of your product such as price, photos, and availability, so that there is absolutely no confusion to search engines. Other popular schemas include: • Offer
• WebPage / Websit ebsitee • Rating / Review • Event • SearchAction repeatedly edly shown through testing how The SEO agency Distilled has repeat how adding various types t ypes of structured str uctured data has helped in rankings ran kings.. (It doesn’t help help in all cases, but often of ten does.) Aside from adding clarity clar ity to your content, the other way Structured Data improves your visibility is by triggering Rich Snippets in search results, which we covered earlier. earlier.
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Important Factors
How to Leverage: First of all, if you are unfamiliar with Structured Data, how to implement it, or the types of content you should mark up, here are a couple of resources to get you started: • Google’s Introduction to Structured Data
• What is Structured Data? And Why Should You Implement It? Be sure to test your markup using Google’s Structured Data esting ool.
12. Hreang for Internationalization If you serve various versions of your website across different countries or languages, hreflang implementation is a must. Hreflang doesn’t necessarily boost your rankings (though many report that it does exactly this th is in many situations situations)) but it helps Google to show the right contentt to the right conten r ight audience, which can have a profound impact on your search sea rch performance. Check out these case studies, all with search visibility improvements: improvements: • Case Study: Te Impact of hreflang ag
• Hreflang Case Studies • HREFLang Fix Results in % Increase in Local raffic Hreflang isn’t appropriate to all circumstances (i.e., you only target web content to a single language and country) but if you want to expand across dialects and borders, it offers a great opportunity.
How to Leverage: Hreflang implementation is straightforward, but the specifics can be daunting even to the most experienced exper ienced SEO. SEO. After you get everything set up, be sure to test using the Sistrix tool below, and checking Google Search Console for hreang errors. . Overview : Use hreflang for language and regional URLs
. Generate: Te hreflang ags Generator ool . Test: hreflang Validator
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13. Volume of Brand Searches It sounds like a chicken and egg scenario, but it’s actually much more than that: When more people people search for your website and/or and/or brand, you tend to show up more frequently in search results. There are several differ di fferent ent ways searchers searche rs can search se arch for your brand br and and associate it with specic keywords: • Brand: Nike
• Navigational: nike.com • Brand + Keyword: nike running shoes • Brand + Navigation: running shoes nike.com Many marketers have wisely observed that when the volume of these branded searches increases, the brand bra nd tends to show up even when searchers aren’t specifically looking for it. Part of the reason, many SEOs believe, is that brand searches create an entity relationship between the brand and the keyword, i.e., “nike” is an entity associated with “running shoes,” so it tends to show up more when running shoes are searched. The other reason is much more obvious: brand searches influence in fluence Google’s Google’s auto-suggest. The more people search for “running shoes nike,” the more likely Google will suggest that exact phrase when people search for “running shoes.”
How to Leverage: Building your brand so that searchers actually seek you out by name (and don’t simply stumble upon you in search results) results) is one of the strongest drivers of traffic there t here is. It also helps build a defensive “moat” around your business. The more people people looking for your website, the less likely for Google to push down your site in rankings. rank ings. Building up your brand is hard work, but there are clever shortcuts shortcuts many savvy marketers have tried. For example: • A television commercial commercial that encourages viewers to search Google or “Chicken by Bob” can create branded search around those terms.
• An email campaign campaign that includes a link to a specific Google search containing the brand + the keyword.
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14. AMP Google likes to say that t hat Accelerated Mobile Mobile Pages (AMP) isn’t a rankin ra nkingg factor. And SEOs equally like li ke to point out that AMP is indeed a visibility visibilit y factor. The primar y advantages that AMP A MP affords af fords are: are : • Pages become eligible or Google News Carousels and other eatures
• Faster load times, which can improve engagement • Mobile search results are flagged with the AMP symbol, which can increase CR For publishers, these advantages can add up quickly. A Google sponsored For Forrester study showed showed a 10% year-over-year increase in traffic and 60% increase in pages per visit for AMP sites. AMP, despite despite the advantages, isn’t for everyone. Publishers may find that the technical standards are hard to maintain, and some non-news sites may find that any traffic gains aren’t worth the trouble.
How to Leverage: Setting up AMP can be tricky for smaller sites, but availa available ble tools get better each month. Check out these resources: • Accelerated Mobile Pages Project
• AMP Optimization for Success: SEO Steps, ips & ools • How to Properly Setup Google AMP on Your WordPress Site
15. HTTPS Even by Google standards, that the actual ranking boost from HTTPS is small. One Googler called it a tiebreaker. Even so, the SEO benet from HTTPS is bigger than the sum of its parts.
Part of the reason is the way browsers display HTTPS sites as secure. Currently, most browsers grace secure sites with a trusted green bar, while Chrome aggressively labels certain pages “insecure” if they don’t have HTTPS. Going forward, browsers may do away with green bars altogether and stated plans to issue warnings for all non-secure pages. In this case, non-HTTPS pages might soon be considered a negative ranking factor by default. For now, now, it’s a good idea to implement HT TPS.
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How to Leverage: Fortunately, making your site secure through HTTPS is easier than ever. Many web hosts even offer it free through services serv ices like Let’s Encrypt and Cloudflare. Otherwise, we recommend this handy HTTPS migration checklist from Aleyda Solis.
