According to Conductor, 72% of enterprises have had success with SEO. By optimizing your enterprise SEO strategies with quality content and sound technical practices, you’re setting the stage for sustainable growth in an ever-competitive online world.

In this article:

• Understanding Enterprise SEO and How It’s Different
• What Makes a Good Enterprise SEO Strategy?
• Enterprise SEO and AI
• The Challenges of Getting Enterprise SEO Done
• How to Measure Enterprise SEO Success
• Enterprise SEO Tools
• Integrating Enterprise SEO with Other Marketing Channels
• Staying Ahead of the Curve
• Enterprise SEO Case Study
• FAQ: How can I implement an effective enterprise SEO strategy to drive organic growth and revenue for my large organization?

Understanding Enterprise SEO and How It’s Different

Enterprise SEO is not just about on-page optimization; it’s a complex venture with a lot of moving parts. This requires a robust strategy to tackle the unique challenges of large organizations.

The sheer size of enterprise websites often means they have thousands, if not millions, of pages. A solid SEO foundation helps ensure you can compete in the highly competitive world of search results.

That means structuring your site and your strategy so that search engines can find and index pages correctly, and visitors and potential leads can find what they need and engage with your brand.

Here are a couple of ways that enterprise SEO differs from other types of SEO programs …

Scale

In small business SEO, one might juggle dozens or hundreds of keywords — but when we talk about enterprises? We’re looking at thousands upon thousands.

You’ll need tools capable of managing enterprise SEO strategies, which let you monitor rankings en masse and provide actionable insights into how well each keyword performs against competitors.

Business Silos

Another key difference between enterprise SEO versus small business or smaller-scale SEO projects is stakeholder involvement. With more cooks in the kitchen — each with their own ideas — it can be tough to create a cohesive recipe for success.

Silos within companies are notorious for making coordination difficult; different departments may have conflicting goals or strategies regarding things like content creation and distribution.

Fixing this problem requires clear communication so that all parts move together towards a common objective: Increased visibility in the search results, which equates to more leads, more customers and ultimately, higher revenue streams.

This calls for regular cross-departmental meetings where SEO isn’t seen as just an “IT thing” but rather integral throughout all stages from product development through post-launch analysis.

What Makes a Good Enterprise SEO Strategy?

When you’re playing the long game in enterprise SEO, your strategy has to be robust and flexible. It’s not just about getting more eyes on your page; it’s about building a sustainable foundation for organic growth in the search results.

In-Depth Research

Whether it’s doing in-depth keyword and topic research or competitor research for SEO, the best enterprise SEO strategies do not skimp on the upfront investment to lay a solid foundation.

Technical SEO

You want everything running smoothly under the hood.

That means spending time perfecting site architecture, which we refer to as SEO siloing. Google echoes this sentiment in its SEO starter guide, which emphasizes clean structure and navigation.

SEO siloing not only helps search engines and visitors discover key pages, but it also makes a site an authority on a subject matter.
Technical SEO also addresses the user experience component of your website, making sure visitors have a seamless interaction with your site. Ultimately, this translates to more revenue for many businesses because you are not losing people to a bad user experience.

One case study showed how an e-commerce company improved performance and saw a 7.6% increase in sitewide conversion, translating to roughly a $6 million lift in annual revenue.

Content Strategy

Quality content helps future-proof your SEO strategy, making your site ready to take on every curveball thrown by changing algorithms or consumer behavior trends.

You want your brand to serve up thorough answers to burning questions (aka search queries) backed by data-driven insights. The goal? To satisfy user intent so well that people keep coming back and ultimately, convert.

Any SEO strategy benefits from quality content; however, enterprise SEO strategies demand it, as brands need to build their authority in the space.

Link Earning

If you get the content piece right, you are halfway there when it comes to earning links. While links don’t hold as much weight as they used to, they still matter.

Today, building links isn’t about quantity; it’s about quality over anything else. Fewer high-quality links can elevate a site more than a bunch of low-quality links.

You can also use competitor research to find link opportunities you may not have thought of previously, and that is something we cover in The New Link Building Manifesto e-book.

Enterprise SEO and AI

Artificial intelligence can be a game-changer for enterprise SEO. AI is transforming how big businesses tackle the challenge of more visibility in search results.

For instance, with AI, companies can now use predictive analytics to foresee market trends and adjust their strategies accordingly. Another major leap forward is AI content.

In addition, AI-powered content married with professional editing can accelerate the progress of an SEO program like never before. Whereas content used to be a roadblock for agility, it’s now available faster with AI.

(For more on AI content, see my article at Search Engine Land: AI content creation: A beginner’s guide.)

But what makes AI truly stand out in enterprise SEO?

The ability to process massive data, fast. By leveraging AI-driven insights, large organizations can pinpoint exactly where they need to improve without getting bogged down by data overload.

The Challenges of Getting Enterprise SEO Done

Deploying an enterprise SEO strategy is no small feat. Here are three major challenges:

1. Buy-in: Without support from the top, SEO programs don’t have a chance. Ensuring everyone understands the value and potential impact of a strong SEO campaign on the organization’s bottom line helps rally support. Focus on building relationships, sharing data on successful SEO, dispelling SEO myths and piloting a small project. For more, read: 6 Practical Ways to Get Buy-In for SEO.
2. Business silos: One major challenge is departmental silos, which can be huge barriers to communication and collaboration. McKinsey reported that cultural and behavioral challenges, which include functional or departmental silos, have the most impact on the ability to meet digital priorities.
3. Resources: Where to find the time, talent and budget to fuel your SEO efforts effectively? Enterprises often struggle with balancing resources against other marketing priorities. According to a survey by Conductor (linked in the intro to this article), 57% of enterprises said limited in-house SEO skills as the most challenging obstacle to achieving important SEO objectives, and 43% reported limited SEO budget as the most challenging obstacle for their company.

To jump over these hurdles, enterprise SEO requires strategic planning, persuasive communication skills and often, tenacity. And, when you can outsource SEO expertise to an expert SEO agency, it’s worth it.

For more ideas, see more of our tips on how to get SEO done.

How to Measure Enterprise SEO Success

When you’re looking at a massive puzzle, each piece is crucial to seeing the big picture. Enterprise SEO has a lot of moving parts, and I’ll outline what to look for next.

Core Metrics

The core of any robust enterprise SEO strategy lies in tracking organic traffic growth over time. Organic traffic is the No. 1 indicator of SEO success.

But what about conversions? You can’t monetize your organic search traffic without a site that is primed for conversions. This is the brand’s responsibility, but one that a good SEO expert can advise on.

For more, see: SEO and Conversions: Two Halves of a Pie

Keyword Rankings

Keyword rankings can feel like vanity metrics sometimes, but they are vital when gauging how your content is performing. What we want is a consistent ranking improvement for strategic keywords across major search engines — a sign that efforts are bearing fruit.

Analytics Data

Digging into analytics like Google Analytics 4 (GA4) allows us to get granular with data. It lets us dissect which pages pull their weight and contribute most significantly to business goals.

Attribution modeling becomes key as it attributes credit where due along customer journey touch points. This is key when understanding complex customer journeys inherent to larger organizations.

Enterprise SEO Tools

The scale of enterprise SEO can be overwhelming. But there are tools out there that make this daunting task manageable — and maybe even a little bit enjoyable. Let me walk you through some essentials.

Technical SEO Audits

One critical tool in an enterprise SEO strategy is the SEO audit. While there is software that can help quickly uncover data about what is hindering SEO success, it is usually surface-level recommendations.

We believe that you get the best answers with a deep technical analysis by SEO experts.

To put this into perspective, three types of audits exist today:

1. The “Good” SEO Audit: Here, software uncovers superficial but useful SEO issues. Though, the results are typically a one-size-fits-all generic report. This works when you don’t have a budget for an in-depth audit, or you want to check some basics before starting with an agency. This is not a waste, but not a deep dive.
2. The “Better” SEO Audit: For this, an SEO vendor or practitioner offers additional SEO insights but without many solutions. They can identify problems that data analytics alone can’t uncover. But without in-depth solutions, this only points to possible trouble areas.
3. The “Best” SEO Audit: In this scenario, an SEO agency performs an in-depth technical audit. It requires the expertise of a seasoned SEO expert who specializes in technical website analysis and SEO business strategy. This is a manual review supported by tools, and it takes many, many hours. This produces the most robust data on how a website can fix issues related to ranking.

Read more: SEO Audits: The Good, The Better and The Best.

Data Analytics

The backbone of any robust enterprise SEO strategy is solid analytics.

What are some baseline tools you can use in your enterprise SEO? Google Analytics and Google Search Console are your windows into user behavior and site performance on a grand scale. Then there’s the need for comprehensive crawling software; a good tool is Screaming Frog.

