Search Engine Optimization is no longer just a buzzword--it's a science. And it's critical for your website to be found.
Unfortunately, SEO is as entrenched with myths and untrue rumours as the internet in its early days. Even today, it's easy to find poorly repeated material spread around the web full of false information. To make matters more esoteric still, major search engines such as Google guard their frequently-changing algorithms with a careful eye, releasing only the need-to-know information to the public as they see fit.
Nevertheless, there are best practices for SEO--practices that make a difference when done correctly. Here's 5 lesser-known elements that affect your search engine ranking--for better or worse.
1. Content
When people think of SEO, keywords and other meta information are generally the first items that pop into mind. But content is really the powerhouse behind all good (and proven) SEO tactics. The higher quality and quantity of content will not only drive more organic traffic to your site, the fresher it is will be favoured kindly by Google.
Moreover, content adds weight to your site by giving crawlers more to search, giving you a better history (and thus higher ranking). It also adds more room for increasing your keywords, which play their largest role on the landing page (primarily if your SEO initiative runs in tandem with an AdWords campaign). Remember, pages are ranked--not sites, so content should be consistently distributed and easy to find for both the visitor and the crawler. The most important content should be placed above the fold (for ideal user experience, especially with non-responsive websites).
Just as content can play a (very) strong role in improving your rankings, duplicate content can harm your rankings, as neither page can be deemed of a higher quality. Google ranks the older content higher on the assumption that newer matching content has been lifted from the original source; therefore, it's best to make sure your own site isn't punished. Similarly, keep in mind quality--simply adding a gargantuan amount of random content to your website isn't recommended for improving your SEO. Ultimately (quality, search engine optimized) content is still king.
2. Backlinks
Backlinks are particularly valuable because they remain long after the initial rush of traffic; users stumbling on your content later are able to follow the path after the party is gone. Backlinks, however, are commonly overlooked as an asset to SEO because many website owners focus solely on the creation of viral content.
Of course, it's difficult to know when or if something will go viral (and that's primarily a marketing concern). Allocating energy to instead producing quality, non-gimmicky content with a wide relevance will not only continue to bring in traffic (thus increasing rankings), it will accrue backlinks that are significantly more long-lasting. And these backlinks equal big points in the world of SEO.
3. Social Media
That brings us to social media--how do you get those backlinks anyway? If you're running a website, you need to be on social media. The more your content is shared, liked or retweeted, the more backlinks are generated and the more new traffic is drawn to your site. Search engines understand this as a measure of quality and freshness.
A big theme to keep in mind with SEO is that the search engines are constantly changing their algorithms to adapt to the latest events. As social media becomes more and more a factor in the way in which people retrieve and process information from the web, the more search engine will customize results to the user and weigh relevant content (by measure of shares, likes and retweets). And don't forget G+ when optimizing for Google.
4. Keyword Positions
Simply put: the crawlers aren't as thorough as you might hope. The first links they reach on your site are they ones they'll record first; same with keywords. This puts the most emphasis on titles and header and footer content, including H1s, H2s and H3s. All of these are part of the on-page factors the search engine scans.
In general, the closer the keywords are to the top, the better. The better the design of the website for SEO, the better you'll be able to optimize the keyword positions.
5. Site Loading Time
While Google doesn't currently punish sites with longer load times, it still has an affect on any tandem AdWords campaign, not to mention user experience. Unless your site times out while it's being crawled, it's likely to survive, for now. Many experts foresee a site loading time algorithm will be included in the near future.
However, faster sites do create a better user experience and thus generate more traffic. Likewise, poor page loading times could be due to poor coding, a definite negative factor in SEO.
Is your site search engine optimized? If so, have you included these five elements in your initiative?