FOCUS ON THESE
5 Importnt SEO Success Fctors While not as critical, mastering the important success factors remain essential for high Google rankings and search visibility. Technical SEO skills, content crafting, and marketing required.
1
Layout & Design
2
Use of Relevant Keywords, Phrases, & Topics
3
9 10
Content Depth Topical Authority
11
Use of Optimized Images and Video
Structured Data
4
Personalization
12
Hreflang for Internationalization
5
Authority + Trust of Links
13
Volume of Brand Searches
6
Relevance of Links
14
AMP
7
Social Sharing
15
HTTPS
8
Page Structure
Source: https://zyppy.co Source: https://zyppy.com/seo-success-fac m/seo-success-factors/ tors/
Feell free to use this infographic Fee infogr aphic with proper attribution. Click here for high-res version. version.
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SECTION 3
Influential Factors Influential success factors aren’t always alw ays required for successful SEO, but they can give you the edge over the search sea rch competition. Frequently, Frequently, they make a huge difference.
1. User User-Friendly -Friendly URLs Good URLs can make a big difference in all areas of SEO: crawling, ranking, CTR, and sharing. A few rules for URLs that SEOs have found true through testing and performance: . Shorter URLs URLs > Longer Longer URLs
. Keywords in URLs help, but not too many . - older levels, levels, tops . Generally Avoid: Avoid: Numbers, Numbers, special characters, and keep parameters to a minimum Example of a good URL:
• https://example.com/seo-success-actors/
Example of a mostly terrible URL: • https:/ https://examp /example.com/ le.com/oo/bbs-/i/i/ oo/bbs-/i/i/?re_=bb?usi ?re_=bb?usid_=null d_=null
Learn More: • URL Best Practices
2. Parameter Control Too many parameters can cause a lot of work for search engines, and also create a ton of duplicate content issues. The number of new URLs U RLs created by parameters can add up fast.
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Influential Factors
Consider this URL:
• http://www.example.com/?price-category=couch-urnature&sort-by=manuactuer&sort-order=asc&availability=null Google provides a specialized tool within Search Console to deal with URL parameters. While the URL Parameter Tool is very powerful, configuring it correctly can be confusing for anyone other than expert users. For many marketers, it’s simply simply easier and safer to control parameters using rel=canonical. rel=canonica l.
3. Quality of Supplemental Content Main Content is Content is the part of a webpage that focuses on the main goal of the page. It can be a blog, product, news article, ar ticle, video or other content. When we think of “content,” we typically think of Main Content. Supplemental Content is Content is the extra part of a webpage that is outside or only related to the main goal of the page. Guidelines spend a lot of time disGoogle’s Search Quality Evaluators Guidelines cussing Supplemental Content. The quality of Supplemental Supplemental Content can have an impact on user experience and how Google evaluates the page. Low-quality Supplemental Content—such Content—such as annoying ads and poor navigation—work to frustrate the user, is often unrelated to the Main Content, and can lower engagement. Good Supplemental Content adds value for the user, encourages exploration, and improves engagement. engagement. This can include: • Navigation
• Related articles • Additional products • Comments • Advertisements • …and more
Learn More: • All About Supplementary Content in the Google Quality Rater’s Guidelines
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Influential Factors
4. Real World Business Information Websites associated with veriable, Websites veri able, real-world businesses often have a leg up in Google Search Results. There are a number of rea-
sons for this: . Business citations help establish trust, and ofen links, or real-world businesses
. Users interacting with maps and voice search are more likely to engage with real businesses Wikidata or your business entity can be helpul . Having verifiable Wikidata If your website is associated with a real-world business, it’s often helpful to build business citations citations to support it. This This is even more more critical if you do do Local SEO.
5. Robots Control
While making mak ing your site crawlable and accessible to to search engines is a critical cr itical ranking factor, often telling Google what not to index and where not to crawl is just as important. Some areas where you may want to restrict search robots from crawling or indexing your site: . Duplicate content
. Low-quality content . Low-value Low-value search results pages . Administration pages . Members only areas . Pages with privacy concerns While robots.txt is often the first choice to bend bots to your will, it’s also a very blunt tool that lacks the refinement of robots meta directives, canonical tags, HTTP headers, or other methods of robots control.
Learn More: • Te ultimate guide to controllin controlling g Crawling and Indexing
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6. Link Velocity A common scenario: You You build and launch your excellent content, content, earn a bunch of links and sail into rankings and traffic glory. Then, over time, your rankings start to slide. Eventually, even though you have far more links than your competitors, your content is relegated to the 3rd page of Google. Link Velocity is is often thought of as a Freshness Factor. The concept is the rate at which sites link to you can indicate how fresh and relevant your content is. If your link li nk velocity slows down or stops altogether, your content content may no longer be fresh or worthy of ranking. If your link velocity speeds up over time, it may indicate your content deserves to be pushed up in search results.