Our SEOToolSet also has powerful capabilities that go beyond crawling and include:

• On-page analysis
• Project dashboard
• Site spider
• Visual link graph
• Meta details report
• Site health checker
• Ranking monitor
• Competitor tracking
• Multi-page analysis
• Competitor research
• Keyword research
• Backlink reports
• WordPress SEO plugin

Integrating Enterprise SEO with Other Marketing Channels

Integrating enterprise SEO with other marketing channels can score big wins for your business. Here are a few ways:

1. Social media and SEO: By aligning social media campaigns with keyword strategies and content themes, you’re more likely to engage users who are already primed by organic search results. Social engagement increases when content is optimized across both search and social platforms.
2. Paid advertising and SEO: Linking paid ad campaigns directly with high-performing organic content can reduce cost per click while improving ad relevance.
3. Email marketing and SEO: When email campaigns include links to well-optimized landing pages, they extend user engagement beyond the inbox and onto your website where conversion chances increase.

To truly integrate these elements into one unified force, you must break down departmental silos, as mentioned earlier. When done right, it creates a multi-channel approach that leverages each platform’s strengths, leading to better visibility online and ultimately, more conversions.

Staying Ahead of the Curve

SEO never stops evolving, and neither should your SEO strategy.

To stay competitive in enterprise SEO, you need to keep learning about new practices, algorithm changes and industry trends. Doing so not only sharpens your skills but also prepares you to respond well to any sudden shifts.

Consider taking SEO training at least once per year — whether it’s in person, at a conference or virtually (examples include our classroom SEO training or SEO training membership site).

This is in addition to daily reading to stay on top of any significant changes to Google Search, honing skills through monthly or quarterly webinars and attending conferences annually.

By the way, we just so happen to be hosting our next in-person training class April 9–11. We’ve revamped this all-new training course to bring you the latest SEO tips, strategies and techniques. Go here to register and learn more.

Enterprise SEO Case Study

When it comes to enterprise SEO, the proof is in the pudding. Big businesses have seen big wins by fine-tuning their strategies for maximum impact. Let’s explore a case study that highlights this success.

Auto Research and Review Giant Boosts Organic Traffic by 900% in One Week

One of the largest research and review sites in the automotive sector worked with Bruce Clay Inc. for a technical SEO audit with consulting. Our team delivered a 100+ page SEO audit, proposing many improvements, including radical siloing of their massive website content.

The client committed to implementing every SEO recommendation, no matter how large or small. They knew to pull it off, everybody — from the executives to the marketing and IT teams — would need to be on board.

The chairman of the board called a company meeting. He announced that search engine optimization was a key strategic initiative for the company. Everybody would need to be on board or essentially find a new place to work.

After implementing the SEO program and launching the changes, the website experienced a 900 percent increase in traffic within the first week. The site’s prominence continues to this day.

Final Thoughts

Mastering enterprise SEO takes commitment. Remember, getting buy-in from the top down and breaking down silos are two of the most important things you can do to set your enterprise SEO up for success. When done right, enterprise SEO can launch your brand to a new level.

If you need help getting company buy-in from the top down, I recommend checking out and sharing these resources:

• 6 Successful Ways to Get Company Buy-In for SEO [On-Demand Webinar]
• Free Executive’s Guide to SEO [Video Training]

Whether you’re a large enterprise, a mid-sized company or a small organization, our SEO experts can help you win big with your SEO and earn top rankings in the search results. Schedule a free consultation with us today.

FAQ: How can I implement an effective enterprise SEO strategy to drive organic growth and revenue for my large organization?

Implementing an effective enterprise SEO strategy requires careful planning and execution to drive organic growth and revenue for large organizations. The following strategies will guide you towards success.

Understand Your Target Audience: Begin by thoroughly researching your target audience to gain insights into their search behavior and preferences. This will help you tailor your SEO strategy accordingly.

Keyword Research: Conduct comprehensive keyword research to identify relevant and high-volume keywords that align with your business objectives. Keyword variations and stemmed versions can be used to optimize your content.

Technical SEO: Work to improve your website’s technical SEO, such as site speed, mobile-friendliness and crawlability. Streamlining these factors will enable search engines to better index and rank your website.

On-Page Optimization: Craft high-quality and relevant content that aligns with your target keywords. Optimize meta tags, headers and URLs, while ensuring a natural incorporation of keywords within your content.

Content Marketing: Implement a robust content marketing strategy that focuses on producing valuable and informative content. This will attract more organic traffic and establish your organization as an industry authority.

Link Building: Build a strong and diverse backlink profile by acquiring quality links from reputable websites. This will not only enhance your website’s authority but also increase organic visibility.

Local SEO: If your large organization operates in multiple locations, optimize your website for local search. Create location-specific landing pages, optimize Google My Business profiles, and encourage online reviews.

Analyze and Refine: Regularly monitor and analyze your SEO performance using tools like Google Analytics. Make data-driven decisions and continuously refine your strategy based on insights obtained.

Implementing an effective enterprise SEO strategy requires a comprehensive approach that encompasses careful planning, research, technical optimization, content creation and continuous analysis.

Step-by-Step Procedure for Implementing an Effective Enterprise SEO Strategy:

1. Research your target audience extensively, understanding their search behavior and preferences.
2. Conduct thorough keyword research, identifying relevant and high-volume keywords.
3. Optimize your website’s technical SEO aspects, ensuring optimal site speed, mobile-friendliness and crawlability.
4. Create high-quality and relevant content, incorporating your target keywords naturally.
5. Develop a comprehensive content marketing strategy to attract organic traffic and establish authority.
6. Build a diverse and authoritative backlink profile through manual outreach and relationship building.
7. Optimize your website for local search, if applicable, by creating location-specific landing pages and optimizing Google My Business profiles.
8. Monitor and analyze your SEO performance regularly, making data-driven decisions for continual improvement.
9. Regularly refine your enterprise SEO strategy based on the insights obtained from analytics.
10. Stay updated with the latest SEO trends and algorithm changes to adapt your strategy accordingly.
11. Test and experiment with different SEO tactics to identify what works best for your organization.
12. Collaborate with other departments within your organization to align SEO efforts with overall business goals.
13. Consider hiring an experienced SEO agency or professional to assist with strategy development and implementation.
14. Continuously track and measure the impact of your SEO efforts on organic growth and revenue.
15. Adapt and adjust your strategy as needed to maintain long-term success.
16. Regularly evaluate and optimize your website’s user experience to improve organic visibility.
17. Foster a culture of SEO within your organization, ensuring everyone understands its importance and contributes to its success.
18. Stay patient and persistent, as implementing an effective enterprise SEO strategy takes time and dedication.
19. Regularly measure your progress and celebrate milestones to maintain motivation and morale.

By following these steps and staying committed to refining your strategy, you can drive organic growth and revenue for your enterprise.

The post The Ultimate Guide To Winning Big With Enterprise SEO appeared first on Bruce Clay, Inc..

Understanding the challenges, preferences, motivations and behaviors of a target audience is the key to a successful SEO campaign.

In this article, we’ll discuss how businesses can tailor an SEO strategy to their audience and optimize their return on investment.

• Audience research is key
• Keyword optimization with audience intent
• Content creation aligned with audience needs
• User experience and technical SEO 
• FAQ: How does keyword optimization contribute to audience-focused SEO?

Audience Research is Key

The first step in understanding your audience is to create detailed customer personas that encompass demographics, preferences, pain points and online behavior.

Gather valuable information through keyword research, social media insights and by using tools like Google Analytics. Armed with this knowledge, you can begin to tailor your messaging, keywords and content directly towards them.

A recent study looking at consumer purchasing habits by CX Network found that 63% of consumers think they are being sold things they don’t need. So why does this matter to you?

Businesses have an opportunity to increase their conversion rate when they do audience research, but most businesses skip this vital step or perform it once every five years.

If you keep up-to-date information on your audience and create clear customer avatars, you can make sure that your marketing content addresses your customer’s pain points clearly. Consumer confidence in your brand will go up — and so will your sales.

Keyword Optimization with Audience Intent

Once you have a grasp of your audience’s preferences, it’s time to focus on keyword optimization.

Instead of solely relying on high-volume keywords, prioritize those that align with your audience’s search intent. Understand the ‘why’ behind their searches. Are they seeking information, looking to make a purchase, or trying to solve a problem?

Develop content around these keywords that addresses the underlying intent to provide real value to your audience.

During this process, it’s also wise to look at your competitors. When do they show up in search queries? What types of searches do customers use when they end up on your competitor’s site?

