CONFUSED? Read Before engaging an agency for SEO.
DO YOU GET MUCH CONFLICTING INFORMATION ON SEO FROM THE MARKET?
Then go ahead and continue reading part 2 below. (for part1 click here)
There is no shortcut to high rankings.
Another favourite claim we make regarding SEO
You cannot deliver a baby in 6 months with two women (no matter how hard you try).
There are so many elements related to SEO that there is a periodic table to understand all of the ingredients. (Created and published by SearchEngineLand https://searchengineland.com/seotable. Since it first debuted in 2011, Search Engine Land’s Periodic Table of SEO has become a globally recognized tool that search professionals have relied on to help them understand the elements essential to a winning SEO strategy)
The elements impacting SEO are as below:
The above elements impact SEO positively. There are a few elements that are impacting negatively.
REPUTATION ELEMENTS
EAT — Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness — as a method that Google uses to gauge the value and relevance of sites. But Google has never explicitly said EAT is a ranking factor, but it hasn’t been silent on what it considers good content either.
Expertise (Ex) and Trust (Tr)
Expertise (Ex) and Trust (Tr) speak directly to these signals, encompassing how your site fits into its niche – is it the most authoritative in its field and has it established that reputation by being around for many years? That’s the ideal when it comes to these
elements.
Authority (Au)
Authority (Au) is all about being the go-to person or site for a topic. Authority garners your site links, mentions, shares, and more for your knowledge on a topic.
LINK ELEMENTS
Links are one of the oldest elements in SEO. When Google introduced PageRank algorithm in 1998, they made it clear that links were
a factor in how well a website would perform in search.
Link Quality (Lq)
The higher Link Quality (Lq) and more relevant the sites that link to your own are, the better it is for your SEO.
Anchors (An)
Anchors (An) – the text that other sites use when linking to yours.
Quantity (Qt)
Quantity (Qt) of good links to your sites, the better it will be for your SEO. Link building businesses, after all, were born on this principle.
USER ELEMENTS
User-specific factors will also affect how you rank in a particular Country (Cy) or Locality (Ly), and, while this is important, there’s not much you can do about it other than to make sure your site speaks to users in the area where your audience resides.
User Experience (Ux), is also essential. Intent (It) is important here, too, as the extent to which your page meets the searcher’s intent will play a role in how your site is ranked for similar searches.
Engagement (Eg) is all about making sure that you meet that user intent and not requiring searchers to go back to SERPs
to find what they were actually looking for.
NICHes
The new addition to the SEO Periodic Table is the Niches section. We know that some SEO factors are different or completely separate based on the niche they serve.
Search engines have different signals for these niches that are important to the overall practice of SEO. These niches include local SEO, publishing, and eCommerce.
LOCAL ELEMENTS
With local SEO key to showing in the local maps Locations (Lc) and ensure your Citations (Ci) are set up and accurate. This includes NAP (NAP) consistency across platforms and citation sites
and a complete GMB (GMB) profile — including choosing the right categories, keeping your listing updated, and engaging with your listing regularly.
A key element of GMB listings is, of course, Reviews (REV). It is also critical to respond to those reviews — whether they’re good or bad.
PUBLISHING ELEMENTS
News and publishing present a unique opportunity and challenge when it comes to SEO. A publishing site often produces large quantities of content every day so it’s critical that Archives (Av) are in order.
A strong, well-optimized Archive acts as a content pillar in your industry or coverage area. News also benefits from investments in Top Stories (Ts) and Discover (Dc).
Another element key to showing up in these features is Image Required (Ir). Every news page is required to include at least one image to show in the above-mentioned news search results.
Finally, with publishing and subscriptions, search engines recommend having a set Flexible Sampling (Fs) lead-in.
E-COMMERCE ELEMENTS
Ranking in retail can be much different from ranking a “regular” page in search results. Your Product Descriptions (Pd) should be detailed and thorough, but easy to understand. Most importantly, though, they should be unique.
Your Product Architecture (At) needs to be intuitive and give buyers easy access to what they need. This includes making sure category pages are optimized and there is a comprehensive strategy to cover product, mfg., category, and larger
informational keywords, too.
In a similar vein, Pagination (Pg) should be considered in eCommerce SEO. Ensure that important product pages are not being orphaned and prevent unnecessarily deep site structures while providing positive UX.
A good eCommerce SEO strategy will include being a part of Google’s Merchant Center (Mc) to manage how your inventory displays in Google product search.
It’s also important that SEOs ensure the URL structure (URL) is easy to read and tells buyers where they came from on the site i.e make your URL structure user friendly. Lastly, it’s critical to keep your Structured Data (Sd) up to date for products, offers and reviews
TOXIc ELEMENTS
Anyone entering the realm of search engine optimization is likely to encounter some questionable or downright detrimental tactics, or Toxins, as we call them here.
These are shortcuts or tricks that may have been sufficient to guarantee a high ranking back in the day when the engines’ methods were much less sophisticated. And, they might even work for a short time now — at least until you’re caught.
However, we recommend staying far away from these tactics because employing them could result in a penalty or ban, which will achieve the exact opposite of what you intended.
Cloaking (Cl) involves setting up your site in such a way that the search engines’ crawlers see something different than the actual humans visiting.
Three of these
Toxins – link Schemes (Sc), keyword Stuffing (Sf) and Hiding (Hi) – represent ways to turn the search engines’ signals against them.
Seeking links and incorporating keywords are perfectly legitimate practices, but paying for links and going overboard with keywords can get you in trouble.
The Piracy (Ar) Toxin involves hosting stolen content – either item scraped from other sites or copyright-violating downloads of music or videos – which is flat-out illegal as well as bad for SEO.
And being Intrusive (Iv) by delivering popups or invasive ads of any format damages your user experience.
Bad Content (Bc) and Malicious Behavior (Mb): Search engines punish automated/ generated content scraped content, and doorway pages.
Malicious Behavior like phishing, trojans, malware and hacking will get websites banned or not indexed.
Following best practices and potential pitfalls can build the framework for your SEO strategy. Use this image to understand the periodic table.
We will talk about the remaining elements in the next post. Keep watching.