7. Sitema Sitemaps ps While sitemaps probably likely an actual rankin ra nkingg factor, using sitemaps sitemaps effectively canps play role Google in SEO success, for larger la rger Sitemaps Sitema cana help find and a nd especially prioritize content conten t onsites. your site, in ways that may help them to do it faster or more efficiently efficiently than they otherwise otherw ise would. Aside from cataloging the important impor tant pages on your site, sitemaps can also highlight specialized content, including: • Images
• Videos • Alternate language pages (hreflang) • Google News While most people think of X ML sitemaps, HTML sitemaps sitemaps can add additional value. For a cool cool example, check out the New York Times HTML sitemap.
Learn More: • Learn About Sitemaps • What is an XML sitemap and why should you have one?
8. Linking Out to High-Quality Sources In the past, Google has both indicated that external links are a ranking factor…
“
In the same way that Google trusts sites less when they link to spammy sites or bad neighborhoods, parts of our system encourage links to good sites.” – Matt Cutts
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Influential Factors
While at other times, Google implies something more opaque:
Our point of view, external links to other sites, so links from
“
your site toitother people’s people’s sites sites ran king ranking factor. But can bring value to isn’t your specifically content anda that in turn can be relevant for us in search. And whether or not they are not followed, doesn’t really real ly matter.” – Jo hn Mu el le r
Sometimes, SEOs are scared of linking out, fearing they’ll transfer authority elsewhere. The truth is, Google wants to reward sites that offer good experiences. What’s more, multiple SEO experiments and correlation studies show that linking out to high-quality resources is correlated with higher rankings.
9. Site Architecture Site Architecture refers to the organization of your website, navigation, and how the pages are linked together. An example would be “Homepage > Categories > Products” while Products” while defining how all of these different elements link to one another. A clear Site Architecture not only helps Google with crawling, but also helps distribute topical link authority while helping users with navigation. navig ation. All of these elements are important. impor tant. . Cross-linking to related categories/products categories/products/pages /pages
. Flat architecture: No more than three clicks to the deepest level . Breadcrumbs
Learn More: • Smart Internal Linking for SEO • Successful Site Architecture for SEO • Google Guide to Breadcrumb Breadcrumbss
10. Pagination Pagination is another aspect with assists Google with crawling and indexing of your site, though it is not itself a direct ranking rank ing factor.
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When you have multiple pages pa ges that t hat run r un in i n sequence—such sequence —such as a s categor y pages that list products or blog posts—proper pagination setup can help search engines to find all the relevant content, and signal that these pages are related to one another. Pagination is especially especial ly important when the sequential page system s ystem isn’t clear, like a page with infinite scroll.
Learn More: • Google’s Guide to Paginated Content • Pagination: link rel=”prev” and rel=”next”
11. Domain Age One one hand, Google has clearly stated that Domain Age isn’t specifically a ranking factor. On the other hand, Google has also stated that they may look at the date when they first crawled a website, or the age of links pointing to a site. SEOs have often noted the difficulty in getting a newer site to rank for competitive terms, and called this period the “Sandbox.” So while there’s nothing specifically stopping a new site from ranking, it’s typically easier for older sites to rank because they’ve had longer to build up link and authority signals. In fact, almost all SEO correlation studies find a relationship between older domains and higher rankings.
Learn More: • How does Google determine domain age, and is it important for ranking?
12. Website & Business Reputation In Local SEO, we know that citations and reviews make up two huge pieces of the ranking puzzle. It’s important for a business to get high-quality citations, and it’s important to earn authentic positive reviews to rank higher. The concept of reputation extends to regular search results as well. Google Quality Rater Guidelines consistently score sites on perceived reputation. We know Google has included analyzing customer experience into its algorithm. For any online business, real-world customer signals can ca n have a positive or negative effect on rankings. This is especially relevant now that Google can v isit and how long they stay. measure, through phones, what stores people visit Earning quality citations, positive reviews, and delivering excellent real world and online experiences can make a difference di fference to to your online visibility. v isibility.
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13. Use of Semantic Content Previously, we discussed the use of relevant keywords as an important ranking factor. But what about the rest of the content, i.e., the words, phrases, and a nd topics Google expects to find with w ith a specific piece of text? SEOs debate, test, and argue about specific methods for determining what Google may use to score topic “aboutness,” or relevance. These include TF-IDF, TF-IDF, LDA, Proof Keywords, Co-Occurrence, Entity Salience and other concepts. These concepts, while different, all predict that specific keywords and topics are more commonly found together than other keywords/topics. For example, if your search searc h topic were “apple watch,” you’d you’d expect to nd certain certai n keywords and phrases more of ten than others, such as: • Models
• Series • GPS • Heart Rate • … and more Multiple SEO studies have found that higher ranking content tends to have more associated keywords and phrases, and adding related phrases can improve a page’s ranking.
