Have you ever wondered what are the top Google ranking factors that can actually help boost your site and move you up the ranks?

Search engines don’t reveal how they rank exactly but many SEO experts believe that search engines use between 80 – 200 different ranking signals.

We don’t need to worry about all of these rankings, just a couple of these make up the majority of what really produces results.

Where should I focus my effort?

To boost traffic, here are some of the top search engine ranking factors.

Content

To rank high in search engines, you need to have content that ranks and answers the query someone has entered into a search engine. It sounds easy but actually creating the content is often something that it missed. A lot of people try to rank their homepage for every single keyword.

What you want to do, is show search engines that your website is about pages for each service you offer or each product.

Without these other optimised pages, search engines don’t know what you website is going to be about. That’s why having your content optimised is one of the highest google ranking factors.

On-page Optimisation

What you content is ready to fo, you will want to make sure it’s optimised so search engines know what to look for.

The first step is to make sure your keywords sit in your title tag and meta description. A web page’s title tag is the text in the link that shows up on the search engine results page. Another good step is to include your keywords and meta description tags. Writing a description can help convince searchers to click on your link from Search Engine Result Pages.

Look to include your target keywords naturally in the content of the actual web page.

Content Length

The length of your content also affects search engine performance. It’s known that writing content with over 1,600 tends to rang higher than those with shorter content.

Google tends to prefer long-form content that fully addresses the user’s questions. when writing long-form content, you will cover most of the things the user is looking for.

That being said, long content does not always rank better if the searcher’s intent doesn’t match.

Some queries like searches for recipes or quotes might work better with short content as such individuals are likely looking for quick information.

So how long should your content be to optimise search engine traffic?

Well, the content should be long enough so it providers valuable information to the reader.

It’s sometimes of benefit to check out your competition and see how their articles are ranking and you should look to create something which is better than theirs.

Search Intent

Search intent  is another factor to consider. Even if you do everything right to optimise your web page, it still won’t rank if you are targeting the wrong keywords with the wrong content type.

Google tends to rank more articles over product pages generally. If you search right now for “best email marketing software,” you might notice that Google is ranking articles about the best marketing software, as opposed to a product page from one of the top brands.

Google thinks the intent of the search is not to buy software immediately but to figure out which software is best through reviews.

In this case, it would be very difficult to rank your product page for “best marketing software,” and if you wanted to rank for this term, you would want to match the content type that is ranking.

To evaluate search intent, see what types of web pages are currently ranking when you type in a search query.

Keep your content fresh

Content freshness is also a ranking factor. Google provides the freshest / most current content, so keep your up to date.

Inbound Links

Another important ranking factor is links, including links from other websites to your website as well as internal links within your own website.

Links are like votes for your website – If a lot of people are linking to your website, search engines see your website as popular and therefore can rank you higher.

Quantity Of Links

Getting a large number of links to your website is a good thing and can help you rank in the search engines if those links appear to grow at a natural pace. Generating awareness for your brand and publicity will result in other people linking to your site naturally.

You can also get more links to your site by doing email outreach and building relationships with other website owners or even asking for links.

Quality Of Links

Another important factor to consider is the quality of the links you receive. Your website can rank well with just a few high-quality links from high authority sites.

For example, a link from CNN.com would have much more value than a link from your friend’s personal blog. The reason is that CNN already has a ton of inbound links from other sites as is therefore considered an authority site.

Anchor Text

The anchor text  (or link text) can influence your rankings as well. “Anchor Text” is the text that is linked. Anchor text can let search engines know what your webpage is about.

Usability

Another ranking factor that websites should pay attention to is usability and user experience. Websites that are not user-friendly could cause users to get frustrated and even leave, even if the content is good.

Bounce Rate

Have you ever visited a website, realised it’s not what you were looking for and immediately closed the window?

That’s called a “bounce” and in analytics, you can watch your bounce rate to make sure that it’s not too high.

If a visitor comes to your website and immediately returns to the search results page to click on something else, then this behaviour could tell the search engines that your web page is not a result that people want to see.

Page Speed

With today’s fast internet speeds, users are impatient!

If your website loads too slowly, visitors will leave before your site even has a chance to load – which is why having a fast website is increasingly important.

Search engines also like websites that load quickly, so be sure to optimise your website for speed. Slow loading pages frustrate users and cause them to leave.

Mobile-Friendly Design

Mobile search traffic (people searching on their phones) is now outpacing the number of people who search from their desktops. Making sure your website looks good on mobile is very important.

Be sure to test your website to make sure it’s compatible with various devices and web browsers.

Security & HTTPs

SSL are important for websites and help you rank by up to 2-3% better than if you didn’t have one. Secure browsing is particularly important for e-commerce sites that are collecting sensitive data like credit card details.

Conclusion

By focusing on these top Google ranking factors, you can start ranking and getting traffic from Google and other search engines.