Understanding when they appear in search results and the specific search queries that lead customers to their websites can provide valuable insights for enhancing your own SEO strategy.

Leverage this competitor data to make informed decisions that will optimize your online visibility and capture a larger share of your target audience.

Content Creation Aligned with Audience Needs

Producing content that aligns with your audience’s needs fosters trust and strengthens your brand connection between them. When your audience finds you helpful, they are more likely to engage with your brand in the form of likes, shares and comments.

Generate articles, blog posts, videos, or infographics that answer their questions and concerns. Regularly monitor, update and refresh your content to keep it current and engaging. This will position your business as an authority in your niche, earning trust and loyalty from your audience.

Search engines will reward you with better rankings, too.

User Experience and Technical SEO

A technically sound website that provides a seamless experience improves SEO rankings and ensures your audience will come back.

Optimize your website so that it is mobile-responsive, loads quickly and is easy for users to find what they are looking for.

Invest in technical SEO to optimize site structure, meta tags and image tags. A fast, user-friendly website will make your audience — and search engines — happy.

A successful SEO strategy starts by understanding your audience’s preferences, behaviors and intent. Following the tips we just outlined will drive organic traffic and convert your visitors into loyal customers.

We can help you figure out how to structure a successful SEO strategy. Reach out to us for a free consultation.

FAQ: How does keyword optimization contribute to audience-focused SEO?

The significance of keyword optimization cannot be overstated. The core essence lies in understanding the nuances of audience behavior and preferences in the online landscape.

Keyword optimization acts as the gateway to seamlessly connect user intent with content relevance, ensuring a harmonious synergy between what the audience seeks and what businesses offer.

Audience research helps businesses gain profound insights into the language and queries used by their target demographic. These insights form the backbone of keyword selection, allowing for the incorporation of highly relevant and resonant terms into content.

This deliberate choice of keywords positions content to organically attract the intended audience, steering traffic towards websites and platforms catering directly to their needs.

Keyword optimization evolves beyond mere word matching — it involves comprehending the context and intent behind the audience’s search queries.

This strategic approach crafts content that not only aligns with specific keywords but also addresses the underlying motives behind the audience’s searches.

It’s about providing solutions, answers and valuable information that precisely cater to their queries, thereby fostering a stronger connection and trust between the audience and the brand.

An insightful tip for effective keyword optimization in audience-focused SEO is the continual refinement of keyword strategies.

Regularly monitoring keyword performance, trends and shifts in audience behavior helps in staying adaptive and responsive.

Adapting keywords to reflect changes in audience preferences ensures that content remains relevant and impactful amidst the dynamic digital landscape.

An effective audience-focused SEO strategy unfolds by transitioning seamlessly between audience research, keyword selection and content creation. Each component works together to form an engaging framework that not only resonates with but also retains your target audience, propelling your businesses toward long-term digital growth and success.

Step-by-Step Procedure

1. Understand Audience Behavior: Conduct thorough audience research to comprehend their preferences, pain points and online behavior.
2. Identify Relevant Keywords: Use insights from research to identify keywords aligned with audience queries and interests.
3. Keyword Analysis: Analyze keyword performance, trends and competition to select optimal keywords.
4. Create Targeted Content: Develop content that seamlessly incorporates chosen keywords while addressing audience needs.
5. Monitor and Refine: Continuously monitor keyword performance and audience behavior, adapting strategies accordingly to maintain relevance and resonance.

The post How Can Businesses Develop an Effective SEO Strategy Based on Their Target Audience? appeared first on Bruce Clay, Inc..

Back in 2016, a Google engineer famously said that Google’s top three ranking factors were content, links and RankBrain. However, this was later disputed by more than one Googler.

Sure, those three factors are likely a huge part of how Google determines rankings, but that’s not an exhaustive list.

It is wrong to think that the algorithm is made up only of these three factors and that each of them carries one-third weight for each query. That’s because the factors in Google’s algorithm change from query to query.

That said, I’ll spend the rest of this article shedding more light on what I believe are the top factors in how your website ranks.

• Content
• Technical factors
• Links
• RankBrain
• FAQ: How can I increase the ranking of my website with Google using its top ranking factors?

Content

If I were to choose the No. 1 spot among the top ranking factors, it would be content. Content is the fabric of the web. Without content, Google’s search results simply wouldn’t exist.

Now, any website can have content, but quality content is how you rank. That’s because the content you create is important to the efficacy of Google’s search results.

Google wants its users to have a good experience. To do that, the websites featured in its search results must offer good answers to their users’ queries.

To ensure that Google is featuring the best content in its search results, it has created things like:

• Its “Search Essentials,” which teaches website publishers the rules of the game.
• Its search algorithm, which is constantly being updated to find the best websites for page one of the search results.
• Its “Search Quality Rater Guidelines,” which is a manual for assessing the quality of websites.

For more, see:

• The Complete Guide to the Basics of Google’s E-E-A-T
• What Is a Google Penalty and How Do I Avoid It?
• What Makes a Webpage Quality?
• 5 Steps To Help Writers Create Expert Content for SEO

Technical Factors

If your site is not crawlable and/or doesn’t perform well, it will likely not do well in the search results.

One of the most important things you can do is make sure your site is optimized from the ground up so that search engines can access, crawl and understand it with ease. And it must provide visitors with a good user experience.

Case in point: Google’s Gary Illyes once said:

“I really wish SEOs went back to the basics (i.e. MAKE THAT DAMN SITE CRAWLABLE) instead of focusing on silly updates and made-up terms by the rank trackers and that they talked more with the developers of the website once done with the first part of this sentence.”

In Google’s Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines, it states that unmaintained sites are low quality:

… unmaintained/abandoned “old” websites or unmaintained and inaccurate/misleading content is a reason for a low Page Quality rating.

In 2021, Google rolled out its page experience update, outlining various technical factors that should be followed to ensure a good user experience. If you want to be rewarded with better ranking, optimize your site to address these signals.

For more, see:

• Page Experience: Google’s New User Experience Algorithm Update
• Technical SEO vs. On-Page SEO

Links

If content is the fabric of the web, links are the strings that tie it together. Ever since PageRank, links have been a significant way search engines determine rankings. Why? Links have always served as a “vote” from one website for another.

Even though Google says links have less impact now than they used to, they are still important.

However, not all links are created equal. Google doesn’t give every link to your site an equal vote. In fact, some links can even result in a negative impact on your website’s ability to rank.

Today, links are no longer a numbers game. Even though Backlinko research shows that the No. 1 result in Google has an average of 3.8 times more backlinks than positions No. 2 to 10, we have seen sites with fewer but higher quality links outrank sites with more.

To get links right, you want to focus on link earning rather than link building and the quality and relevance of links versus the quantity. Link earning first starts with creating excellent content and a trusted site so that it naturally earns the links it deserves.

In 2020, Google’s John Mueller said links were “definitely not the most important SEO factor.” What does that mean? Google wants people to focus on making a great site first and not worry too much about building tons of links.

For more, see:

• 3 Steps To Create a Better Link-Building Campaign
• E-book: The New Link Building Manifesto: A Complete Guide to Earning Links That Count
• 50 Ways to Get Quality “White Hat” Backlinks

RankBrain

RankBrain is probably one of the most misunderstood ranking factors. RankBrain is a machine learning component of Google’s algorithm. It uses multiple data points at the time of a search to help the search engine better interpret the intent of search queries and serve the most relevant search results.

With RankBrain, Google can go beyond factors like the quality of the content or the links to a webpage to help identify the very best answer to a search.

So to survive RankBrain, you have a lot of work to do to ensure that you are creating the type of content that satisfies the query / your keywords. If you don’t, you risk the chance of RankBrain deciding that your content is not relevant to a search and you can lose rankings.

For more, see:

• The Real Impact of RankBrain on Web Traffic
• 5 Ways to Create Winning SEO Content That Gets More Visibility in the Search Results
• What Is Google’s “Needs Met” Rating and Why Should Website Publishers Care

There are countless factors that go into ranking a webpage, video, or image. And those factors change based on the search query. Understanding the top factors, though, is an important first step in knowing how search works.

Unlock your website’s potential with our expert SEO strategies tailored to Google’s dynamic ranking factors—let’s boost your visibility and climb the search results together. Talk to us. 

FAQ: How can I increase the ranking of my website with Google using its top ranking factors?

Today’s digital world necessitates having an effective online presence for any business to remain viable; and Google’s top ranking factors play a pivotal role when it comes to your website’s SERP ranking. So, how can these elements help boost website performance and how can businesses utilize these factors to their benefit? In order to understand more on this subject and gain some valuable insights.