14. Domain Extension When people first get into SEO, they often ask if they should use a .com or .org (or .marketing!) for their domain name. The general answer a nswer is that you should choose a domain extension best suited to your business and branding, brandi ng, but it’s a little more nuanced than that. Google tends to treat all generic Top Level Domains (gTLDs) equally. Examples of gTLDs include: • .com – Accounts or % of all gLDs
• .net, .org, ino, .biz – Popular alternatives to .com • .design, .tech, .online, app app – Newer Newer Brand gLDs • .edu, .gov, .gov, .mil – Restric Restricted, ted, Sponsored generic op-Level op-Level Domains (sLD) • .london, .tokyo, .vegas – Region-specific extensions that are treated as gLDs
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In the end, most evidence indicates that the domain extension you use doesn’t really matter, with one huge exception: use of Countr y Code Top-Level Domains (ccTLDs). ccTLDs—such as .hk, .au, .fr, and .in—are used by Google to geo-target your website to to a specific region. This means that t hat by using a ccTLD, you may influence your site’s site’s ability to show up in search on a region-by-region basis. Typically, Ty pically, if your website servers users in multiple countries, it’s sometimes sometimes better to use a gTLD and a nd specify langua la nguage/region ge/region variations using hreflang. h reflang.
15. Server Location Along with international targeting signals such as hreflang, and ccTLD, ccTLD, the location of your server may influence your search visibility within a specific region. Using a server close to your visitors has two distinct advantages: . While inormation over the internet can travel close to the speed o light, there are ofen multiple relays, switches, and cables the signal must pass through, especially over long distances. Having a server nearby can dramatically improve page load speed, which can benefit your SEO all around.
. Google may use your location server as a signal or geo-targeting. geo-targeting. Today, use of Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) Today, (CDNs) and cloud infrastr in frastructure ucture can ca n dampen these effects by delivering content to locations all over the world. That said, if you serve users in a specific area, it can be helpful to have your server physically located nearby. nea rby.
Learn More: • Te impact of IP host location on your site SEO • Working with multi-regional websites
16. Multiple Sources of Trafc Almost every ever y SEO correlation study that examines the issue shows a correlation between direct traffic and higher rankings. These studies inevitably lead to lots of controversy and debate. Here’s the truth: . Does Google use other sources sources o web traffic as a ranking signal? signal?
. Nobody knows, and it doesn’t matter.
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Influential Factors
We know that Google watches and records what websites people visit and bookmark through throug h the Chrome browser. It’s It’s not a stretch to believe believe that they could use this information in their ranking algorithms. In fact, there have been many experiments and anecdotal evidence of site seeing a boost in Google rankings after increasing site traffic through other virall Reddit posts . means, such as Facebook ads, TV commercials, and a nd vira Regardless of whether it’s an actual ranking factor, an increase in both direct and referral traffic helps your visibility in multiple ways. More eyeballs on your contentt can lead to more links conten lin ks and shares, sha res, which directly helps your SEO. Furthermore, diversifying your traffic beyond Google makes you more resilient to the ups and downs of Google’s algorithm.
17.. Readabilit 17 Rea dability y SEOs often focus on Reading Level as a possible ranking rankin g factor, but but that misses the point. Readability of your content is far more important. Readability impor tant. Google is good at parsing parsin g words and sentences together, together, and we know that th at gibberish h text tends to get demoted in search results. Conlow quality or gibberis versely, content that th at is too to o condensed or advanced adv anced may m ay not appeal appea l to a wide portion of the web. Your Y our content should match your audience. aud ience. Legal Le gal and medical med ical journ journals als should use appropriate appropriate jargon and sy ntax. Speaking Speak ing to your audience is your best bet be t for matching match ing user u ser intent. intent . Most of the popular web is both scannable scan nable and written at about a 7th 7 th to
8th-grade level. In fact, this is the type of text that tends to earn the most featured snippets. In many cases, it’s also the type of content that earn links and shares. Finally, readability better bet ter engages your audience and simply helps helps your content perform better.
Learn More: • How o Improve Content Readability And How Tat Will Affect Your SEO • How to Use Yoast SEO: Te Readability Analysis • Grammarly: Free Writing Assistant
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18. Factually Correct There’s plenty of evidence that Google wants to rank sites that Factually Correct over websites that play fast and loose with the truth.
. First, there’s there’s a Google research paper which defines Knowledge-Based rust, which is a method o scoring websites on the correctness o their actual inormation instead o external actors like links. . Ten, in Google updated updated their Quality Raters Guidelines to included guidelines or rating pages with “demonstrably inaccurate content” as a Lowest Quality Page. Generally, when Google includes something in its Search Quality Raters Guidelines, it suggests they are trying to solve or it algorithmically. . Finally, Googlers have recently made several statements indicating their desire to fact check web pages. So not only can it pay to have factually factua lly accurate content, it can potentially hurt to have factually inaccurate content. (For (For more negative SEO Success Factors, see the last section. section.))
19. Author Reputation We’re reaching the end of the list of Influential We’re In fluential Ranking Ran king Factors, and here you find Author Reputation. Why is it near the end? To be honest, nobody knows how big of a deal it is. The idea that Google wants to know who authored a page, and use that information for ranking websites, has been around a long time. In fact, most of this information comes from Google itself. • A Google paten patentt titled “Agent Rank” describes a system or scoring authors not only on reputation (based on how ofen the author’s work is cited by others) but on subject expertise as well. So i you become an author-authority on “car parts,” Google may rank your content on car parts higher. Most people today reer to this as Author Rank.
• Google executives and engineers have requently been quoted discussed scoring content based on authorship. • Authorship photos were supposed supposed to be a step in this direction. Sadly, the photos were discontinued, but many believe Author Rank lived on. • Finally, Google’ Google’ss Search Quality Raters guidelines state that High-Qualit High-Qualityy Content makes clear “Who (what individual, company, business, oundation, etc.) created the content on the page you are evaluating.”
