Business Growth Marketing Tips for 2023

1, Oct 2022 | Digital Marketing, General

There are lots of things that you can do on the marketing front to tackle the last few months of 2022 and the new year ahead with the best possible chances of optimising business growth.

The team at Woya suggest you follow these top business growth marketing tips and grab the opportunities that 2023 has to offer.

Business Growth Marketing Tip #1 – Have a Mobile Responsive Web Presence

Over 60% of all web traffic is now made through a mobile device and so if a business’ website isn’t formatted to respond to the device on which its being displayed appropriately, those visiting will be forced to go elsewhere – and elsewhere may just be the website of your competitor.

Mobile responsiveness is now part of the standard offering of just about every web development business and if your business’ website isn’t set up for it, get to refreshing the whole thing to fit it.

Mobile responsiveness is often just considered to be images formatting down in a line for smaller screens but in reality, there’s a lot more to it. You may need to edit your website’s structure for mobile devices in order to more easily display and show calls to action and conversion opportunities, and it might be that an online purchase process can be streamlined to suit.

Security certification ‘behind the scenes’ on websites also needs to vary for mobile devices, so it’s definitely worth investing in a web designer who’s able to best advise and guide you through the options.

Business Growth Marketing Tip #2 – Visually Optimise Your Website

A website that offers a good user experience (UX) is not only more likely to drive conversions and positive action from those who visit it, it’s also more likely to be ranked higher on search engine results.

The usability and security of websites is now just as important for SEO as the usage of keywords and so is not to be underestimated in its power.

It is estimated that Google makes at least two changes a week to its algorithm in order to better present search results to users, and all of the recent updates have included a focus on UX over just language usage. This means that the SEO tactics of days gone by are fast becoming irrelevant, and in some cases could even harm your website’s performance.

It’s imperative that you focus on the up-to-date and ever changing methods of SEO practice and that your site is audited to highlight areas of opportunity.

Business Growth Marketing Tip #3 – Invest In SEO

Organic search is often thought of as ‘free’ in comparison to paid-for advertising, but it does require the investment of time and resource in order to manage it properly and make it happen. Now is the time to make a move, up your game and get ahead of the competition.

Work on SEO should be a continual process and so there’s no one project that you can complete and see the job done. Instead, businesses should invest time in the creation of appropriate, helpful and shareable content, ensuring the usability of their site is top notch and that they build up backlinks from high-authority sources.

We don’t recommend hiring an internal SEO consultant to work directly for your business. It is definitely more cost effective with the services of a specialist SEO consultant or SEO agency to drive results. With Woya SEO packages starting at £750 per month, this will certainly deliver more bang for your buck than managing an internal team.

Business Growth Marketing Tip #4 – Optimise for Local Search

Businesses that operate in or serve a particular geographical area can find vast benefit in the use of Google local SEO services. Taking the time to claim and optimise your Google Business Profile will elevate your organic exposure on search engines, with specific targeting toward your demographic audience.

Local search results really stand out from others on Google Maps, SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) with photos, contact information and highlights. It may seem counterintuitive to ‘think local’ on a search engine so global, but Google has invested heavily in its local SEO and reports that users find it extremely helpful.

Woya’s Local SEO packages include both on- and off-site optimisation as well as full management of a Google Business Profile account.

Business Growth Marketing Tip #5 – Take A Smart Approach to Social Media

A common pitfall is that businesses put time and effort into social media marketing, just because they feel they should, so it takes up time and resource without any real ROI.

You don’t need to be on every social media channel, but you should be present on whichever channels your target demographic are. The creation of content for social media that is engaging and invites interaction can help build a strategic relationship with your customer base rather than just a transactional one, and will allow for a more positive personal connection to be made.

Social media trends move fast, and something can blow up in minutes. It’s important for businesses not just to focus on ‘going viral’ but instead to understand what they want to achieve from their social media presence. Keep it relevant and appropriate for your audience and don’t diversify further than you need to.

Broadening your niche will only result in an audience who won’t engage and/or convert, and that’s not a good use of internal resources.

Business Growth Marketing Tip #6 – Up Your Content Marketing Game

Marketplaces are more crowded than ever and competition is fierce. The creation of unique, helpful and relevant content for customers is no longer a ‘nice-to-have’ marketing tool, but an essential one.

Content is often thought of as just blogging, but can be just about anything to position you as a thought-leading expert in your industry. Think videos, podcasts, e-books, printables, and instruction guides, just as a start.

