The SEO community is always looking for new ranking factors and we have discovered over two hundred of them so far. But there may be hundreds more actually used by Google. Luckily, we don’t have to work on all of them. Most have very little weight in SEO and are often used as tie-breakers rather than ranking signals. Instead, here is the definitive list of Google ranking factors, each of which can make or break your search optimization strategy. 1. Backlinks Even though Google is planning to move away from backlinks in the future, they still remain the most important ranking factor for your pages. Except it is now too risky to use black hat SEO strategies — your links have to come from a variety of high authority websites that are similar to yours. Furthermore, some Google patents say that freshness and traffic may also be important backlink metrics. …

Let’s talk about meta tags — what they are, why they matter, and how to do them better. First things first — what made you click on this article to read it? Maybe the title caught your eye , or perhaps it was the short blurb you saw. You might have clicked simply because this article comes from a source you trust. If you found this article via a search engine, though, there’s a good chance you found and clicked this article because of meta tags. Meta tags are the foundation of SEO , and the first thing you’ll find yourself setting up when building a web page. Without meta tags, you can’t reach readers organically. It doesn’t take much time to generate meta tags, but it’s more important than you might think. That’s because 93% of all online experiences begin with a search engine. This is why so many …

Posted by SamuelMangialavori Content, content, and more content! That’s what SEO is all about nowadays, right? Compared to when I started working in SEO (2014), today, content is consistently one of the most popular topics covered at digital marketing conferences, there are way more tools that focus on content analysis and optimization, and overall it seems to dominate most of SEO news. Don’t believe me? Here’s a nice Google Trends graph that may change your mind: Google Trends screenshot for “content marketing” as a topic, set for worldwide interest. But why is it that content is now dominating the SEO scene? How vital is content for your SEO strategy, actually? And most importantly: how can you be content with your site’s content? Puns aside, this post aims to help you figure out potential causes of your underperforming content and how to improve it. Why content is key in SEO in …

Top Google rankings are a pinnacle of online business success. According to Backlinko , the first result on Google gets 31.7 percent of all clicks — while results on the second page receive just .78 percent of clicks. I’ve talked to a lot of business owners and managers – newbies and veterans – who have gone crazy trying to unlock the secrets of how to improve Google ranking without getting penalized. I wish I could tell you there’s a magic button that ranks your site #1 without fail. The truth is, it takes resourcefulness, dedication, persistence, and creativity. This is especially true because of the constantly-changing nature of Google’s algorithm. While there’s no magic, there are steps you can take to soar to the top of a search engine results page (SERP). I learned this the hard way. But luckily, you don’t have to. I’m going back to basics with …

Do you want more organic search traffic to your site? I’m willing to bet the answer is yes – we all do! Organic search traffic is critical for growing your website and business. Some research claims around 53% of your site’s traffic can be attributed to organic search. But the stats don’t matter much if your site doesn’t show up in the search results at all. How do you get your new site or blog indexed by Google, Bing, and other search engines? Well, you’ve got two choices. You can take the “tortoise” approach – just sit back and wait for it to happen naturally, but this can take weeks or months. (Trust me, I’ve been there before – not fun.) Or you can make it happen now, giving you more time and energy to put towards increasing your conversion rate , improving your social presence — and, of course, …

We recently analyzed 11.8 million Google search results to answer the question: Which factors correlate with first page search engine rankings? We looked at content. We looked at backlinks. We even looked at page speed. With the help of our data partner Ahrefs , we uncovered some interesting findings. And today I’m going to share what we found with you. Here is a Summary of Our Key Findings: 1. Our data shows that a site’s overall link authority (as measured by Ahrefs Domain Rating) strongly correlates with higher rankings. 2. Pages with lots of backlinks rank above pages that don’t have as many backlinks. In fact, the #1 result in Google has an average of 3.8x more backlinks than positions #2-#10. 3. Comprehensive content with a high “Content Grade” (via Clearscope ), significantly outperformed content that didn’t cover a topic in-depth. 4. We found no correlation between page loading speed …

30-second summary: Technical SEO ensures that Google has all the details required to make a search listing. It can tell you the length of your title tags, whether it fits your content and whether your pages are missing title tags. Technical SEO can tell you whether any of your pages have missing URLs, whether they contain any words or even the length of your URL. It can tell you whether your content matches the description, what the length is and also whether any of your pages have a missing meta description. Technical SEO can tell you whether your page can be used in additional page elements and whether the formatting is correct for this particular use. It can help you improve your chances of ranking higher on search results. It can tell you the keyword density on your pages, the search terms that you are ranking but also details such …

Are you ready to double your search traffic ? Understanding SEO is crucial to significantly increase your traffic and brand awareness. Right now, thousands of people are looking for content just like yours. You can help them find it by becoming an SEO expert. In fact, 40 percent of website traffic begins with a search query. That’s why search engine optimization (SEO) is so important. Staying on top of SEO takes a lot of research and experimentation. Google’s algorithms are constantly updated, so it’s important to stay tuned into the latest news. With a bit of practice, you can become your own SEO expert. That’s what I did! Every day, people use Google to conduct over 3.5 billion searches . In the U.S., 78% of people use the web to research products and services before buying. Once your website begins to rank on the first pages of Google’s search results, …

Creating great content is key to an SEO strategy. But if you neglect the technical side of how your content is delivered, then you are putting up unnecessary barriers for yourself. Technical SEO encompasses the “behind the scenes” elements of an SEO strategy that speaks directly to search algorithms. But there are quite a few things to optimize for when building out a technical SEO strategy. For many business owners, it may be beneficial to hire a technical SEO consultant who can handle the nuances for you. 6 Ways a Technical SEO Consultant Can Help Grow Your Business Regardless of which type of service you hire for, your end goal is to grow your business. Hiring a technical SEO consultant is no different, and you should go into the relationship with an expectation of results. A technical SEO consultant will optimize both your website and content so that you are …

With a reported 3.68 million active sellers on Etsy , it can be daunting to figure out how to ensure marketplace visibility. How will new customers find your store with thousands of similar offerings? How do you ensure your products appear in a prime position on the search list? The answer to these questions is simple: You need an Etsy SEO (search engine optimization) strategy. Why You Need an SEO Strategy For Your Etsy Shop Search engine optimization (SEO) refers to the practice of developing content, copy, visuals, and a slew of other factors tailored to increasing search visibility. While the topic of SEO generally focuses on search engine results pages (SERPs), similar strategies can be employed by the savvy Etsy store owner to ensure products and store listing manifest at the top of the e-commerce site’s search function. How Etsy Search Works The Etsy search function is engineered to …