At first, it’s essential to recognize that Google uses a sophisticated algorithm to rank websites. Although this algorithm incorporates numerous factors, here are a few primary ones which you should focus on:

1. Content Quality: Producing high-quality, engaging and relevant content is of utmost importance for Google to recognize websites as providers of valuable information to their visitors, so invest time into producing engaging articles, blog posts, videos and other forms of media content creation such as books.
2. Backlinks: An authoritative backlink network can make all the difference for improving website rankings. Partner with prominent industry websites when possible and prioritize quality over quantity when it comes to backlinks.
3. Mobile Responsiveness: Being mobile-first makes having a mobile-responsive website essential. Google prioritizes websites which deliver seamless user experiences on all devices; to maximize this benefit for mobile visitors optimize both design and functionality to provide optimal experience across devices.
4. Page Loading Speed: Slow websites can lead to poor user experiences and reduce Google ranking, so make sure yours loads quickly by optimizing images, minifying code and employing caching strategies.
5. User Experience: Google prioritizes websites that focus on user experience. Focusing on elements like easy navigation, intuitive design and clear calls-to-action will not only increase rankings but will also foster engagement and conversions.

Moving forward to enhance your website’s ranking:

6. Leverage Keywords Precisely: Conduct keyword research to identify relevant search terms, then incorporate these naturally into the content, meta tags and headings on your website.
7. Optimize meta tags: Create attractive titles and descriptions that accurately capture your webpage content while encouraging viewers to visit it.
8. Take Advantage of Header Tags: Header tags can help structure and simplify your content for users as well as search engines alike, making it more readable for both audiences.
9. Include alt text with images: Alt text can help search engines understand your images more readily, making your website both accessible and search-engine-friendly.
10. Regularly update content: Stagnant websites tend not to rank well; to stay ahead, ensure yours remains fresh by regularly publishing articles, blog posts or product updates.
11. Leverage Social Media: Utilize social media channels such as Twitter and Facebook to increase exposure, drive visitors directly to your website, and potentially secure backlinks from outside sources.
12. Monitor and Assess Website Performance: Utilizing tools like Google Analytics can be useful in monitoring website performance, user activity and traffic sources — providing valuable data that reveals areas requiring improvement and potential problem areas.
13. Engage Your Audience: Responding to user comments, queries and feedback is vital in building relationships and maintaining your website’s visibility and reputation. Engaging and building relationships will pay dividends!
14. Increase Website Security: Search engines prefer secure websites; utilize SSL encryption technology and regularly upgrade software updates in order to protect it against malware attacks.
15. Optimize for local search: If your business has physical presence, pay special attention to local SEO factors like Google My Business listings, customer reviews and local keywords when optimizing for local search.
16. Generate an XML Sitemap: Generating an XML sitemap helps search engines understand and index your website more effectively.
17. Stay Abreast of Your Competitors: Keep tabs on what strategies, keywords and tactics your competitors employ in order to increase the ranking of their website.
18. Create an effective internal linking structure: Internal links enable search engines to navigate your website more effectively while also helping establish its hierarchy, dispersing authority more evenly among pages and improving user navigation.
19. Strive for positive user experience: Prioritize providing visitors with an engaging user experience on your website by prioritizing fast loading pages, intuitive interfaces and fast access to pertinent data.
20. Stay current: With search engine algorithms ever evolving, staying informed on latest trends, updates and best practices is key for maintaining and improving the ranking of your website.

Utilizing Google’s top ranking factors is the cornerstone of improving website rankings. Apply these expert strategies, deliver valuable content with exceptional user experiences and watch as your rankings soar higher and higher on search engine result pages.

The post What Are Google’s Top Ranking Factors? appeared first on Bruce Clay, Inc..

Every Monday, SEO is a brand-new industry. It’s complex and can be difficult to keep up with the constant changes.

In the right hands, SEO is a powerful tool that makes your brand first among equals.

In the wrong hands, doing SEO incorrectly hurts your brand and can ultimately cause your business to fail. The difference between the two is expertise.

So in order to implement a successful SEO program, it would be wise to work with an experienced agency or consultant.

An expert SEO agency knows how to implement good strategies to improve your online visibility, establish your company as a trusted authority in your niche, attract more organic traffic to your website, and increase your revenue.

Not all SEO agencies are created equal — some are good, some are bad. If you know more about SEO than your agency does, don’t expect to see meaningful results. And if you’re not getting the best results from your SEO campaign, it’s time to look elsewhere.

There are many factors you should consider before deciding on hiring outside help. Here, we will look at the top 10 expert skills you should expect from an SEO agency:

1. 1. 1. Keyword research
      2. Competitor analysis
      3. On-page optimization
      4. Off-page optimization
      5. Technical SEO
      6. Content marketing
      7. Local SEO
      8. Analytics and reporting
      9. SEO tools
      10. SEO training

   FAQ: What are the top contributions that an SEO agency can make to your SEO program?

1. Keyword Research

Keyword research is a critical component of every successful SEO campaign. It’s what helps you understand your target audience and their search behaviors.

A good SEO agency will utilize keyword research to provide you with an edge in understanding and outranking your competitors. They will also conduct content gap analyses to identify gaps and enhance an overall competitive content strategy.

The top three search results for a query get the majority of clicks. An agency will help you align your content creation and optimization with the keywords and queries your audience is looking for to give you a better chance of showing up in those positions.

For more, read:

• What are keywords? Why are keywords important to SEO?

2. Competitor Analysis

The goal of SEO is to beat the competition, not the algorithm.

SEO agencies know how to conduct a thorough competitor analysis to analyze the SEO strategies of a website’s competition. These insights inform the recommendations they make on how to outperform them.

For more on competitor analysis, read:

• How to do competitor research for SEO

3. On-Page Optimization

On-page optimization improves a website’s relevance and user experience, leading to higher visibility in search engines.

Some tactics include:

• Optimizing the website’s content with keywords.
• Deploying the right formatting.
• Schema markup.
• Making sure a webpage is mobile-friendly, user-friendly, and fast.
• Focusing on the organization of the content throughout the site, including the internal linking strategy.

With expert knowledge of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, a great SEO agency can optimize a website’s structure, content, and design to ensure it meets the technical requirements of search engines and user needs.

Our Always Up-to-Date SEO Checklist is a great resource to help you with on-page optimization. I suggest bookmarking the page for frequent reference.

4. Off-Page Optimization

Off-page optimization includes things like social media marketing, influencer promotions, press releases, and earning quality links to the website.

Backlinks are a ranking factor, although it isn’t specifically the number of links that matters. Fewer high-quality backlinks can better improve the credibility and authority of a website than a large volume of lower-quality ones.

In other words: The days of “link building” are over …. ultimately, earning relevant links comes down to creating great content that people want to link to and share.

For more on backlinks, see:

• The New Link Building Manifesto: A Complete Guide to Earning Links That Count

5. Technical SEO

Technical SEO involves optimizing a website’s performance to ensure it meets the technical requirements of search engines and offers a great user experience.

For example, page speed is a confirmed Google ranking signal, and Google wants pages to load in under 2.5 seconds.

Technical failures are a common reason for a drop in rankings and traffic. And the complexity of today’s websites requires an expert to identify and fix any issues that may cause these drops in traffic.

With expertise in website architecture, server configuration, and user experience, the right SEO agency can ensure that your site is technically sound and make it easier for search engines to access it.

For more on technical SEO, see:

• Technical SEO vs. On-Page SEO: The DIfferences
• SEO Guide: Technical SEO Tips

6. Content Marketing

Content marketing is about creating and sharing content in a way that helps you achieve your business and marketing objectives.

Content marketing involves:

• Communicating effectively.
• Making connections.
• Sharing the right content.
• Engaging your audience.
• Being in the right place at the right time.
• Seizing opportunity.
• Inspiring action.
• Nurturing the needs of your customers.
• Showcasing your personality/company culture in a way that fits the brand.

An expert SEO agency understands how experience, expertise, authority, and trust factor into quality content that builds trust with your market. They are skilled at developing content strategies, optimizing content for target keywords, and implementing content promotion techniques that demonstrate authority to search engines and to your target audience.

7. Local SEO

Local SEO is critical for businesses that rely on local customers. In fact, research from BrightLocal shows that 98% of people use the internet to find information about a local business.

Some of the SEO tactics used in local SEO differ from traditional techniques for organic search results (“10 blue links”).

And the complexity of local SEO grows when you have national and multi-site businesses, including franchises.

An experienced agency knows how to utilize local keyword research, on-page optimization, and local link building to ensure that a business’s website appears in local search results for the most valuable queries.

For more on local SEO, read:

• How Do I Rank Higher in Google Local Search?

