SEO means the continuous process of improving the website content and functions to get a higher rank on the search engines, increase potential customers traffic, and sell more products/ services.
Since all modern industries have gone online, ranking high in the related keywords searches means getting a bigger share of any industry. Also, it will increase your site’s appearance and visibility among users. In addition, if you can provide engaging content, you will get shares via social media and email.
In general, the higher your site’s pages rank in search results, the more likely it will attract potential customers to your business.
Although this process seems easy, it is not at all! SEO is a constant, continuous, and daily work that involves studying your competitors, improving your website appearance, and constantly developing your content.
Although SEO is a big topic, we will summarize its most essential basics on this page.
How Does the SEO Process Work?
All search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing depend on very algorithms, and bots allow them to scan hundreds of thousands of pages of different sites in milliseconds. Then, it collects info about those pages and forms a comprehensive index related to the used keywords. So, for example, if you own a website about food and write an article about English cake, Google will add that page to its huge English cake index. Then, when a user searches for the keyword “English cake”, the sites will appear ranked from best to least quality. Often, 90% of users will choose one of the first three results, and none will turn to the next search page.
Imagine that this index is a vast library, but the librarian is so active as he can recommend you the most suitable book in a split second!
Website pages are analyzed based on multiple factors, some known and some not. For example, long quality content in which the keyword is used wisely is one of the most crucial success factors. In addition, the use of images, site speed optimization, smartphone friendliness, and flexible design are all reasons why your site will rank highly in search engines.
To sum up, it is all about the user experience.
Factors in SEO that Kill Your Site’s Ranking!
Some factors can lower your site’s ranking in search results, such as using plagiarism content. Reposting images of other sites. Using the focus keyword more than once. placing content that does not benefit the reader and does not provide new info.
Regardless of paid search engines’ ads, you cannot get higher rankings with one button click. Thus, content writers, graphic designers, and SEO experts must work as a team to perform daily SEO tasks.
Some believe that the search engines bots’ have fixed standards that do not change. However, this is not true at all! These algorithms are constantly and continuously improved and developed to ensure that users get the best experience. Otherwise, users will shift to another browser. For example, Google is your primary search engine although Yahoo was once much better, but today no one uses it.
Sometimes a site page might rank first for a keyword, but its rank gets lower over time; Either because the competitors have something better or because the site SEO expert isn’t working on it enough.
To make it easier for you, next we have collected the most crucial factors that can kill your site’s rank:
Poor Load Score
The website’s pages should be responsive, fast, and light to keep visitors for a long time and raise engagement. In 2019, Google made a study that concluded that more than 53% of smartphone users are likely to leave a page that renders in more than 3 seconds. Web users don’t have time to wait for clunky pages. Also, even if they stay, they will not expect too much from this poor performance site. The main reason behind the long loading time is adding many images with high quality graphics. Also, the site may have complex animations or even host an autoplay video. Fortunately, there are many tools that you can use to check your site performance on any device. Also, they offer precious advice on how to increase it to provide a better browsing experience.
Slow Navigating
At the current time, mobile devices generate the biggest percentage of web traffic. So, if your site isn’t following the web design rules, you will not get any high rank even if you tick all other boxes. In fact, all search engines pots are brilliant to detect these flaws rapidly! Therefore, the user-friendly mobile site should be light, scale to suit any display size, load rapidly, and have big tabs and menus that you can navigate faster and easily. In addition, the site should consume data as little as possible.
Bad Content Tactics
Search engines can pick up on all the downsides in the texts you publish on your site, even better than your readers! Google, for example, integrates third party content raters. Then, google produce reports for the content quality and send them to the site’s team. The most common weaknesses of the content are:
- Grammatical flaws, especially in English texts, as the bots can’t read other languages as perfect as English content.
- Non-unique content, meaning the texts that have been published many times before on other sites.
- Profanity, obscenity, racist words; Google and other search engines can detect these words in your content and punish your site by decreasing its rank.
- Mysterious language; Extensive use of foreign words may be helpful in scientific studies but is inappropriate for Internet content that should be light and fast.
- Out of date info; As a rule, internet users search for the most recent data about the topic. So, providing outdated info about it won’t help your site to get a high rank. For example, if you write a topic about money-saving techniques, it shouldn’t revolve around the history of fiat money!
- Repeating info; Do not repeat new info in a different form or style; This is not helpful! Instead, try to move from one point to another flexibly to keep your readers interested.
Final Thoughts
in conclusion, there are many standards that SEO experts must consider to improve the site’s rank, engagement, and traffic. The most important element of all is the content – content is the king! Focus keywords should be highlighted naturally and repeatedly, linked to other essential words, and used originally without spamming. Also, the text must be unique, informative, and provides up to date info. You should avoid using too many images, high-quality animation, and auto-play videos. To put all this info in perspective, consider Google a voracious reader and give him something to be curious about!