Google was officially launched 24 years ago in 1998.
A lot has changed since then, but one thing has remained the same. If you focus only on the basics, you can still be quite successful online.
Of course, the basics in 2022 are very different from the basics in 1998. Our practical discipline in SEO work has never been more important.
So, the obvious question is: What factors are indispensable and to be considered? How can rankings be improved? How can one generate traffic in such a competitive environment?
In this article, we will examine which factors have more importance and how we can optimise for each of them.
As machine learning, artificial intelligence and deep learning continue to evolve, each will carry more weight in the Google Core Algorithm.
Google’s ultimate goal is to understand the context of a given search query and deliver results that match the user’s intent. This makes advanced keyword research and keyword selection more important than ever.
Before you spend time and resources trying to rank for a phrase, you will need to look at the websites currently at the top of the SERPs for that phrase.
The contextual relevance of a keyword should align with a search query. There will be some keywords and queries that will be impossible to rank for.
For example, if Google has determined that people searching for “Commercial Law Attorney Istanbul” want a list of lawyers to choose from, a number of trusted legal directories will appear at the top of the SERPs.
An individual or a single company will not replace these directories. In such cases, you will need to refine your strategy.
The basis of technical SEO is to have a solid website architecture.
You cannot publish a random collection of pages and posts. An SEO-friendly site architecture will guide users through your site and make it easier for Google to crawl and index your pages.
Once you have created the right architecture, it’s time to perform a technical or SEO audit.
Thanks to the many SEO tools available, an SEO audit is no longer a daunting task. However, the key is to know how to interpret the data provided and what to do with it.
For starters, you should check the following and correct any problems that arise:
– Check and correct status code errors.
– Check robot.txt file for errors. Optimise if necessary.
– Check your site indexing via Google Search Console. Review and fix any issues found.
– Fix duplicate title tags and duplicate meta descriptions.
– Audit the content of your website. Check traffic statistics in Google Analytics. Consider improving or deleting underperforming content.
– Fix broken links. These are the enemy of user experience and potentially rankings.
– Submit your XML sitemap to Google via Google Search Console.
User experience (UX) focuses on gaining insights about users, their needs, values, capabilities and limitations.
UX also considers business goals and objectives. UX best practices focus on improving the quality of the user experience.
According to Peter Morville, factors that influence UX include the following:
– Useful: Your content needs to be unique and fulfil a need.
– Usable: Your website should be easy to use and navigate.
– Desirable: Your design elements and branding should evoke emotion and appreciation.
– Findable: Integrate design and navigation elements to make it easy for users to find what they need.
– Accessible: Content needs to be accessible to everyone, including the disabled population.
– Trustworthy: Your site needs to be trustworthy for users to believe you.
– Valuable: Your site must provide value to the user in terms of experience and value to the company in terms of positive ROI.
Multivariate and A/B testing is the best way to measure and create a better experience for website users. Multivariate testing is best when considering complex changes.
You can combine many different elements and test how they all work together. A/B testing compares two different elements on your site to determine which performs best.
Google began officially rolling out the mobile-first index in March 2018. Smart marketers were adopting a mobile-first approach long before the official rollout.
According to Google Search Centre:
“Neither mobile-friendliness nor mobile-friendly layout is required for mobile-first indexing. Pages without a mobile version will still work on mobile and can be used for indexing. However, it’s time to move away from desktop-only and embrace mobile :)”
Here are some basics to make your site mobile-friendly:
– Make your site adaptable to any device, be it desktop, mobile or tablet.
– Always scale your images, especially when using a responsive design for mobile users.
– Use short meta titles. They are easier to read on mobile devices.
– Avoid pop-up windows that close your content and prevent visitors from seeing what your content is about.
– Less can be more on mobile. In a mobile-first world, long-form content doesn’t necessarily mean more traffic and better rankings.
– Don’t use the mobile phone as an excuse for obfuscation. Users and search engines need to see the same content.
In July 2021, the Page Experience Update was rolled out and is now included in Google’s core algorithm as a ranking factor.