8. Analytics and Reporting

Analytics and reporting are essential to measure the success of an SEO campaign and identify areas for improvement.

SEO agencies should frequently check in with you to provide detailed reports on the website’s performance, rankings, and traffic. They are experienced in data analytics tools like Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and other SEO tools. And with the launch of Google Analytics 4 (GA4), an agency will have even more powerful tools to track and analyze user behavior on your website.

9. SEO Tools

SEO tools can provide a competitive advantage and improve the efficiency and effectiveness of any agency’s services.

These tools can provide valuable information about keyword research, backlink analysis, and website optimization.

Some SEO agencies (like ours) have their own proprietary SEO tools. Our SEO ToolSet software offers a suite of unique tools for website optimization. It’s been used by over 5,000 clients, including Fortune 500 companies and government agencies.

With access to the right tools, an agency can provide businesses with a unique and effective strategy that outperforms its competitors.

Remember that there is always a difference between data and wisdom. SEO tools can inundate you with data, but what sets agencies apart is the wisdom to understand what the data is telling you.

A skilled SEO agency will give you the right data with information specific to your website, then make actionable recommendations to help you make the right decisions for your business.

For more on SEO tools, see:

• The Top SEO Software That Experts Use Every Day

10. SEO Training

SEO training, like tools, can provide a competitive advantage and improve the efficiency and effectiveness of any agency services.

By learning how SEO works or improving upon the SEO skills you already have, you can have more strategic conversations with your SEO provider.

As the SEO industry continues to grow, the demand for training courses has steadily increased. Google Trends data shows a notable surge in search interest for SEO training services toward the last quarter of 2021.

These trends underscore the vital importance of investing in SEO training, showing its importance for business survival in an ever-evolving digital landscape.

Some SEO companies provide SEO training – we happen to be one of them. We’ve trained tens of thousands of students over 27 years on the foundations of SEO and evolving best practices.

In the past few years, we have reinvented our SEO training from in-person classes to an online membership site with tons of resources for its members in various content formats.

With the constant changes to search engine algorithms, staying up-to-date on SEO best practices and strategies through quality training is essential to remain competitive in today’s online marketplace.

There are a plethora of SEO training offerings out there — you must do your research and choose wisely. Before committing to anything, I suggest reading my article on Search Engine Land to help you evaluate your options.

Looking for an experienced SEO agency with a proven track record of helping websites get to Page 1 in the search results? Look no further than Bruce Clay, Inc.! Reach out to us to schedule a free consultation.

FAQ: What are the top contributions that an SEO agency can make to your SEO program?

Many businesses don’t have the time, resources, or knowledge to implement a successful SEO program. Working with an experienced SEO agency can significantly enhance your campaign. Here are the top skills you should look for when deciding to hire outside help.

Keyword Research

Keyword research is at the core of any successful SEO strategy. SEO agencies possess the knowledge and expertise required to perform thorough searches that identify relevant keywords for your industry, product, or service. They also optimize websites so they rank higher in search engine result pages (SERPs). By understanding your audience and their search behavior, agencies can optimize sites so they appear higher up in SERPs, leading to more organic traffic and conversions.

Competitor Analysis

To be the best in SEO, it means outstripping competitors. SEO agencies specialize in competitor analysis to gain valuable insight into their strategies and assist you with creating an improved SEO plan by studying what others are doing. Using this knowledge, they can identify opportunities to outrank rivals and bring more qualified traffic to your site.

Expert On-Page SEO

Optimizing the relevance and user experience of your website is paramount for its success. An SEO agency utilizes its extensive knowledge of HTML and CSS to optimize the structure, design and content of your website in accordance with search engines’ technical requirements while simultaneously meeting user demands. A specialist agency can boost rankings and targeted traffic by employing strategies such as keyword optimization, formatting schema markups and creating user-friendly navigation.

Off-page SEO

Off-page SEO refers to activities performed outside of your website that contribute to its overall search engine optimization success. A good SEO agency can develop an effective off-page strategy for optimizing your website, including social media marketing, influencer promotion, link acquisition strategies, or creating high-quality links. These experts understand the importance of a good link-building strategy and can create content that earns backlinks for increased authority, credibility and visibility for your brand.

Analytical Insights and Reporting

Reporting and analytics are crucial in evaluating the success of any SEO campaign and identifying any areas for improvement. SEO agencies typically provide regular reports detailing website traffic, rankings and key metrics gathered using data-driven insights provided by tools like Google Analytics and Search Console that will allow you to stay ahead of competitors in an ever-evolving digital landscape. These reports help keep an accurate account of SEO campaign activities while keeping a detailed log of improvements necessary in real-time.

Choosing the right partnership with an SEO agency can be the key to the success of your business. Take the time to get to know them, what they offer and what their track record is like. Leverage their experience in the industry to achieve better results — more traffic, visibility, leads, conversions, sales and customers.

The post 10 Expert Skills of an SEO Agency appeared first on Bruce Clay, Inc..

In this article, I’ll outline five technical SEO best practices you should follow (and how to get started with them) to ensure you website is primed for both users and search engines:

• Hosting
• Server errors
• Sitemaps
• Website speed
• Mobile friendliness
• FAQ: How can I optimize my website’s technical aspects for improved search engine rankings and user experience? 

1. Hosting

Sometimes website owners choose a shared hosting plan versus a dedicated hosting plan to save on the costs of hosting a website. When this happens, you share an IP address with other websites. This can present SEO problems as both a speed issue (more sites per shared server means each may be slower) and a neighborhood issue.

Say you share your hosting with other websites that happen to be spammy websites. If a site is caught performing spam tactics, the entire IP block and all the sites that share that IP address could be put on a block list, also called an IP blacklist or IP blocklist. That means you’re in a bad neighborhood, so to speak. This significantly impacts email, but it can cause conversion issues if your emails are blocked … and poor conversion is a marketing fail.

While this “bad neighborhood” problem used to be much more prominent, and Google has also indicated that it would be hard to be SEO tainted by surrounding bad neighbors, I still would not take any chances.

IMO we do not KNOW that there is no TRUST impact on a bad neighborhood. And Google can say what they like — for a little effort, why take the chance? Still, blocked emails kill sales.

Probably a more obvious issue is the performance of your website when you share hosting. Being on a shared hosting plan may mean that your servers are not as efficient. You’re often fighting other sites for resources that could impact load time and, indirectly, your organic search rankings, to say nothing of conversion.

There are a couple of things you can do here to look into these potential problems:

Bad Neighborhood Issues

• Get your IP address at WhatIsMyIPAddress.com.
• Go to Blacklist Check at the same website to evaluate if your IP is in a bad neighborhood.
• If it’s associated with other bad websites, call the hosting provider and ask for a new, clean IP.
• Run a check on the new IP if you get it.
• If your hosting provider won’t comply, consider dedicated hosting or finding another hosting provider altogether.

Performance Issues

• Go to WebPageTest.org.
• Run a test for your home page URL.
• Look at the first byte time — this is an indication of the responsiveness of a server.
• Run the same test on your competition (you could use our SEOToolSet for competitive research or check out our article on how to do competitor research for SEO).
• If your first byte time is not as good as your competition, you might want to switch hosting providers or get a dedicated IP

Here are my thoughts on whether you should use a shared hosting plan:

2. Server Errors

Your web server runs your website. When a webpage is requested, the server receives that request and responds with the content of that page. When you have server issues, it can impact the user experience and search engine rankings.

There is much to consider when evaluating a server, from its type to how well it performs. In this section, though, we’ll focus on server errors.

Server status codes are a response by the server in response to a client request. You can find a full list of server status codes at W3.org here. Sometimes servers produce errors when a visitor or search engine spider tries to access something on your website.

Because certain status codes could impact your rankings, so you want to check server response codes and know what is happening with your website.

In particular, here are the following status codes that you want to pay special attention to and fix right away:

• 302: A 302 is a temporary redirect and is generally not SEO-friendly as it does not always transfer a page’s historical link signals to the redirected page. Yes, Google has indicated that it is often treated like a 301 permanent redirect, but I would rather use a 301 and not be concerned with the crawl budget.
• 400: There is a syntax error in the request. It is denied.
• 401: The header in your request did not contain the correct authorization codes. You don’t get to see what you requested.
• 403: You are forbidden to see the document you requested. It can also mean that the server doesn’t have the ability to show you what you want to see or your IP is blocked by the server.
• 404: Document not found – your requested URL does not exist.
• 410: The page used to be there, but now it’s gone. This essentially tells the search engine to purge the indexed entry now instead of waiting for a few 404 errors to cause deletion.
• 500: The server experienced an internal error that prevents it from serving the request.