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In the real world, it’s difficult to observe the impact of any Author Rank, but it could be significant. In any case, it’s best practice pr actice to make it clear who created your content. . I it’s it’s an individual author, you can include an author byline and author page on the site. Te author can also build up expertise by writing authoritative content around the web, and linking author profiles.
I content is authored authored by a company company or group, group, make sure your About and Contact inormation is clear and up to date, so it’s obvious who is responsible or your content.
Learn More: • What is Author Rank?
20. Accurate & Consistent Registration Info To be honest, this factor should be listed in the “Could be Important” Importa nt” category. Many SEOs over the years have speculated about the impact of private WHOIS domain registration. There are, in fact, fact , a lot of reasons to speculate that Google monitors domain ownership and might care about WHOIS information. . For example, this Google paten patentt: “… illegitimate domains may be identified. For instance, search engine may monitor whether physically correct address inormation exists over a period o time, whether contact inormation or the domain changes relatively ofen, whether there is a relatively high number o changes between different name servers and hosting companies”
. Older statements from Matt Cutts: “…having whois privacy turned on isn’t automatically bad, but once you get several o these actors all together, you’re ofen talking about a very different type o webmaster than the ellow who just has a single site or so.” . Research showing a slight negative correlation between rankings and private domain registration. . Recent anecdotal evidence showing the negative effects o accidental domain privacy. . Experiments with ownership. expired domains showing how Google may not trust a change o domain
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To be fair, Google has stated that “ having whois privacy turned on isn’t automatically bad” – it’s more about the combined signals that indicate manipulation. Furthermore, the effects of recent GDPR regulation throws a wrench in all this, as more and more website registration data becomes private by default. At the end of the day, keep the following best practices in mind: • Keep registration inormation up-to-date and consistent. I public, make sure the inormation is accurate, and i possible, tied to real-world inormation
• Frequent changes in WHOIS ownership inormation, including lapses during expiration expiratio n periods, could be a signal or Google to trust the domain less. • Tere are many many legitimate reasons or using private WHOIS, but using a network o private domains to link together—especially i Google can tie them together—may spell trouble or your rankings.
FOCUS ON THESE
20 Influenti Influentil l SEO Success Fctors Influential success factors aren’t always required to win at SEO, but they can give you the edge over the search competition. Frequently, they make a huge difference.
1
User-Friendly URLs
11
Domain Age
2
Parameter Control
12
Website & Business Reputation
3
Quality of Supplemental Content
13
Use of Semantic Content
4
Real World Business Information
14
Domain Extension
5
Robots Control
15
Server Location
6
Link Velocity
16
Multiple Sources of Traffic
7
Sitemaps
17
Readability
8
Linking to High-Quality Sources
18
Factually Correct
9
Site Architecture
19
Author Reputation
Pagination
20
Accurate & Consistent Registration Info
10
Source: https://zyppy.co Source: https://zyppy.com/seo-success-fac m/seo-success-factors/ tors/
Feell free to use this infographic Fee infogr aphic with proper attribution. Click here for high-res version.
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SECTION 4
Myth Factors Feel safe to ignore these unimportant success factors. In fact, a few on this list may do more harm than good.
1. Using Google Analytics A persistent persi stent myth my th some folks believe is that th at using usi ng Google Go ogle Analy A naly tics can ca n help your site to rank. ra nk. Or conversely, conver sely, that engage en gagement ment metrics metr ics from fr om your Google Analyt Ana lytics ics account can influence your search s earch ran rankin kings. gs. In fact, neither is true. Whi le it is import While important ant to use some ty pe of analy a naly tics tracki t racking ng on your site, s ite, you could easily use Piwik, Adobe Analytics, or any other good analytics solution. Google has consistently said they don’t use data from Google Analytics for ranking purposes, and in truth, they have many other places to get the data they need.
2. Domain Expiration Length An older Google Patent suggests that registering your domain for a longer period could be helpful in distinguishing spam site from legitimate sites. The logic behind that patent is that spam sites are rarely registered for more than a year at a time. t ime. While Domain Expiration Expiration Length Length could legitimat legitimately ely be be a ranking factor, factor, in reality, any effect is very small. Moz’s 2015 Ranking Factors noted a correlation of .04 between expiration length and rankings, which isn’t considered significant. Furthermore, Google has discouraged site owners from worrying worryi ng about it. That said, if you plan on keeping your domain for a while, whi le, it’s a very good idea to extend your registration. reg istration. Accidentally letting your domain expire is no fun.
3. Google Among the newlyAdsense initiated in SEO, there’s a persistent myth myth that t hat using Google Adsense may help your your rankings. ran kings.
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It’s not true. Not even a little bit. On the flip side, too many ads—of any kind, Adsense or not—can hurt your rankings. It’s not unusual to see a slight negative correlation between rankings Heavy algoand the amount of ad space. In 2012 Google announced it’s Top Heavy rithm which demoted sites with too many ads above the t he fold, along with its Intrusive Interstitial update in 2016.