All too often businesses get hung up on producing thousands of pieces of content just for the sake of having them. Instead, repurpose a single piece of content into other forms, use a freebie as a ‘lipstick offer’ to draw in an audience and try to balance out your content portfolio between current and evergreen in order for it to sustain itself long-term.

Business Growth Marketing Tip #7 – Add Digital PR to Your Marketing Strategy Mix

PR has traditionally entailed maintaining a decent relationship with your local newspaper, but in the age of the internet, the whole concept of PR has been transformed.

Digital PR involves the use of online systems to send business press releases to a myriad of relevant media worldwide. This increases your business’ brand exposure further than just local titles and helps increase coverage levels. In turn, this enhanced coverage can have a further positive impact on your SEO – as band mentions and links back to your website from high authority sites will boost your SEO ranking.

Positioning your brand as an expert in its field has a myriad of long-term benefits and will lead to further growth opportunities in the future. Be bold, be brave, and get out there – nail your colours to the mast and put your name to your brand values.

Business Growth Tip #8 – Strategise!

Most businesses now understand that a digital presence is critical to marketing, but without steering your efforts in the right direction, the optimisation and success will be limited.

It’s important that a thorough digital marketing strategy is created and managed in order to ensure that all work has an impact and is converting as expected. Without a proper plan, all too often digital marketing efforts become ad hoc and lack the clarity of direction required for real success.

A comprehensive digital marketing strategy will steer online activity across a variety of appropriate channels and keep messaging consistent throughout; so no matter how or where consumers come across your brand, they’re able to identify it. It will also speak to two audiences: existing customers, and potential customers, and maximise the opportunities to interact with both.

Business Growth Marketing Tip #9 – Work With Experts

Woya Digital are SEO experts and specialise in increasing the visibility and customer base of organisations online.

No matter how niche or specialised your organisation, we can help boost your exposure and increase your bottom line. Our team of experts work on a basis of continuous learning and improvement to ensure that we’re always at the forefront of SEO and digital marketing developments – so you can be, too.

All of our packages are constructed for stretched budgets, and everything is paid monthly with no upfront investment. Why hire your own marketing resource when you can use ours? Get in touch to discuss your organisation’s 2023 goals, and let’s chat about how we can help you in achieving them.

The Benefits of Website Hosting on a Dedicated Server

22, Sep 2022 | Digital Marketing, General, Webdesign

A website needs somewhere to live on the internet, and unless a business has its own dedicated server for website hosting, it will need to decide exactly where it will lie.

Indeed there’s no shortage of options available, with a deluge of website hosting companies advertising to companies with varying packages of server support. At Woya, we host all of our clients’ websites on a dedicated server – but this is just one choice available to those looking to secure their digital presence.

Find out more about the ins and outs of business website hosting and to help make an educated decision on what may be the right decision for your organisation.

What is Website Hosting?

Hosting is a space to house a website being rented or bought online.

All of the content that makes up a website – the HTML and CSS coding, images, videos, downloadables and all other components – must be housed on a server in order to be viewable online. When a user visits this content, it is downloaded from this server to be displayed.

What is a Server?

A server is a computer that acts as the connection between a website and those who use it, presenting the data to them.

It is a high-powered piece of machinery specifically built to store, process and manage network data, devices and systems, so it holds a lot of information and processes lots of pieces of data simultaneously. A server holds the website and its content and when accessed, displays it for the web user.

What is a Website Hosting Service Provider?

Website hosting service providers are companies who own servers, connectivity services and other associated services to host websites for other organisations.

Through the offering of a variety of hosting plans, they are able to sell and/or rent space on their servers to cover a spectrum of hosting needs that businesses may require; from small one-person blogs to large corporation’s websites. Website hosting service providers usually differentiate their services from one another on the pricing of packages and the reliability of their service.

The latter should be considered priority as if the servers of a website hosting service providers fail or malfunction, the website of the organisations hosted on it will be unavailable for visitors.

What Do Website Hosting Companies Offer?

Of course, every website hosting company is different and all will have varying service packages. However, generally speaking, most offer a space on their shared server for a website to be hosted, usually amongst hundreds if not thousands, of other sites.

Many also offer some degree of tech support, a choice of URLs and sometimes personalised email addresses.

Website Hosting on a Shared Server Differ vs a Dedicated Server

Not all website hosting companies operate by hosting more than one website on their servers – some dedicate specific servers to one website or organisation at a time.

