Everybody in the SEO industry kind of thinks of themselves as industry experts – or jack of all trades! But the level of one’s expertise is only determined when one takes a challenging role.
People think SEO is easy. Just read a couple of blog posts on link building, keyword research, and on-page SEO practices, and you are a qualified expert now.
And the same lot finds it difficult to research, learn and adapt to new practices. Thus, they work day in and day out to implement the basic practices but never learn the advanced, evolving SEO practices.
Up-to-date knowledge is important. And if you haven’t been following the latest SEO-related news lately, get ready to learn how much money you have left on the table.
Below, you will find five overlooked SEO ranking factors that you must take seriously onwards, as they play a crucial role in your website’s performance on the search engines.
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5 Overlooked SEO Ranking Factors
1.Backlinks Quality
A lot of SEOs fuss over the number of backlinks, and in order to speed up the backlinking process, they turn a blind eye to the quality of backlinks being acquired.
One backlink from a high-authority website beats hundreds of low-quality ones. Before you ask for a backlink, do some research. Check out the site’s spam score and domain authority.
If they are not ranked against high-volume keywords and the spam score is also high, leave such backlinks. They do more harm than good.
A spam score under 30% is acceptable. Anything between 50 and 60 is considered a decent domain authority.
2.Backlink Relevancy
This is another common practice among search engine specialists today, if they get a guest posting opportunity, they don’t check the relevancy of the website – out of sheer desperation.
Once again, it’s not about the numbers but the credibility and relevance of websites giving you a backlink. If your website is about widgets and computer accessories, a backlink from a food blog would be useless for you.
Google sees it as suspicious because it doesn’t make sense that a food blogger is referring to a website about gadgets. Secondly, the traffic you will get from that blog would be highly irrelevant.
So avoid irrelevant backlinks at any cost!
3.Fresh Content Gets Ranked Faster!
Struggling to get your content ranked? Maybe you need to reconsider the content you are producing. Specificity is the key if the niche is already saturated. To produce fresh content, mention the year to let Google know it’s the most up-to-date piece out there.
Instead of producing a blog post on ‘Best Men’s Watches,’ try ‘Best Men’s Watches – 2022.’ It has been experienced that Google prefers fresh content over a piece that was published back in 2010.
So the next time you sit down to devise content ideas, target the fresh queries. Cater to the latest queries in your content. This way Google will show it on the first page and among the top results.
4.Search Intent
A lot of time we prepare long-form content, but it just never gets any traffic. More often than not, this happens for not considering the intent and trusting your instincts.
Nowadays people hop on Google to ask all sorts of questions, some are informational queries while some are purely commercial.
For example, if someone is searching for “how to play football,” they are looking for rules of the game, equipment used in it, the space required, and everything related to football.
Conversely, if someone searches for “best football shoes,” they are looking for reviews or suggestions. The user is already in buying mode. That’s why it’s important to take the intent into account to get noticed.
Ahref recommends four Cs in this regard:
Content Style: The form of content ranked against a certain keyword: web page or a YouTube video?
Content Type: Are the majority of results blog posts, product, category, or landing pages?
Content Format: Likewise, what’s the dominant content format: How-tos, listicles, tutorials, news articles, or opinion pieces?
Content Angle: Likewise, what’s the content angle? Who are they targeting and what’s the core message conveyed in it?
5.Website Security
Your website’s security is not just important for the safety of your business, but it serves as a ranking factor as well. Even Google has announced that HTTPS is a ranking signal for its algorithm.
In 2017, Google’s Chrome browser flagged sites as “ not secure” that were not using HTTPS. And after a certain time, websites reported a rise in bounce rates of sites that ignored the HTTPS technology.
So if you are still using the HTTP technology, and experiencing a high bounce rate and none of your blog posts are appearing in the top results, move to HTTPS.
Conclusion
If, after months of effort, you are struggling to get any improvement, and your traffic seems to be going down and down, maybe you are ignoring these ranking factors.
And in case you are unable to execute your SEO strategy with perfection, hire an SEO company in Dubai to manage your SEO campaigns while you concentrate on the bottom line!
Ellen Holington