4. Keyword Density This is a tough one to include in “Not Important” factors because yes, you typically need to use relevant keywords, phrases, and topics in your content to rank. That said, focusing on keyword density—the idea that your conten contentt should contain a minimum threshold percentage of exact match keywords—doesn’t typically lead to optimal results. It’s not that keyword usage isn’t important, butInrather there are farng better w ays ways of optimizing. fact, recent ranki ranking factor studies have shown either little or no importance whatsoever w with ith keyword density. A better way of optimizing: . Include keywords and variations in important areas, i.e., title, URL, headers, text, and images
. Use o synonyms and close variants . Include related question and search phrases in your copy . Cover the topic thoroughly to include natural semantically related content
Learn More:
• What’s the ideal keyword density of a page? • More than Keywords: Concepts of Advanced On-Page SEO
5. W3C Validation The rumor that W3C validation is important for search rankings probably started with web development firms that promised “valid HTML code.” In fact, most websites have multiple validation errors, even Google itself. What’s much, MUCH MUCH more important is if Google and web browsers can properly render the page. If you want to focus on what’s more important, run your URLs through Google’s Fetch and Render tool.
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Myth Factors
And if you want to be concerned about W3C standards, it’s far more helpful helpful to accessibility ility standards. users to focus on accessib
Learn More: • Is HML validation necessary for ranking?
6. Multiple H1 Tags Like W3C validation, SEOs often get obsessed with proper heading structure. st ructure. One, and only one, H1 heading tag per page is the rule. r ule. And it is not to be broken. Except it doesn’t matter. What’s more important, important, found through th rough experimentation, is having havi ng clear, large text near the beginning of a page that indicates a headline of sorts. Moz discovered this through experimentation, and it holds true today.
Learn More: • Google: Use As Many H ags As You Want
7. SEO Site Submission If you want to spot cheap, typically worthless SEO services, see if they offer anything resembling “Search Engine Submission Services.” This was a popular service back in the day to tell different search engines about your website but is worthless worth less today. Certainly, Certain ly, if you have a brand new site, it’s it’s helpful to let Google and other search engines know, but there are far better bet ter ways of doing it. For all types of search listings—including websites, business, digital content and more—Google offers a variety variet y of ways to get inclusion here: Get your content c ontent on Goog Google le
8. Dedicated IP Another old SEO myth that was likely l ikely propagated by web hosting hosting companies looking to upsell services. This was more a problem when Google found a web server full of spam websites. In this case, any other site on the same server using the same IP might look suspicious. If you are concerned that this is your circumstance (it typically isn’t)) the simple solution isn’t solution is to find a more reputable hosting provider.
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Myth Factors
While there were historical historical advantages to hosting your your site with a unique unique IP in some edge cases, today many hosting companies don’t even offer it as an option.
Learn More: • Myth busting: virtual hosts vs. dedicated IP addresses
9. Meta Keywords Google doesn’t use the meta keyword tag for ranking purposes. Nope, not even the meta news keyword tag. Sorry.
10. Magical .Edu and .Gov Backlinks Let’s be perfectly clear: links from .edu and .gov domains can be fantastic— especially when they are targeted, relevant, and high-authority. For years, SEOs have pursued .edu and .gov backlinks as if they were the Holy Grail. The myth being that .edu and .gov links might automatically carry more weight, or because they are closer to trusted “seed” sites, they may carry carr y more trust authority. Sadly, neither the evidence or the data support these claims. Sadly, Yes, Y es, .edu and .gov links carr carryy value, and you can build an entirely successful backlink strategy st rategy on them. But Google has frequently denied that there is anything inherently special about them.
The data supports this as well. Correlation studies using data from Moz, Ah refs , and SearchMetrics all show that while the total number of .edu and Ahrefs .gov backlinks does correlate with higher rankings, it correlates weaker than the total number of all backlinks. Both .edu and .gov links can be bad, as well. In fact, many webmasters report receiving “Unnatural Link” warnings from Google after abusing scholarship link building practices. Put another way: .edu and .gov links can help you to rank, but there’s absolutely lute ly nothing special about them. Build ‘em if you can, but no need to fret about it.
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Myth Factors
IGNORE THESE
0 SEO Success Fctor Myths Feel safeharm to ignore factors. In fact, pursuing them may do more thanthese good.unimportant This is the land of myths and outdated advice.
1
Using Google Analytics
6
Multiple H1 Tags
2
Domain Expiration Length
7
SEO Site Submission
3
Google Adsense
8
Dedicated IP
4
Keyword Density
9
Meta Keywords
5
W3C Validation
10
Magical .Edu and .Gov Backlinks
Source: https://zyppy.com/ Source: https://zyppy.com/seo-success-factors/ seo-success-factors/
Feell free to use this infographic Fee infogr aphic with proper attribution. Click here for high-res version.
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SECTION 4
Negative Factors Not all success factors are positive. The ones listed l isted below possess the power to damage your visibility. Proceed with caution.
1. Spam The whole point of Google is to deliver the opposite of spam, so producing spam isn’t going to help you rank. Spam takes many different forms. It may include, but isn’t limited to:
• Spun / low quality content content • Doorway pages • Low quality auto-generated content • Scraped content • Malware If you’ve made it this far through SEO Success Factors, you know this is not what you want to produce.
