One of the fundamental principles of running a successful business is to maintain customer satisfaction. Once you achieve that, it becomes easier to increase your profit streams as they find it easier to purchase from you. Customer satisfaction comes in many forms. Ideally, maintaining a high quality of product and [...]
Does Website Traffic and Bounce Rate Affect Google Rankings?
Different search engines embrace different ranking criteria.
Their algorithms are constantly changing and becoming more and more complex.
In this context, you should probably ask yourself the following question: is your current SEO strategy a friend or a foe?
Here are 5 little-known SEO factors that affect your Google ranking.
1) Site Engagement
Search engines will always strive to reward sites that ensure an ideal user experience and penalize those that go in the opposite direction.
It’s as simple as that.
Google designed and implemented Google Analytics to help webmasters, but this tool also lets Google know how your website is actually performing.
Therefore, an elevated bounce rate will show Google that you are not on the same page with your targeted audience.
Here are only a few factors that may have gotten you in this situation in the first place:
Low-quality, irrelevant, dull content
Improper segmentation
Low-quality, unremarkable website design
Unsuitable content distribution strategies
By improving your current website design, its content and functionality and the overall navigation experience you will manage to overcome this obstacle and rank higher in search engine results.
2) Site Speed
Just think about it: would you really be willing to land over and over again on a website that takes ages to load?
Of course not!
Time is always of the essence, so you should probably start exploring your other options.
A fantastic user experience is linked to a fast loading time.
Clean code and tools like Schema.org will enable you to improve your communication with search engines.
Moreover, optimized on-site content and responsive design will help you address potential website speed-related issues and improve your rankings.
3) Stale Content
Do you consider your website a moneymaking machine or a bridge between your brand and your potential clients?
If you create content for the sake of doing it, your efforts will be in vain.
On the other hand, inspiring, user-oriented, problem-solving, original content will always attract new visitors and help you increase brand awareness.
Furthermore, Google tends to favor websites promoting fresh content, by offering them a privileged position in search results.
Content diversity is another aspect that you should focus on.
Search for a very specific topic like “how to braid your hair” for example.
Instead of finding a mere list of links, you will actually stumble across images and videos created and posted to attract more users.
As long as visitors like premium, diversified multimedia content, Google will also like it.
4) Shady Link Building Strategies
Link building strategies can often bring you into the gray area of SEO.
Shady black-hat practices can terminate your friendship with Google, affect your rankings and expose you to considerable penalties.
Links are only useful for readers if they guide them towards stellar, relevant content created by trustworthy, popular sources.
Otherwise, links just represent the key element of a manipulative tactic implemented to deceive search engines.
All engines want you to actually focus on what the end user would need and want to see on your website, so you could improve your online reputation and visibility level by upgrading your content strategy, rather than relying on spammy practices that won’t do you any favors in the long run.
5) Social Signals
Are you one of those people who think that a bad or average social media presence is actually better than no presence at all?
As tempting as it may seem to go for the lesser of two evils, don’t do it.
Keep in mind that even if most social media strategies don’t take a dime out of your own pockets, they are pretty labor-intensive.
Instead of tackling a plentitude of channels and being forced to deal with huge gaps of months or weeks between postings, you may want to find out which social networking websites are actually relevant to your segment of public and stick to those.
Create an account, use a great variety of tools (Google Trends, Buzzfeed, Zite, Twitter and Swayy) to determine what kind of topics make your audience tick, create and distribute engaging content, cultivate the feedback of your fans and followers and stay active on major platforms where your readers/prospects like to hang out.
Strong social signals tell search engines that you are a powerful, popular player in your niche and convince them that you’ve earned your spot on the first page search results.
If you’re still far from SEO success and are having a hard time trying to figure out what’s holding you back, just contact us.
We have the shortest, simplest, most accurate answer to any kind of SEO challenge that you may be experiencing.
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One of the fundamental principles of running a successful business is to maintain customer satisfaction. Once you achieve that, it becomes easier to increase your profit streams as they find it easier to purchase from you. Customer satisfaction comes in many forms. Ideally, maintaining a high quality of product and service delivery is instrumental. Additionally, [...]
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