Focus on creating great content, getting links, and providing a great user experience and search engines will reward you with the traffic you deserve.

Keep it original and keep it to the point.

www.byter.com

Increasing brand awareness, perception, web traffic and sales. Pretty essential stuff. But which digital marketing route will you be taking to make it happen: organic or paid? Well, before we come to any decisions, let’s take a closer look at what our two options even mean.

Organic Advertising

Essentially, anything that isn’t paid for can be considered organic. If you have a strong grasp of the needs and concerns of your buyer personas, it’s time to get creative and utilise social media to raise your brand awareness amongst your likely target audience.

All clicks generated from the likes of Google without paying for them can be considered organic search traffic. Likely? Well, making sure your site works well on all devices, has all the relevant content and lots of quality inbound links from other trusted websites will go a very long way to ensuring this is the case.

Paid Advertising

As the name suggests, this is when your content appears as a result of paying a publisher such as Facebook, Google etc. Having specified your desired associated search terms and pay-per-click amount, your posts are ready to go, soon to be sitting alongside and looking deliberately like organic results.

Certain ads appear on your social media channels due to the advertiser considering you their target audience, whether that be due to your age, occupation etc.

Organic Pros and Cons

Let’s now take a closer look at our two available routes, by weighing up the pros and cons of each in order to help us make a decision.

Sometimes being as simple as setting up and using a Twitter account, organic marketing is available to all companies no matter their size. However, though you’d think most of the world’s marketing budgets could afford this, what is far more costly is the time required to make it worthwhile. Time on social media, writing blogs, SEO and email marketing unfortunately do all add up. And that’s not even taking into account time spent analysing data from Google analytics, Google search console, your social media scheduling tool, email marketing platform… do we need to go on?

Paid Pros and Cons

With paid advertising comes great control. Whether it be the actual message published, the people who see it, or the time at which they do, paid advertising is far more targeted than its seemingly inferior alternative. Another tick in the pro box for paid advertising concerns its instant results. Once the payment has gone through, paid results sit at the top of users’ search feed.

As you have no doubt guessed though, this doesn’t come cheap and marketing budgets of smaller businesses of course create natural barriers. Perhaps even worse are those companies with the necessary marketing financial stretch, but without the required knowledge of the likes of Google Adwords or Facebook Ads to utilise them properly.

So, if you’ve got a bit of cash to spare, how about a combination of the two? Start organic and then start running the two side-by-side?

Let’s now take a look at when might be considered a good time to use each.

When is Good Organic Timing?

It’s never a bad time to go organic! Of course, for businesses in the real starter stages, waiting up to a year for real leads to open up from social media or organic rankings is pretty unappealing to say the least. However, enough time and persistency can certainly help to snowball things down the line.

When is a Good Time to Pay?

If you have products you want to get rid of quickly, such as during sales periods, then the likes of Google Ads could be a great option. Similarly, new product and brand launches can benefit hugely through paid advertising. Social media ads bring with them brand exposure, which can run concurrently with the Google ads homing in on the people searching the problems you can solve.

Just one thing first though. Although it sounds almost too obvious to say, do make sure your website is live and functioning as it should. You may be surprised at how many companies dip into their marketing budget to sit proudly atop Google’s search lists, with users just a click away from a website that doesn’t convert. As such, test first. And then test again!

Decision Time

Well, when it comes down to it, neither is essentially better or worse than the other. In fact, an effective marketing strategy is created when the two work in tandem. Dipping into the marketing budget can certainly boost your traffic and brand awareness in quick-fire time, but there’s no reason why you can’t then run a more cost-effective organic search marketing campaign in the background.

Ultimately, it’s your business and it’s up to you to weigh up what suits your specific situation best, so as always from the Byter Team, good luck!

www.byter.com

Whether you opt for bubble graphs, bar charts, heat maps or treemaps, you can rest assured in the knowledge that scientific research is on your side. Of course, the text has its inescapable time and place, but when we consider that as much as 90% of information transferred to the human brain is visual, with images being processed 60,000 times faster than text, good data visualisation is a must for businesses wanting to deliver an easily digestible story to their audience.

A content strategist’s hunt for new and innovative ways to present data in visually appealing ways is never-ending. With that being said, let’s take a look at some effective data visualisation techniques that are worth bearing in mind during your next big campaign.

1. Inspiration: You Are Not Alone

So, some good news… sourcing data and creating an effective piece of data visualisation (data vis) to go with it doesn’t necessarily require suffering in silence. The website informationisbeautiful.net is one fantastic Pinterest-esque tool at your fingertips, filled with creative data vis inspiration and guidance.

2. Data Visualisation Tools

In a similar vein, be sure to explore the available online tools which are there to help you visualise your data in minutes. Such examples include:

DataWrapper

· Allows you to copy and paste from Google Sheets, Excel, CSV files.

· Allows you to link to URLs to create customisable charts.

· Allows you to preview the chart before you go ahead and publish it.