2. Manipulative Links Google hates unnatural links. links. To be fair, unnatural links li nks are less of a big deal ever since Google released released Penguin 4.0, which is very granular and often likely to ignore bad links than penalize you for them. That said, naughty linking link ing practices remain a major cause of lower rankings, either through manual penalties or algorithmic actions.
Learn More: Learn to avoid link schemes and ollow the rules of link building.
3. Thin Content Content Cont ent that adds little value, unique un iqueness, ness, or substance qualifies as thin th in content.
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Negative Factors
Especially damning to Google are thin affiliate sites, which exist solely to lead folks to affiliate sites while adding little extra value.
4. Non-unique Content While Google doesn’t penalize penaliz e duplicate duplicate content, content content that is non-unique can get filtered from search results. Aside from following the advice adv ice earlier in this guide g uide on duplicate duplicate content, content, it’s best practice to have at least 2-3 sentences up to to a few hundred words of unique content on each page to have a chance of ranking. Learn More: • Duplicate Content SEO Advice From Google
5. Cloaking Cloaking is generally defined as the practice of showing certain cont content ent to users, while showing different cont content ent to search search engines – typically for sneaky reasons. Don’t do this. Sometimess cloaking is fine Sometime fi ne if done for the right reason, but these are usually edge cases.
Learn More: • Cloaking
6. Meta Noindex Errors The meta noindex directive is a powerful tool that when used correctly helps with both crawling crawl ing and indexing, indexin g, as well as duplicate content content issues. But noindex can also be abused and cause unnecessary errors. True to its purpose, using a meta noindex on a page causes Google to drop it from its index, and it won’t rank. In fact, meta noindex errors are one of the most frequent findings during SEO audits.
7. Canonical Errors Another commo common n error. error. If URL 1 has a canonical canonical tag pointing pointing to URL 2, then URL 1 isn’t going to be indexed or ranked (as long as Google respects the canonical.)
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Negative Factors
Additional canonical errors er rors include pointing pointing a canonical ca nonical to a page marked “noindex”, which can cause both pages to be dropped by Google’s. Ouch!
Learn More: • Extreme Canonical ricks
8. Robots.txt Blocking Pages blocked by robots.txt—accidental or otherwise—likely won’t rank well in Google’s search results. An important importa nt distinction is that while wh ile robots.txt prevents crawling, it does not stop a page from appearing in search results. The best way to control this is through the noindex directive.
9. Keyword Stufng Keyword stuffing is the art of stuffing keywords where keywords shouldn’t be stuffed. Enough?
Learn More: • Irrelevant Keywords
10. Hidden Text Text or Links Hiding text and links is a form of cloaking, because it shows something in the source code to search engines that users typically can’t see. While Whi le this was much more common common in the early days of SEO, it’s still around today—sometimes accidentally! Hiding text, and especially links, often means a fast path to the Google penalty box.
Learn More: • Hidden text and links
11. Piracy / DMCA Notices Whether you run a pirate site or not, the number of valid DMCA copyright removal notices your site receives can lower your search rankings.
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Negative Factors
A single notice or two likely won’t hurt much, but a large number of such hur t. removal requests will likely hurt
12. Rich Snippet Spam Rich snippets are awesome when you want to make your search results stand sta nd out. Which is probably the reason so many people try to earn them with false information such as fake reviews and falsified event markup. But spammy structured data can get your site penalized. Google even has a form where your competito competitors rs can report you .
13. Blocking Important JS / CSS Files Allowi Al lowing ng Google Go ogle to crawl your JavaScr Jav aScript ipt and CSS files fi les is par p artt of crawli c rawling ng and a nd indexing, but one that many people overlook. When these files are a re blocked by robots.txt, robots.t xt, Google has trouble t rouble rendering render ing the t he page like a browser, and a nd your rankings may suffer. You Y ou can ca n run r un a quick check che ck of blocked blocke d resources resou rces using usi ng Google’s Fetch and Render tool, and address any a ny problems. problems.
Learn More: • Blocking Googlebot from CSS & JavaScript Can Hurt Google Rankings
14. Overly Long / Complex URLs In almost all SEO correlation studies, the total length of the URL is correlated with lower rankings. ran kings. This is also the t he case with the amount a mount of numbers and special characters in the URL, e.g., https://example.com/887600o!jshfj# jklsing0098019-874 jklsing009 8019-874 The converse is also true: shorter, cleaner URLs tend to rank slightly better. Correlation is not causation, but this could be caused by: • Deep older structures, ofen ar removed rom high authority pages
• Superfluous parameters • People being less likely to copy and share long, complex URLs Whatever the reason, it often pays to keep your URLs clean and a nd tidy. tidy.
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Negative Factors
15. Linking to Bad Neighborhoods Just like Google’s system rewards sites that link lin k out to high-quality sources, the system also “trusts sites less when they link to spammy sites or bad neigh borhoods” (source). A bad neighborhood is one filled with spam sites, or sites that have been penalized. Gambling, shady pharmaceutical sites, and porn are often targets. Linking to these sites aggressively can put a serious dent in your search traffic.
