Google’s Top 10 Ranking Factors In 2020

By Peter Brittain on June 15, 2020 in SEO Rankings

It is hardly surprising that many website owners who do their own SEO often feel like their head is spinning trying to keep up with Google’s ranking factors. Truth be told, many seasoned SEO experts often feel the same way.

Hopefully, we will not make you feel too dizzy as we highlight Google’s top 10 ranking factors for 2020.

#1 Content still rules as Google continues to reward websites that publish quality content over those that produce sub-standard content.

#2 Mobile over desktop is how the world has moved in terms of consuming online content and that is why Google now indexes mobile sites first. That means if your website is not mobile optimised its ranking is going to continually drop

#3 Page load speed has become more important due to mobile indexing and it means that websites that load quickly have a distinct advantage over clunky websites that take ages to load.

#4 Freshness is a ranking factor that many are blissfully unaware of, so their old, stagnant content does nothing for their ranking. If, instead, they updated it, and even included the present year, Google will look upon it a lot more favourably.

How To E-A-T Your Way to The Top Of The Search Engines

By Peter Brittain on June 5, 2020 in Ranking Factors

Hopefully, you will have already realised we are not talking about eating food to help your SEO, much as that might appeal to us all. Instead, the acronym E-A-T stands for Expertise – Authority – Trustworthiness. Given that E-A-T is something that Google’s algorithms are focused on, it is something every website owner needs to understand.

Those three words mean that Google has moved on from just looking for quality content. A quick point to make here is that does not mean that you should let your standards drop and stop producing quality content. That requirement has not been abandoned, however, Google are taking things a step further.

Google is continually striving to make its search engine results as close to the user’s intention as possible. Taking that stage further means they want the destination that users arrive at to give them the best user experience possible.

Put yourself in Google’s shoes for a moment and imagine you had to determine what websites are going to achieve that goal, and which are not. How about fake news websites, or websites with lots of content, but otherwise full of affiliate offers for sale?

What about those with misleading sales messages or hyped up claims? And, how about websites that look like they offer content, but it is really just sales copy dressed up as content?

How to Keep Visitors on Your Website Longer

By Peter Brittain on May 18, 2020 in Conversions, Website UX

Here are 5 Ways To Ensure Your Website Visitors Stay Longer.

Within the SEO and online business communities, a lot has been written about Google’s continuing mission to make its search engine results exactly match the intent of the person entering the search. In fact, a lot of what has been written has come from Google itself.

They have moved from simply ranking websites based on how relevant they are to the search term to them giving higher rankings to websites where the evidence is that user experiences will be greater than on other websites.

As it is impossible for Google to survey every single person to ask them about their experience, Google instead tries to establish it using data it receives back from the destination website.

There are numerous data points that all feed into Google’s ‘user experience’ score. These include bounce rate, which checks whether visitors take one look at a site and then click away, whether a website gets bookmarked by visitors, and dwell time, which is what we are going to focus on.

Dwell time tells Google how long visitors stay on each page of the website, with logic telling them that if dwell time is high, the visitor likes the site, and if it is low, maybe not so much.

For website owners, this means that they need to do all they can to encourage visitors to stay. Here are 5 simple ways it can be done…

Using Video As An Integral Part of Your Marketing and SEO

By Peter Brittain on April 22, 2020 in Video SEO

If you own a local business and you are looking for ways to gain a marketing advantage over your competitors, then you must consider using video. Video, and its ability to give SEO for your website a huge boost is something that most businesses are completely unaware of.

The truth is Google absolutely loves video and given it owns the biggest video website on the planet, YouTube, it is little wonder that videos rank very highly in their search results. But it is not just for Google’s benefit and your website’s rankings that you should be using video, it is due to the fact that your customers and potential customers love video too.

To prove this point, the next time you are in a busy area of town stop for a moment and look around to see what everyone is doing. It is an absolute certainty that many of them will be walking, standing, sitting or even having a conversation whilst at the time looking at a mobile device such as a phone or tablet.

This is the world we live in today where handheld devices have almost become as much a part of us as the hands that hold them. While there will be all sorts of different reasons for looking at one of these devices, the primary ones will be social media, communication, and entertainment, with videos often being the main source of that entertainment.

How To Increase Visitor Activity and Sales Conversions On Your Website

By Peter Brittain on March 8, 2020 in SEO

No matter how much you have spent on your website, and regardless of how awesome your website looks, one thing you must remember is, it is nothing more than a bauble if it doesn’t help to generate revenue for your business.

Now it’s true that some websites are not built specifically for selling and are seen merely as a corporate hub designed to promote the company’s brand. There is nothing wrong with this, especially for large corporations and multi-national organisations; however, for local businesses, websites serve a much different purpose, which, sadly, they often fail to fulfil for a variety of reasons.

Rather than go through a whole list of things that local business websites get wrong, instead let’s take a look at some of the key functions that a local business website should be performing if it is to help that business generate leads, sales, and revenue in order to sustain it.

Now, we want to be very careful with this one, which is to create a good first impression. Please do not think that is the starting gun for you to run off and completely redesign your website into a multi-coloured kaleidoscope of flashing images. The phrase less is more is very prevalent when it comes to the look of a website so don’t use colours and graphics for the sake of it.

What is more important about the visual elements of a website is whether it gives visitors a good first impression and does it look like a website that is going to be easy to navigate. Menus and buttons saying, ‘Click Here’ to the left, right and centre are confusing, and a confused mind always says ‘No’, which means they are out of there.