RawGraphs

· Allows you to copy and paste the relevant data directly from your spreadsheet.

· Allows you to choose a data vis type, with adjustable metrics.

Tableau

· Includes a blog full of useful tips well worth checking out.

3. Don’t Overcomplicate Things

Good data vis should simplify a message, making things easier to understand. Despite this, it’s incredibly common for people to associate increasingly complex graphs with higher quality. After wading through numerous eyesores on the ‘ugly charts’ section of the highly recommended website flowingdata.com I stumbled across this example highlighting why, in fact, the reality is often the exact opposite.

1. Mobile Friendly

Designing for mobile phones is a great opportunity to present data in new interesting ways.

You could:

· Stack your data vertically rather than horizontally and introduce a zoomable visual.

· Scale down the graphic.

· Create an entirely new graphic, focusing only on the critical insights (with the desktop version providing more context).

2. Choose Wisely

The type of data vis you choose is certainly no stab in the dark. Of course, a specific data vis will suit certain data, but when it comes to a (not-quite) one-size-fits-all choice, you can often not go too far wrong using maps, not least due to their ability to open up outreach targets. Furthermore, including an index may well be of use when dealing with lots of different metrics in your data, as is the case for interactivity, but remember to keep in mind the old adage of ‘less is more.’

By carefully taking this all into account, that next big campaign should be rooted in success.

As always from the team at Byter, good luck!

www.byter.com

When we think of the main digital marketing channels available to us, it’s PPC and SEO that crop up most often. Though their features, targets and methods differ, the goal always remains the same: making sure your online presence is as strong and visible as possible.

This begs the obvious question: which is better?

PPC

Let’s first look more closely at PPC (pay-per-click).

PPC is jam-packed with clever technology but, despite this, still remains renowned for its speed. Of course, such technology does come at a price, but if set up correctly, it more than allows you to reap the rewards.

Google Ads

Being loaded with technology and algorithms, Google Ads allow you to home in on your targets, through tactics such as remarketing. The algorithms feed on your account’s data, providing the biggest bang for your buck.

This increasingly automated platform uses a huge bank of algorithmic data in targeting the precise time and searches that it knows will convert – all backed by an experienced paid media specialist, enabling your business to instantly reach the summit of the Google SERP.

This visibility is great for:

Promoting new websites.

Advertising new ecommerce product lines.

Keeping on the front foot against your competitors.

Reporting on every single piece of data, thus increasing the effectiveness of your campaigns.

SEO

Let’s now take a closer looks SEO (search engine optimization).

Likened to that silent hard worker in the shadows, SEO is technical, complex and analytical. With Google not revealing all the elements that make up their search algorithms, hours can go by researching, experimenting and implementing changes across a wide range of on-page tactics and off the site link. As a result, SEOs much research, plan and execute to ensure you get as high up the rankings as possible, although without the aforesaid speed advantages of PPC.

Nevertheless, if a strong strategy is applied, the potential long-term rewards are huge. Such a strategy involves optimising your content for targeted, valuable keywords, enabling search engines to crawl and index your site more easily. This leads to organic search results, hopefully near the top of page one, with your SERP snippet being engaging enough to entice users into clicking onto your website.

With the buyer’s journey acting as a guide, your site’s content can be crafted in a way that effectively answers your potential customers’ queries which, when coupled with a fantastic user experience, builds trust and ultimately action in the form of sales.

SEO and PPC: Head-to-Head

Put simply, when deciding on which route you want to take, think in terms of goals and objectives. Let’s see what a new business’ digital marketing journey might look like, building from the ground up.

4. Business building an audience at the top of the marketing funnel.

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3. Message of brand now being spread by returning customers

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2. SEO elements now used to capitalise on new traffic

Converting traffic into returning customers

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1. PPC tactics to ensure online visibility

E.g. wide-reaching campaign with broad targeting.

Remember, it’s choosing how and when you use each channel that matters. Although PPC might be faster and more measurable in terms of garnering traffic, once the money is no longer put into PPC, the ads stop and the traffic heads out the door along with them.

Alternatively, SEO can offer greater levels of (albeit longer-term) consistency for a less direct cost. Keep in mind SEO can effectively be done manually, through the likes of amending product descriptions on your site. Although the site will still earn traffic without this, it certainly doesn’t hurt to keep the momentum going.

Better Together?

With Google suggesting online consumer intent dependent touchpoints range from anywhere between 20-500, it seems unwise for a business to rely on one single channel for acquiring traffic. As expressed in the above diagram, the multi-channel approach helps to ensure that you don’t miss out on visibility across the entire buyer’s journey.

In summary, there’s no hard-and-fast rule about which one of PPC and SEO is better. Each has its own advantages at particular times, with different businesses being able to reap the rewards of each in different ways. More often than not though, a carefully applied strategy will contain a mixture of the two.

As always, good luck.

Byter Team.

Info@byter.com

0203 978 8820

www.byter.com