The operation of shared servers presents different service levels to those of dedicated servers, and it’s important that businesses understand what is available to them in order to make an informed decision before they purchase a website hosting service.

Website hosting on a shared server is usually cheaper, but this cost factor often presents a compromise with site speed. As the nature of shared servers mean that more traffic passes through them (as more than one website will be accessed through it), site speed can be impacted. This is particularly a risk if one website on the server is spammed or subject to malicious traffic, as it can take a while for the website hosting company to identify where the issue is occurring and correct it. On a dedicated server, site speed will not be impacted by others’ traffic and service will be faster as a result.

Businesses looking to build up their SEO rankings need to consider that the risk of shared server unreliability needs to be weighed up with their SEO presence, as websites that are often down or slow may be ranked down in the Google algorithm as they are considered to not deliver a great user experience (UX) considering Google Core Vitals.

Shared servers don’t require the website owner to have any degree of technical skill, as no knowledge of servers, security or other hosting services is needed – everything is managed by the website hosting service provider with no individual intervention required, so you can self manage via their portal.

A business managing their website hosting through a dedicated server may need to understand a little more technically and often use companies offering dedicated hosting that can still manage the technical aspects. Then the organisation doesn’t necessarily need a tech or web expert in-house.

Dedicated servers do give a higher degree of control for those using them as opposed to shared servers as they are not limited by the customisation options offered by set packages. This allows for bespoke configuration setup in order to best tailor the website hosting to business requirements.

All considered, this makes shared servers a cost-effective option for personal websites but often not the preference for professional companies and businesses. Particularly large businesses with lots of content on their websites should consider hosting on a dedicated server as they will want to control the traffic levels and not be at risk from other shared hosting websites, in fact they should even consider mirrored servers to secure their online presence.

Woya Digital Dedicated Server Website Hosting

We host all of our customer websites on dedicated servers. These are premium quality servers which our team hold complete control over; offering the best in security, site speed and service – without our customers having to know the ins and outs of server technology.

Get in touch with our team to find out more about what we have to offer your business!

Why Your Website Load Speed is Important

10, Aug 2022 | Digital Marketing

SEO is a varied field, with it sometimes seeming like there’s hundreds of things for webmasters to consider and take care of when it comes to making sure their website ranks well in search engine results pages (SERPs). Yet one of Google’s most recent updates has sought to prioritise user experience (UX) over just a pure content focus, shifting attention from what it is people publish online to how they publish it.

Website load speed is just one of the on-page factors that those managing a domain need to consider; and it is important. If you haven’t yet invested time and effort into monitoring and improving load speed on your business’ website, now is the time.

What is Website Load Speed?

Website load speed is the speed at which a web page’s content takes to load wholly on a user’s device. In technical terms, it refers to the time in which each page’s content is downloaded from its hosting server and displayed in a user’s web browser.

Generally speaking, ‘heavier’ content such as high-definition photos and videos take longer to download and so add to this time, lessening the site load speed. However, there are also other factors at play and the coding behind a site’s aesthetics can also impact heavily on this efficiency.

Why is Website Load Speed Important?

Just as offline, users prefer a fast online experience to a lagging one. Websites that take a long time to load are likely to be abandoned by the user and its conversion rate to be lower, as they instead look to find content elsewhere online that’s more efficient for them to use.

There’s lots of good examples of load speed impacting on business success. Salesforce company Mobify found that decreasing their homepage’s load time by just 100 milliseconds resulted in a 1.11% improvement in session-based conversion. Supermarket giant Walmart improved their page load time by one second and experienced a 2% increase in conversions, and retailer AutoAnything found a 13% sales increase by cutting their page load time in half.

A poor website load speed can therefore impact heavily on a business’ competitive advantage, and bottom line performance.

How Does Website Load Speed Affect SEO?

Since 2018, Google has prioritised site load speed as a factor that contributes to SEO performance. Through an update that introduced on-page components known as Core Web Vitals, it has become a critical component of SEO effort.

There are three Core Web Vitals that Google sets standards for to rank well on SERPs. These are:

LCP (Largest Contentful Paint); the loading performance of the page’s main or ‘heaviest’ content. This should be less than 2.5 seconds
FID (First Input Delay); a measure of interactivity. This is the time that it takes before a user can provide input to the site and should be less than 100 milliseconds
CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift); visual stability. This indicates that the layout should be visually stable and should rank at less than 0.1 shift.