Common server errors include a 302 and 404. Here’s a video I did on 302s that you can check out:

What To Do: Server Errors

• Use our SEOToolSet’s free Check Server Page tool.
• Identify any potential errors and fix them.
• Here is some information on addressing common 302 and 404 errors: How to Do a 301 Redirect and Design a 404 Error Page to Save a Sale.

3. Sitemaps

Both HTML sitemaps and XML sitemaps are important technical SEO steps. These sitemaps help their users (website visitors and search engines) navigate the site and discover content.

An HTML sitemap is a webpage on your website containing links to key webpages (first and second-level navigation pages) so both humans and search spiders can navigate your site. Google has said that the HTML site map is useful to search engines as it flags what are the most important pages for users (and Google), so the HTML sitemap should focus on top important pages.

Originally, HTML sitemaps were made just for website visitors to navigate a website. However, because search engine spiders use links to navigate from one page to another, HTML sitemaps can be a useful shortcut for search engines to find and index content on a website.

So to recap: Having an HTML sitemap in the footer your website allows:

• A search engine spider can enter your site at any webpage and then quickly discover other webpages via the sitemap.
• A website visitor to view the HTML sitemap and use it to navigate your site.

An XML sitemap is a file that you put on your website to tell search engines about the webpages, images and videos that are on the site. An XML sitemap works like a content map, helping ensure search engines crawl and index more thoroughly.

A technical SEO best practice is to create an XML sitemap and ensure it’s always up to date so that search engines crawl and index all the important content on your site.

Google says that sites under 500 pages might not need an XML sitemap, so some people may think it’s not that important.

And while the search engines should be able to find all the content on your site by following links, most websites don’t have proper linking architecture. So it can be hard for search engines to discover the content.

What To Do: HTML Sitemaps

There are several important considerations when designing your HTML sitemap:

• All of the site’s important pages should be listed in the HTML sitemap(s) in a cohesive manner.
• Use keyword-rich anchor text when linking to the important internal pages, making sure it describes the page it is linking to (“the promise of the link”).
• Make sure the sitemap has a clear hierarchy for top landing pages, categories, subcategories and subpages.
• Pages, including the HTML sitemap(s), should include no more than 100 links.
• If there are over 100 links, the sitemap needs to be paginated or nested.
• The sitemap page design should match the overall site design.
• The sitemap should have fully qualified (or absolute) URLs, meaning http:// or https:// is used in the URL, and the entire URL is in the sitemap.

At one point, Google recommended having less than 100 links on each page (and then later dropped that recommendation). The numbers are arbitrary, just don’t be spammy.

I discuss how many links are too many for a page in this video:

What To Do: XML Sitemaps

Here’s what to keep in mind when you create your XML sitemap:

• Every site should have at least one XML sitemap.
• You can create it manually or use an XML sitemap generator.
• Create separate, special sitemaps for things like news, videos, and images.
• Large websites may need to break their list of URLs into many XML sitemaps.
• Once you have created the sitemap file, upload it to the root of your website (https://www.your-domain-name.com/sitemap.xml), then tell search engines to know about it using your robots.txt file.
• Some people prefer to submit the sitemaps manually due to timing; once you submit it, you can start the indexing process versus just waiting for the search engine to give you a turn.
  Submitting the sitemap can also help you identify errors through the Sitemaps report in Google Search Console.

For more, read: What Is an XML SItemap and How Do I Make One?

4. Website Speed

Search engines have a limited crawl budget for all sites. If a site is slow to load, the search engines cannot crawl all webpages within the crawl budget. This results in a site having fewer indexed pages, which decreases opportunities for rankings.

Page speed is a factor in search engine ranking algorithms. Fast performance is also a critical component of the user experience. If your website takes too long to load, users will abandon it in favor of a different website that does not take as long.

And with Google’s focus on Core Web Vitals and the emphasis on speed there, this is a critical factor for overall ranking. (For expert tips to improve your CWV, watch our on-demand webinar.)

Research has shown that faster performance results in improved KPIs for websites. For example, Pinterest reported that reducing wait time by 40% resulted in a 15% increase in SEO traffic and a 15% increase in conversion rate to sign up.

In 2021, Google rolled out the page experience algorithm update, which combines things like site speed and responsiveness when evaluating a website. So focusing on speed is more important than ever.

A site’s responsiveness and speed have a direct effect on a user’s willingness to use and return to a site.

What To Do: Website Speed

When you are assessing your page load speed, you want to be as fast or faster than your competition. In other words, your website does not need to be the fastest website in the world. The goal is to be least imperfect compared to your competitors.

That said, improving website speed can be time-consuming and expensive. When using tools to evaluate your webpage speed, make sure you have a professional review of the scores. You’ll want to make sure you focus on improving the right metrics. Improving certain metrics past a certain threshold may be difficult, and not worth the resources.

Here are some things that can slow webpage load time:

• Excessive HTML comments
• Excessive white space
• Failing to externalize Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)
• Failing to externalize JavaScript
• Failing to specify image dimensions
• Landing page redirects
• No browser caching
• No compression
• No image optimization
• Render-blocking JavaScript
• Slow server response time

I talk more about some of these in one of our “Ask Us Anything” videos:

There are several tests you can run your webpages through. Here are a few:

• GTmetrix
• Google’s PageSpeed Insights
• WebPageTest.org

For more on website speed and page experience, check out the following resources:

• How Fast Should My Webpage Be and Why Should I Care?
• Documentation on PageSpeed Insights
• Google’s recommendations for fast load times
• Google’s Page Experience Update: A Complete Guide
• 3 Expert Tips to Improve Core Web Vitals [On-demand webinar]

5. Mobile Friendliness

The majority of web traffic today (about 55% as of Q1 2021) comes from a mobile device. A mobile-friendly website creates a good experience for people who visit a website from a smartphone or tablet. While that percentage certainly varies by industry and search mission, the fact is that being mobile-friendly is vital. Google indexes your content using a mobile version of the spider, so your designs must be friendly for mobile users.

A mobile-friendly website matters to your search engine rankings because Google wants websites on page one that offer great content through a good experience to mobile users.

In 2021, Google rolled out mobile-first indexing. Google’s announcement explains what that means:

Mobile-first indexing means Google predominantly uses the mobile version of the content for indexing and ranking. Historically, the index primarily used the desktop version of a page’s content when evaluating the relevance of a page to a user’s query. Since the majority of users now access Google Search with a mobile device, Googlebot primarily crawls and indexes pages with the smartphone agent going forward.

This was yet another signal from Google that mobile-friendliness is critical.

What To Do: Mobile Friendliness

In an earlier article I wrote on mobile friendliness, I outlined four steps you can take to get your website in tip-top shape for mobile users:

1. Test your current site: Check out Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test and the mobile usability report in Google Search Console.

2. Learn about mobile-friendly best practices. Check out Google’s guide here and our guide on mobile SEO and UX optimization, too.

3. Implement changes. Here, you may have to decide about things like website configuration (responsive is the current recommendation), website content, and website speed (covered in the last section of this article).

4. Watch for common mistakes. One major pitfall to avoid is sacrificing needed content for the sake of speed. I’ve written about that as well in: Why an Insanely Fast Site Is Your New Priority.

Technical SEO Is Never Done

This is just a sampling of the technical SEO best practices you can and should implement on your website. No aspect of SEO is “set it and forget it,” so there will always be more testing to do and more improvements to make.

The steps outlined in this article give a good starting point for a sound technical SEO foundation.

Our SEO experts can provide technical SEO services to ensure your website runs smoothly and outperforms your competition. Contact us today and let us know how we can help.

FAQ: How can I optimize my website’s technical aspects for improved search engine rankings and user experience?

Every website owner aspires to secure a prominent spot on search engine results pages while delivering a seamless experience to users. Achieving this delicate balance requires strategically optimizing your website’s technical aspects. Each element is crucial in determining your online success, from server performance to mobile responsiveness.

To begin, consider the hosting of your website. Shared hosting may seem cost-effective but can impact website speed and performance due to shared resources. Investing in dedicated hosting ensures a smoother user experience and minimizes downtime, contributing positively to both search rankings and user satisfaction.

Server errors can hinder the crawlability of your site, affecting its visibility on search engines. Regularly monitor server response codes to identify and rectify issues promptly. A well-maintained server enhances search engine indexing and ensures a seamless browsing experience for visitors.

Sitemaps, both HTML and XML, are powerful tools for aiding navigation and indexing. HTML sitemaps assist users in finding essential pages, while XML sitemaps guide search engine bots to relevant content. Regularly updating and optimizing these sitemaps provides clear paths for users and search engines to explore your website.