16. Slow Speed We’ve covered covered the multiple outsized outsized effects of making maki ng your site fast, but the opposite is also true. Slow sites can be degraded in search results. When Google first included speed in their algorithm, it was only supposed to impact the slowest of the slow, the bottom 1% off all pages. Since Si nce then, SEOs have observed the speed effect as a smooth curve along all sites. Don’t be pokey
17. Aggressive Ads / Intrusive Interstitials Google is an ad company, and they understand ads fund the web. That said, there t here are two t wo different dif ferent ways that overly-aggressive ads ad s can hurt your rankings: . Google’s Google’s op Heavy algorithm punishes sites with too many ads above the
old, or in the primary content area. . Te Intrusive Interstitial update punishes mobile sites with aggressive popups and interstitials Feell free to use ads, but don’t be pushy about it. Fee
18. Over-Optimized O ver-Optimized Anchor Text Text Anchor text over-optimization is too much of a good thing. thin g. Yes, Yes, it helps to to have keywords in the anchor text of the links pointing to your site. Even exact match anchor text. But SEOs long ago observed obser ved that when your anchor text becomes “too” optimized, rankings begin to fall. It’s as if Google can tell that your link profile doesn’t look natural, so they demote you in search results.
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Negative Factors
The best advice is to have a deep variety of anchor text links pointing at your site, and even avoiding dictating anchor text when asking for links.
Learn More: • Anchor ext Guide • A Data Driven Guide o Anchor ext (And Its Impact On SEO)
19. High Quantity of Crawl Errors Crawling errors are entirely normal, and most won’t hurt you. In fact, Google has specifically stated that 404s don’t hurt your rankings . That said, a large number of crawl errors can be a sign of trouble. In the case of 404s, when they are a result of broken links—either internal or external— this can cause problems in the flow of link equity, create frustrating user experiences, and depress rankings from their real potential. Not every error needs to be addressed, but a rash of bad crawl errors can spell trouble.
20. False / Misleading / Offensive To crack down on Fake News, Google Goo gle recently updated its algorithm to demote contentt that promotes “misleading information, conten in formation, unexpected offensive results, hoaxes and unsupported conspiracy theories” (source). Google uses its army of Search Quality Raters to flag false and misleading information, andmisleading uses thatg data to train its machine learning algorithms to detect fake and misleadin offensive conten content. t. God save the Queen.
21. Porn / Explicit Content This one’s pretty obvious, but if Google determines your site contains porn or explicit adult content, content, it will w ill be mostly hidden in search results except for a very nar narrow row range ra nge of search queries, and completely hidden with w ith Safe S afe Search Se arch turned on.
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Negative Factors
22. Redirect Chains 301 redirects are awesom awesome! e! They get people and search robots where they need to go, and they even pass PageRank . Seventeen 301 redirects chained together, with a 302 at the end, is not awesome. In general, Google is known to follow only five redirects before giving up (your mileage may vary). Long redirect chains are also prone to break easily, leak PageRank, and generally depress rankings. For best results, shorten redirects to the fewest number of hops possible.
23. UGC Spam It’ss terrific It’ terr ific when you produce great conten content, t, but not so much if you let users submit spam to your website. User-generated spam can include spam comments, forum postings, and accounts on free hosts. The general rule is, if you host it on your site, you’re responsible for it. If you let your users run astray, it can hurt your rankings.
Learn More: • User-generated spam
24. Sneaky Redirects Sneaky redirection is the practice of sending users to a page they didn’t expect, typically spam. Google doesn’t like this, this, so don’t do it.
25. Bad Domain History Even if your site is squeaky squeak y clean (it is, right?) you may still suffer in search sea rch results if you have a long history of spam or penalties. Once everything is cleaned up, it can take time for Google to crawl your content and reassess your site value. SEOs often report that this process can take many months or more. If your site has a bad domain history, it’s typically best to do a link audit and
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Negative Factors
disavow, resolve any penalties, create new content, submit sitemaps, sitemaps, fix technical issues, and build new links. If any of these negative success factors impact you and do the hard work of cleaning up, your rankings will return, hopefully sooner than later.
AVOID THESE
25 Negtive SEO Success Fctors Not all factors are positive. The ones listed here are absolute trouble. Pursuing these tactic s will condemn you to the bot tom of Google search results, fast.
1
Spam
14
Overly Long / Complex URLs
2
Manipulative Links
15
Linking to Bad Neighborhoods
3
Thin Content
16
Slow Speed
4
Non-unique Content
17
Aggressive Ads / Intrusive Interstitials
5
Cloaking
18
Over-Optimized Anchor Text
6
Meta Noindex Errors
19
High Quantity of Crawl Errors
7
Canonical Errors
20
False / Misleading / Offensive
8
Robots.txt Blocking
21
Porn / Explicit Content
9
Keyword Stuffing
22
Redirect Chains
10
Hidden Text or Links
23
UGC Spam
11
Piracy / DMCA Notices
24
Sneaky Redirects
12
Rich Snippet Spam
25
Bad Domain History
13
Blocking Important JS / CSS Files
Source: https://zyppy.com Source: https://zyppy.com/seo-success-factor /seo-success-factors/ s/
Feell free to use this infographic Fee infogr aphic with proper attribution. Click here for high-res version.
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