Building a Website with the Proper Characteristics of SEO
Last week you learned what SEO means, as a part of the in Digital Marketing 101 series. This week you will have an opportunity to learn about the different characteristics of SEO. We will be exploring the aspects that interact to make SEO work.
In order to help you grasp the basics of the science behind SEO, we will be looking at a table from Search Engine Land.
The Periodic Table of SEO Success Factors
How to read the Table
The Table is comprised of two sides, On the Page and Off the Page factors. The blue boxes indicate factors that work in your favor, and the red boxes indicate factors that count against you. The darker the box, the more important the factor is.
On The Page SEO
You can physically see these visual characteristics of SEO on your website. The content portion of your website includes the quality, research, words, engagement, freshness, thinness and ad heaviness. The HTML includes titles, descriptions, headers, structure, stuffing and hidden code. Finally, the architecture includes the physical qualities of the website, such as crawlability, duplicated pages, Speed, URL’s, mobility, and cloaking.
Content
The content of each of your webpages is vital in boosting your SEO score. It begins with researching the keywords that are most important to searchers. These “buzz words” are what direct your page to appear in searches. Search engines have the ability to read your content for readability and keyword quality. This makes the writing of every page extremely important for a good score.
The next factor to think about is the engagement readers are having on your pages. Search Engines will track the amount of time a reader will spend on your page. If your content keeps them there, you will get a better score.
Having fresh content maintains the health of a website. It is almost like a website daily vitamin. Fresh content shows search engines that you care about the content you are providing your visitors. They know that you are making updates to your site and will reward you for keeping things fresh and healthy.
Now we get into the negatives. The thinness of your content, such as lack of words, makes search engines think you are skimping out on your visitors. They will deduct from your overall score harshly for failing to provide an appropriate amount of content. Secondly, you want to be very careful about your use of ads. There is a design term called “fold.” This refers to the top level of the page that readers are most likely to only view. You must be very careful about wasting space in this area with ads. Search engines look down on web designers who put ads in the best position. This will hurt your SEO score, as well as tick off your visitors.
HTML
This refers to the actual code built into a website. If you are using content creation software, be sure to double check the coding meets search engine’s standards. Be sure to make the title, meta description and headers involve your main keyword phrase. With the introduction of Google’s Hummingbird, keyword stuffing is now viewed as a big negative. If your website still uses this technique, FIX IT NOW.
Architecture
The characteristic of SEO known as architecture refers to the physical traits of the page. Dealing with issues like crawability, loading speed, and mobility will improve search engines view of your webpage. In addition to these factors you need to address the issue of cloaking your website. Some web designers will purposefully make pages look different to search bots and humans. This is a major DO NOT DO. With the release of hummingbird, Google will know when you attempt to trick them. Let’s just say that Google is the god of the internet and knows all. You can see that the block is dark red, because search engine will kill your page for this. Never attempt to outsmart god.
OFF the Page SEO
These are all of the intangible characteristics of SEO, which come from other sites that affect your SEO score. Other websites, linking to your website, play a huge factor in how you’re scored. Not only do you need to worry about the number of links, but also the quality. Social media also plays a role, as well as the characteristics of the searcher.
Links
Inbound links play a major role in your website score. As a SEO marketer, we evaluate each link that directs people to your website. The number of links is no longer as important as the quality of the link. You would rather have Time Magazine link to you, than 1,000 mom and pop blogs. One of the most important factors to avoid is paying for links. Again, Google is god. Do not screw with God. Avoid this terrible life choice and earn your links rather than paying for them. You will only have to pay twice, once with money, then the second time with SEO reputation.
Trust
What is the level of honesty your sight portrays? Just like with people, websites build trust overtime with search engines. This can be built from links to your site that portrays your websites authority. Similar to the above, but this time search engines are purely looking for how much of an authority your site is, based off Links. Next, your history with the web matters. Just like how we care about how long a company has been in business, search engines care about how long a website has been operating. The search engines also care about the identity of those in charge. Finally, you need to be very careful to stay away from piracy. Never host anything that is pirated content. While this does not destroy the score of your website, it will negatively influence your score.
Social
As the popularity of social media has grown, so has its importance in SEO. The first and more important characteristic of SEO is the reputation of those sharing your content. Are the social influencers pushing out your content? This is a very important trait of SEO, which many people do not think about how it influences their score. The second trait is how often your content is shared. When you are becoming popular through the web, Search engines take notice and help people find you. This makes finding the hot topic news on the web easy to do.
Personal
The final characteristic of SEO deals with the personal traits of the individual user. This category makes sure that people visiting your site are of a relative geographical location, based on both country and the city of the searcher. This metric also measures the user’s history on the internet and their social activity. If the user has visited your site before, they are more likely to find it in searches. The same is true for their social activity.
Key Takeaway
Remember the internet god Google knows all. Do not try to screw with Google.