Website speed remains a critical factor for both search engines and users. Slow-loading pages can lead to high bounce rates and lower search rankings. Minimize image sizes, leverage browser caching, and optimize code to ensure swift page loading. Google’s Core Web Vitals emphasize the importance of fast-loading pages, making this optimization even more imperative.

Lastly, prioritize mobile friendliness. A responsive design is paramount with a significant portion of users accessing websites via mobile devices. Google’s mobile-first indexing underscores the importance of mobile compatibility for search rankings. Ensure your website displays seamlessly across various devices to provide a positive user experience.

Optimizing your website’s technical aspects is a multifaceted endeavor that directly impacts search engine rankings and user satisfaction. By focusing on hosting, server errors, sitemaps, website speed, and mobile friendliness, you can create a strong foundation for online success. Incorporating these insights and taking proactive steps will elevate your website’s performance and solidify your online presence.

Step-by-Step Procedure: How to Optimize Your Website’s Technical Aspects for Improved Search Engine Rankings and User Experience

1. Evaluate Your Hosting Options: Assess the pros and cons of shared vs. dedicated hosting, considering factors like speed and resource sharing.
2. Monitor Server Response Codes: Regularly check for server errors and address them promptly to ensure optimal crawlability.
3. Optimize Sitemaps: Update and maintain both HTML and XML sitemaps, ensuring they reflect your site’s structure and content.
4. Prioritize Website Speed: Optimize images, enable browser caching, and streamline code to enhance page loading times.
5. Embrace Mobile Friendliness: Adopt a responsive design that provides a seamless experience across various devices.
6. Implement Core Web Vitals: Familiarize yourself with Google’s Core Web Vitals and optimize your site accordingly.
7. Leverage PageSpeed Insights: Use Google’s tool to identify areas for improvement in your website’s speed performance.
8. Consider Content Delivery Networks (CDNs): Explore CDNs to distribute content and reduce server load for faster page loading.
9. Use GZIP Compression: Enable GZIP compression to reduce the size of files transmitted between your server and visitors’ browsers.
10. Optimize CSS and JavaScript: Minify CSS and JavaScript files to reduce their size and improve website loading speed.
11. Enable Browser Caching: Configure your server to enable browser caching, reducing load times for returning visitors.
12. Optimize Images: Compress images without compromising quality to decrease page load times.
13. Implement Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP): Consider using AMP to create lightweight and fast-loading versions of your webpages.
14. Monitor Mobile Usability: Regularly check Google Search Console for mobile usability issues and address them promptly.
15. Test Across Devices: Test your website’s appearance and functionality across various devices and screen sizes.
16. Ensure Clear Navigation: Simplify your website’s navigation to enhance user experience and search engine crawlability.
17. Regularly Audit and Update: Regularly audits your website’s technical aspects and make necessary updates.
18. Stay Updated on Industry Trends: Keep abreast of changes in search engine algorithms and best practices for technical SEO.
19. Utilize Professional Tools: Leverage SEO tools to analyze your website’s technical performance and identify areas for improvement.
20. Continuously Monitor and Refine: Technical optimization is ongoing; regularly monitor, analyze, and refine your strategies to maintain optimal performance.

By following these comprehensive steps, you can optimize your website’s technical aspects effectively, improving search engine rankings and a superior user experience.

The post 5 Unusual Technical SEO Best Practices appeared first on Bruce Clay, Inc..

But what actually determines webpage quality? I’ll outline the various aspects that impact the perceived quality of a webpage, by both search engines and users, in the following sections:

• Experience, Expertise, authority, and trust
• Journalistic integrity in your content
• Content optimization
• Technical SEO
• Tips for consistently improving webpage quality
• FAQ: How can I ensure my webpages maintain high-quality standards for better search engine performance?

Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trust

Google is notoriously protective of its search ranking algorithm. As a result, much of what we accept as best practice in SEO is based on educated guesses, experience, and simply seeing what works.

When it comes to on-page SEO and what Google is looking for in a quality webpage, though, they’ve been surprisingly transparent. In its Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines (SQEG), the search giant shares what its search quality raters should consider as indicative of page quality.

The SQEG explains the following are the most important factors for quality raters to consider in determining a page’s quality rating:

• The purpose of the page
• Experience, expertise, authoritativeness, trustworthiness
• Main content quality and amount
• Website information or information about who is responsible for the main content
• Website reputation or reputation of the person responsible for the main content

That second one — expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness, also known as E-E-A-T — is so important that it appears a whopping 130 times in the SQEG.

While not a ranking factor, E-E-A-T is a great framework by which to gauge the quality of your content. Specifically, Google advises that its raters consider the E-E-A-T of the people who create the content, the content itself, and the website as a whole.

Here’s what the SQEG says to consider:

• The expertise of the creator of the main content
• The authoritativeness of the creator of the main content, the main content itself, and the website
• The trustworthiness of the creator of the main content, the main content itself, and the website

Again, this isn’t a part of the core algorithm. Rather, parts of the core algorithm look for E-E-A-T signals; for example, I believe that the Panda update was about expertise, Penguin was about authority, and Medic was about trust.

How can you make sure your webpages are trustworthy and authoritative, showcasing your expertise? For this next tip, I take a page from the most experienced content creators out there.

Journalistic Integrity in Your Content

Even if you’re fairly confident that the information you’re sharing is accurate, it’s important that you make it easy for Google (and your readers) to verify it. Journalists have “Cite your sources!” drilled into their heads from the earliest days of training.

Fact-checking should be an integral part of your publishing process. In fact, Google cares about this to the extent it provides a fact-checking tool that enables searchers to input a claim and see what’s been verified about it online.

Always consider the expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness of the sources you’re citing on your webpage, too. Restating something as fact is your personal endorsement of that information.

Another important tool for improving the quality of your content is to choose a style guide to go by. Adhering to one style guide gives your content clarity and consistency. For example, the Associated Press Stylebook is the style that journalists use when they write content.

Sticking with one style tells all of your writers, editors, marketers, and others who publish content on-site how to handle links and citations, capitalization in titles and subheadings, punctuation, presentation of statistics, and more.

Essentially, you want readers and visitors focused on your quality content, not trying to overlook omissions or inconsistencies in how the information is presented.

Which style guide you choose is up to you, and in fact, many organizations create their own style guide to maintain consistency. That’s great, too. What matters most is that you choose one and apply it to all of your web content.

Content Optimization

Once you’re satisfied with the quality and accuracy of the content on your webpage, it’s important that you optimize it. How else will Google understand that your webpage is the best answer for relevant queries?

I won’t go into great detail here, as we have an excellent, always up-to-date SEO checklist here. Work through it as you optimize new content, and soon, it’ll become second nature.

Technical SEO

We’ve focused heavily on content and other on-page SEO factors to this point. But even the best content will underperform without the solid underpinning of a technically sound website.

Technical SEO is the practice of optimizing your website so Google and other search engines can easily crawl and index your webpages. It also applies to user experience in that visitors expect webpages to load quickly and smoothly.

Google aims to give each searcher the best answer for their need, and these technical SEO considerations are part of that experience:

Site Speed

How fast your webpage loads has a massive impact on your visitor’s experience — and the actions they will take as a result.

Google’s research shows that “…faster mobile site speed makes people view more pages on the site, convert more, and buy more on most brand sites.”

Page speed has long been a ranking factor, but speed and other core metrics have grown in importance with Google’s 2021 page experience update.

Learn more about how to make your site faster: How Fast Should My Webpage Be and Why Should I Care?

Mobile-Friendliness

Is your site responsive to the device on which the visitor is viewing it?

Does your page load quickly on mobile, and is content formatted for easy reading on different screen sizes?

These are major considerations for Google and in fact, mobile-friendliness is a ranking signal within the page experience update. This impactful update also includes:

• Core Web Vitals, a set of three metrics that help Google understand the experience visitors have on any given webpage: Largest Contentful Paint, Cumulative Layout Shift, and First Input Delay
• HTTPS compliance for secure browsing status
• Intrusive interstitials — specifically, ensuring that you don’t have any

There are many technical factors that can impact your site’s mobile-friendliness — responsive design, properly configured text and buttons, and page loading speed, among them. See Page Experience Matters: The Mobile-Friendly Site to learn more.

A whole host of issues may impact Google’s ability to find, crawl, and index your webpage. Cloaking, redirects, 404 errors, robots.txt status and more are among the more common technical SEO issues that could impact your website quality.

Check out these Technical SEO Tips to learn more about optimizing the back end of your site.