All of these elements impact site load speed – and the longer the time it takes to load, the poorer the Core Web Vitals will perform. This makes site load speed a more critical component of SEO than ever.

How Does Site Load Speed Affect UX?

The way in which website load speed impacts UX should seem fairly obvious, as the concept is basic. The faster a website loads, the better the UX will be as the more satisfied the user is likely to be with their involvement on it.

A user is more likely to search around a website that loads quickly to find exactly what they’re looking for, and to convert as a result. If a user can’t load a page, they won’t be able to navigate the site and are likely to click off and go elsewhere for what they want.

How to Easily Check Website Load Speed

The easiest way to check website load speed is to access it from a range of different devices and browsers and see how quickly you perceive it to be. If it feels inefficient to you, it likely does to all users, and improvements should be sought to be made.

There are a variety of load speed checking tools online that can give exact speed figures, but it can be difficult from these to judge what the benchmark for the site is and what the speed should be.

What Should Website Load Speed Be?

There is no one set figure that all websites should abide by, and although Google provide guidance for the LCP, they don’t set standards for everything; or at least, not that are publicly provided.

According to Portent, who carried out a website load speed study in 2019, a 0-4 second load time is the best for conversion rates; with the first five seconds having the highest impact on conversion rates.

Generally speaking, the faster a website loads, the better.

How to Increase Website Load Speed

There’s a variety of actions businesses can take to improve their website load speed, without compromising on the quality it provides for users. It is advisable to consult with an SEO specialist to understand how best to do this – and not just to pay for server upgrades and downgrade picture quality that may make minimal improvements or end up costing more than the value they provide.

The Difference Between Mobile and Desktop Site Load Speed

Load speed varies between devices and on mobiles can take longer if a website isn’t mobile responsive.

Where a site is mobile responsive, it will adapt its formatting to the browser on which it’s being viewed; providing a great UX even on smaller screens. It is imperative that businesses invest in an improved website load speed for both their mobile and desktop sites in order to provide great service for all users.

Get Help with You Site Load Speed

Woya Digital are SEO experts and work with the technicalities of sites on a daily basis. No one can tackle your site load speed better, so get in touch and let’s get to work!

Google MUM Algorithm Update

18, Apr 2022 | Digital Marketing, SEO

The latest major update to the Google algorithm is known as Google MUM – and the Woya search engine gurus help explain the basics of what it is, what it does, and how businesses should update their practices to facilitate it.

What are Algorithm Updates?

What’s referred to as ‘the algorithm’ behind Google is actually its programming; a complex system of numerous algorithms and ranking factors to deliver webpages ranked by relevance on their SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). This behind-the-scenes programming decides what is displayed where on its indices and how that ranking is arrived upon. The ongoing aim of Google (and indeed, of other search engines) is to provide the most appropriate results to a query input – and the algorithm works to do just that.

Algorithm updates are tweaks and changes made to this programming in order to improve and enhance it. Many of these changes are minor and don’t have a huge impact on rankings or how businesses should approach improving theirs but some are more major and can have tangible outcomes. Although not confirmed, it is believed that minor algorithm updates happen almost daily; with larger changes made only once every few months.

What is Google MUM?

The MUM algorithm is the latest major update to Googles programming and is an abbreviation for Multitask Uniform Model.

MUM is a multi-modal algorithm designed to provide answers to complex search queries by concurrently assessing and drawing upon information across multi-language text, images, video and audio content. It is by far the most clever and comprehensive AI algorithm the search engine (or indeed, any search engine) has ever used and will replace its current algorithm, BERT (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers), which was equally considered a state-of-the-art program when it was introduced.

BERT was the first transformer-based machine learning technique for natural language processing aimed at improving search results based on human-input queries. The MUM algorithm takes this technology to a new level – it is believed to be 1,000 times more powerful!

How will Google MUM Change Results for those Using the Search Engine?

Google MUM will transform the relevant search engine results provided to those with more complex queries than a standard keyword or phrase being input.

Using the T5 text-to-text framework, it doesn’t just understand the language being used in the query, but also generates it. Trained in 75 languages at its inception and able to enact multiple tasks at once, its knowledge is comprehensive and it draws upon multi-modal sources to learn.