As the name suggests, the core web vitals initiative is designed to measure the key metrics for a healthy website. This synchronises with Google’s commitment to delivering the best user experience.
According to Google, “the loading experience, engagement, and visual stability of page content, and their combination, are the foundation of Core Web Vitals.”
Each of these metrics:
– It focuses on a unique aspect of the user experience.
– It is measurable and quantifiable for an objective determination of the outcome.
Tools for Measuring Important Web Data :
– PageSpeed Insights:Measures both mobile and desktop performance and provides recommendations for improvement.
– Lighthouse: It is an open source, automated tool developed by Google to help developers improve web page quality. It has several features not available in PageSpeed Insights, including some SEO controls.
– Search Console:A Web Data Matters report showing URL performance grouped by status, metric type, and URL group is now included in GSC.
Schema markup, once added to a web page, creates a rich snippet, an enhanced description that appears in search results.
All leading search engines including Google, Yahoo, Bing and Yandex support the use of microdata. The real value of schema is that it can provide context to a web page and improve the search experience.
There is no evidence that adding schema has any impact on SERPs.
Below you will find some of the most popular uses of schema.
– article
– book_
– event_
– how to make
– Job Advert
– logos_
– Medical Condition
– film_
– person_
– product_
– food recipe
– Review.
– Subscription and paywall content.
– video.
If you find the thought of adding a schema to a page intimidating, you shouldn’t. Schema is quite simple to implement. If you have a WordPress site, there are several plugins that will do this for you.
It is estimated that 97 zettabytes of data will be created, captured, copied and consumed worldwide this year.
To put this into perspective, this is the equivalent of 18.7 trillion songs or 3.168 years of HD video every day.
The challenge of destroying clutter will become exponentially more difficult as time goes on.
Here’s how to do it
– Create a content hub in the form of a resource centre.
– Fill your resource centre with a combination of useful, informative and entertaining content.
– Write “talking” pieces about your resource centre and interlink.
– Write news articles about your resource centre and interlink.
– Promote your news articles on social channels.
– Capture trending topics related to your content. Promote it on social media.
– Use your smartphone’s camera. Images and videos often convert better than text alone.
– Update old and low-traffic content.
Links remain one of the most important ranking factors.
Over the years, Google has become more adept at identifying and devaluing spammy links, especially after the introduction of Penguin 4.0. As such, quality will continue to trump quantity.
Here are the best link building strategies for 2022.
Use of Resource Pages.
– Broken Link Building.
– Backlink Mining.
– Link Recovery.
You manage what you measure.
A recent study showed that less than 50% of “optimised” pages resulted in more clicks. Even worse, 34% of the changes resulted in reduced clicks!
Basic steps for SEO testing:
– Determine what you are testing and why.
– Create a hypothesis. What do you expect to happen because of your changes?
– Document your test. Make sure it can be reliably replicated.
– Publish your changes and then submit the URLs for review via Google Search Console.
– Run the test long enough to verify that your hypothesis is correct. Document your findings and other observations, such as changes made by competitors that may affect the results.
– Take appropriate action based on the results of your tests.
This process can be easily executed and documented using a spreadsheet.
According to Roger Monti, the 9 Most Important SEO KPIs to consider are:
– Customer Lifetime Value (CLV).
– Content Efficiency.
– Average Engagement Time.
– Conversion Goals by Percentage Based Metrics.
– Accurate Search Visibility.
– Brand Visibility in Search.
– New and Returning Users.
– Average Time Spent on Site.
– Revenue Per Thousand (RPM) and Average Position.
The thing to remember about these KPIs is that they depend on your goals and objectives. Some may apply to your situation while others may not.
Consider this a good starting point for determining how best to measure the success of a campaign.
Conclusion
Since the Internet has no expiry date, a mass of information and disinformation is presented every day in various search queries. If you are not careful, following bad or outdated advice can lead to disastrous consequences. Do yourself a favour and focus only on these 10 essentials. By doing so, you will set yourself up for long-term success. Source: searchenginejournal.com
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