Tips for Consistently Improving Webpage Quality

As you apply best practices and begin looking at all pages through a quality lens, the process will become faster and easier. Run through this list of tips with one of your existing pages and see where you can improve:

1. Focus on demonstrating E-E-A-T in all of your content — written copy, photos, videos, and other elements, too.
2. Remember that the reputation of the content creator and website as a whole matters. Include the author’s name, a short bio (either on-page or linked), and links to social profiles.
3. Fact-check all information and statistics, citing your sources in accordance with the style guide of your choice.
4. Ensure that the page’s content delivers on the expectation a reader will have upon navigating to that page from the SERP.
5. Proofread carefully! Don’t let simple typos or small errors take away from your page’s perceived quality.
6. Create a sufficient amount of content and include enough information to satisfy the need that brought the searcher to your page. (Our WordPress SEO plugin can help you know how much to write in order to compete.)
7. Optimize content to help Google understand how and why that webpage meets the needs of searchers using relevant queries.
8. Make sure preventable technical SEO issues aren’t standing in the way of your page’s accessibility and rankings.

Making a quality website is impossible without SEO-friendly, high-quality content. At Bruce Clay Inc., we have a team of experienced writers who can help meet your needs. Interested in learning more about our content development services? Contact us for a free consultation today.

FAQ: How can I ensure my webpages maintain high-quality standards for better search engine performance?

Maintaining a high level of quality for your webpages is pivotal for driving better search engine performance. In an era where user experience is paramount, search engines like Google are placing increased emphasis on ranking pages that offer genuine value. To ensure your webpages meet these high-quality standards and deliver exceptional results, consider the following strategies:

Prioritize Content Relevance

Craft content that aligns precisely with your audience’s needs. In-depth research into your target audience’s preferences and pain points will help you create content that resonates and provides genuine value.

Incorporate E-E-A-T Principles

Experience, expertise, authority, and trustworthiness (E-A-T) are foundational for high-quality webpages. Showcase your expertise by offering well-researched insights, share your personal experiences and opinions with the subject matter, back your claims with authoritative sources, and foster trust by maintaining transparent and reliable content.

Implement On-Page Optimization

Optimize your content for both users and search engines. Pay attention to title tags, meta descriptions, header tags, and keyword placement. Balancing keyword usage with natural readability is key to maintaining high quality.

Streamline User Experience

User experience directly influences search engine performance. Ensure fast page loading times, responsive design for various devices, and easy navigation. Users should be able to find what they need without any friction.

Focus on Technical SEO

Technical SEO forms the backbone of webpage quality. Prioritize tasks like improving site speed, optimizing images, and ensuring mobile-friendliness. These factors enhance both user experience and search engine rankings.

Transitioning seamlessly between these strategies is essential for maintaining a cohesive approach to webpage quality. By prioritizing content relevance, incorporating E-E-A-T principles, optimizing on-page elements, streamlining the user experience, and emphasizing technical SEO, you can effectively elevate your webpage quality and secure better search engine performance.

Step-by-Step Procedure: Strategies to Enhance Webpage Quality for Improved Search Engine Performance

1. Conduct thorough audience research to understand their preferences and pain points.
2. Align content topics with audience needs to ensure relevance.
3. Utilize authoritative sources to back up claims and enhance expertise.
4. Provide clear author credentials to establish authority and trustworthiness.
5. Craft compelling title tags and meta descriptions that accurately represent content.
6. Use header tags to structure content for easy readability and navigation.
7. Integrate relevant keywords naturally into the content.
8. Optimize images for fast loading times and improved user experience.
9. Ensure responsive design to guarantee usability across various devices.
10. Implement a content delivery network (CDN) to enhance page loading speed.
11. Conduct regular site audits to identify and resolve technical SEO issues.
12. Create XML sitemaps to aid search engine crawling and indexing.
13. Improve site speed by compressing images and minimizing server response time.
14. Eliminate duplicate content issues to enhance content uniqueness.
15. Implement schema markup to enhance search engine understanding of content.
16. Monitor user behavior and make adjustments based on analytics data.
17. Regularly update content to ensure accuracy and relevance.
18. Engage in reputable link-building practices to enhance authority.
19. Collaborate with industry influencers to gain credibility and exposure.
20. Continuously monitor search engine algorithm updates and adapt strategies accordingly.

This article was updated on December 19, 2023.  

The post What Makes a Webpage Quality? appeared first on Bruce Clay, Inc..

• The total package
• Technically speaking
• Perfectly imperfect
• FAQ: What are the key components of a whole-SERP strategy in SEO?

The Total Package

The only thing that’s constant in a search engine results page is change. In fact, Google made more than 3,000 changes to Search in 2018 alone.

So building a whole-SERP strategy should be part of any SEO program every year.

SEO is not just about implementing the basics on a site. It also requires thinking past the blue links to get more real estate on the entire SERP.

Just take a look at the search results for any given query — what do you see? Today, many features fill the page.

Image source: SERP Features Monitor, Searchmetrics 

Each feature represents a search vertical or SEO technique worth mastering. By doing so, you can get more visibility on Page 1 and more chances to drive traffic to your owned media.

So for your most important search queries, understand what types of content are likely to be featured. For example, how-to queries may be more likely to show video results. So, create content strategies to supply those queries with video answers.

Research shows that a Google Search user on a desktop will navigate to the top left of the search results page and then scan down to find the result that is most useful to them.

So be mindful: what’s featured at the top of the SERP for the queries you want to be found for — is it a video? Featured snippet? Something else?

(For more, check out our tips on optimizing video, images, and other multimedia.)

Technically Speaking

Google is always going to place importance on website functionality because it impacts Google’s experience crawling your website. It also impacts the user’s experience visiting your site. Remember that your users are Google’s users, too.

Technical SEO works to optimize a website’s infrastructure so that search engines can better crawl and index content. This includes everything from externalizing JavaScript or CSS to including robots.txt files, reviewing server configurations, and much more.

It was just last year that Google’s Gary Illyes said on Reddit that he wished SEOs would stop focusing on updates and get back to the basics:

i really wish SEOs went back to the basics (i.e. MAKE THAT DAMN SITE CRAWLABLE) instead of focusing on silly updates and made up terms by the rank trackers, and that they talked more with the developers of the website once done with the first part of this sentence.

For more, see this primer on technical SEO.

Perfectly Imperfect

For all you perfectionists out there, here’s some relief: You don’t need to be perfect in SEO to succeed. You just need to be the least imperfect. What do I mean?

Search engine algorithms are a best-kept secret. We’ll never be able to reverse-engineer them entirely. So the best we can do is be the least imperfect compared to our competition in the search results.

In other words: Do what the websites in the top results are doing, but a little bit better. Get as many on-page and off-page factors right as possible. If they have 15 out of 20 SEO tactics implemented well, do 16 tactics very well.

Because we have not found any great multi-site analyzers, we built our own — patent pending even. Audit tools like those found in our SEOToolSet® and our new WordPress plugin for SEO help you dissect the top-ranking pages for any keyword. Then you can be the least imperfect among them and beat your competition.

FAQ: What are the key components of a whole-SERP strategy in SEO?

A holistic approach known as a whole-SERP strategy is imperative to effectively dominate search engine results pages (SERPs). This strategy involves several key components, each pivotal in enhancing online visibility and driving organic traffic.

Organic Search

The foundation of any whole-SERP strategy is organic search optimization. This involves on-page SEO, high-quality content creation, and technical SEO to ensure your website ranks prominently in organic search results.

Paid Search

Complementing organic search is paid search advertising. Crafting targeted pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns can help you secure valuable real estate at the top of the SERPs, ensuring your brand is seen by a wider audience.

Featured Snippets

Understanding how to optimize for featured snippets is crucial. By providing concise, informative answers to common questions within your content, you increase the likelihood of Google showcasing your content in the coveted “position zero.”

Structured Data Markup

Leveraging structured data markup (Schema.org) can enhance your search results with rich snippets, which directly display additional information, such as reviews and product details, in the SERPs. This can significantly improve click-through rates.

User Experience Optimization

A seamless user experience is paramount. Ensure your website is mobile-responsive, loads quickly, and easily navigates. Google rewards sites that provide exceptional user experiences.

Local SEO

For businesses with a physical presence, local SEO optimization is essential. Claim and optimize your Google My Business listing, encourage customer reviews, and ensure your NAP (Name, Address, Phone number) information is consistent across the web.

Content Diversification

Diversify your content strategy to include text, videos, images, and infographics. Different content types appeal to a broader audience and can secure placements in various SERP features.

Incorporating these components into your whole SERP strategy will help you conquer the complex and ever-changing landscape of SEO. Remember that SEO is an ongoing process, requiring continuous monitoring, adjustments, and staying abreast of industry trends.

The post Forget 2020 SEO Trends, These Classics Stand the Test of Time appeared first on Bruce Clay, Inc..