For example, if a user asks Google about having visited one travel destination and looking for information to compare it to another one, chances are they would need to carry out several searches to find the exact information they require. Instead, with the Google MUM algorithm, the programming will understand the need for comparison and can draw upon other related material: such as weather forecasts, differing travel modes, reviews on places to visit, the items you may need to buy, linguistic differences, visa details, and even medical information for travellers. This will all be presented in one place rather than the user having to make several queries.

How can Businesses Optimise for Google MUM?

The Google MUM algorithm follows the broader trend of internet users accessing content through multiple forms of media and no longer just relying on text and the written word. By accessing and understanding different modes of media, the MUM algorithm’s introduction encourages marketers to create content across varying media types and to properly optimise each so that it’s understood as relevant by the search engine.

No longer will text filled with keywords or phrases be the most reliable source of appropriateness but such benefit can be reaped from the likes of imagery, video and audio files too.

Blogging, thought piece writing and comprehensive website copy will remain important but should be complemented by infographics, photography, tutorial videos and audio books, podcasts and ‘quick listen’ files for a full-service multi-modal digital brand presence. All bases must be covered.

Businesses must ensure that their content marketing strategies are set and solid but also that they don’t miss out detail in the pieces produced. The labelling and positioning of audio and video files must be accurate, all content must be coordinated across varying platforms and imagery must have proper alt-tagging and captions. The ability for businesses to link supporting documentation into their blogs or other written content will now be critical for SEO; gaining the attention of the MUM algorithm and of more customers as a result.

Eventually, as the MUM algorithm fully embeds and consumers realise the amount of information they’re able to gain from a single query, it may even become a competitor toward other brand presence online. For example, there may be little need for users to visit a brand’s social media profile to find all the info they need – as it instead could all be presented on a single search engine results page (SERP).

This enhancement of the search engine could reinforce the need for a cohesive brand presence on a website without the reliance of dumping every piece of available content or dataset on to a social media page for replication purposes. Mums are great, and the Google MUM algorithm is set to be just as helpful as the parents we know and love.

SEO is an important tool for digital marketing and will transform a business’ success online. Its potential is not to be underestimated, and neither should the ongoing effort and work required. Woya Digital are an expert SEO team who understand the evolving needs of successful SEO. Get in touch with us to discuss your online business growth.

Blog Structure for Success

4, Apr 2022 | Digital Marketing, Content Marketing

Many businesses reap the benefits of posting regular blogs to their website in order to keep a library of relevant brand content available online for their customers; both potential and existing. Routine blogging is also important to support SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) rankings and website performance as well as position a business as a thought leader, providing valuable resources for those looking for related information and data.

Yet posting blogs regularly can quickly become something done ‘just for the sake of it’ and this attitude can rapidly deteriorate the quality and usability of the content as the focus wanders and it’s no longer deemed a top business priority. However, there are some easy steps that can be followed with blogging to ensure the copy is of high quality, it’s useful for those reading it and that there will be benefit to the organisation from it being posted.

Follow our recommended tips below to ensure you’re applying a blog structure for success, every time.

1. Establish Your Goals

It’s important to keep a blogging schedule regular so that readers are able to return to up-to-date appropriate content.

Establish what is to be achieved through the publication of the blog and what benefit it presents to the reader. Who are the audience? What’s important to them? What question or problem does this blog answer or resolve for them? Once a piece’s purpose has been identified, it can be written in a way that encompasses its derived value.

2. Create a Catchy Title

The targeted SEO keyword or phrase should be included in the title for SEO purposes – and the title itself should be descriptive and catchy. No one likes a purely clickbait title that bears no resemblance to the content within (and indeed, search engines will only punish a website for it) but the title should give the reader a reason to click through.

Keep a title short and direct – and don’t be afraid to us it to post a question. You can revisit the answer to that question and others related to it within the body text.

3. Hook Readers in with a Great Introduction

Once the title has achieved the click through, content has a very limited time to capture the reader enough to encourage full readership – so the introduction must hook readers in, fast. A short introduction to let users know what the blog will cover reinforces that what they’ve clicked through to is in fact what was advertised, and that they have value to gain from reading it.

Ideally, sentence structure in an introduction should be short and concise; encouraging the desire for more information to be gleaned from further interaction.

4. Break the Blog Structure into Sections

A huge block text is unappealing to the eye and will immediately put a potential reader off as too wieldy and difficult to absorb. Instead, blogs should be broken into smaller sections with relevant sub-headings; allowing for skim-reading as well as easier comprehension of the piece in its entirety.

Sub-headings provide further SEO benefits and should include keywords or phrases where possible.

Each section should be no more than a few paragraphs so if it does require longer or more technical explanations, create further sub-sections to make the article even further comprehensive. Don’t allow blog sections to run so long they lose focus on the topic – this will just encourage the reader to stop and leave.

5. Include Internal and External Links

There are benefits to including both internal and external linking within blogs, with both playing a role in SEO. Internal links to other resources on the same domain encourage further browsing and more time on the organisation’s website; and can be optimised to best include a desired call to action or user journey.

External links are often avoided as people don’t wish to direct readers away from their site – yet they hold powerful SEO value. Linking to reputable sources with a high Domain Authority (DA) is positive as it demonstrates to search engines that the business is dedicated to providing quality content for its users.

Always designate external links to open in a new tab or window, keeping the original website open elsewhere on the browser, and as not to encourage readers away from the original blog.

6. Draw a Strong Conclusion

No blog should finish abruptly and instead should draw a proper conclusion that summarises the main points of the article. If there is no clear ‘one way or another’ conclusion, businesses may wish to mention the topic’s questionable or controversial nature, or end with a bullet-pointed list of relevant considerations.

7. Mention your Business

Blogs on a business’ website are not only read by existing site users or those who are already familiar with the organisation, and this should be taken into account.

A small paragraph about the business should, therefore, be included – ideally with internal links around the site for further information. Ideally this should be included organically within the content or as a standalone explanatory portion after the conclusion.

8. Add Sharing Buttons

Giving readers the opportunity to share blog content with friends, colleagues and social media connections is a simple but valuable addition.

Adding sharing buttons at the top or the bottom of the pages can be done through the inclusion of a basic widget or coding – and the more content is shared, the higher the traffic will be, the more value will be demonstrated to search engines and the more likely the content is to ‘go viral’.

9. Add an Image

Including photos, infographics or other imagery throughout blog text content not only helps break up the aesthetic of a chunky piece to read but also holds SEO benefits. Research shows that social media users are much more likely to click through on a post with an image than one that is text only, and indeed, social media algorithms are more likely to display it.

Contrary to what some may think, blogging is still a powerful and very important part of any business marketing and growth strategy. At Woya Digital we can help with all your digital marketing needs, including setting up a blogging strategy that really works to boost your business. Contact us today to chat through your content and digital marketing strategy.

Google SEO Ranking Factors

2, Mar 2022 | Digital Marketing, SEO

Search engines present what they deem to be relevant search results to users looking up various keywords and phrases, and to do this, their automated algorithm programs ‘crawl’ web content continuously.

These crawls pull up a variety of data and intelligence on websites, using this information to understand what a site is about, who its relevant for and what it offers. The elements of a website that are scanned and used by the search engine algorithms to determine where and how to rank them are known as SEO ranking factors.

It’s not known exactly how many webpages or websites are crawled by Google’s systems daily, but we do know that hundreds of billions of pages are scanned continuously; primarily based on previous searches made by search engine users. The crawlers work through site maps, paying attention to the usability and performance of the site overall, links to and from it, changes made to pages it has crawled before, and the content on the site itself.

Each of these SEO ranking factors are taken into account and this helps the system decide where to display a website on relevant SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).

What are Google’s SEO Ranking Factors?

There is a common misconception that the only influence on search engine ranking is the written content within a website – and this has resulted in lots of websites being full of content that is stuffed with as many keywords and phrases as possible.

While this was effective in the early days of SEO, technology has moved on vastly since and this activity is now penalised by Google. There are now over 200 SEO ranking factors for Google alone.

Google’s SEO ranking factors change continuously and the algorithm changes and tweaks daily; so it’s nigh-on impossible to hit exactly the right spot for top organic SEO ranking all of the time. The 200+ SEO ranking factors that Google currently refers to includes, by is by no means limited to:

Domain factors – security, keywords in domain, domain history, geographic registration
Page-level factors – keyword usage, tags and meta data, content, page load speeds, image optimisation, responsiveness
Site-level factors – site architecture, site uptime, site navigation, Core Web Vitals
Backlink factors – links to and from the site and the authenticity of the sites linking
User interaction – user behaviour, content interaction, traffic, bookmarks
Algorithm rules – geo-targeting, safe search, shopping results, YouTube results, local results
Brand signals – branded text, branded searches, linked social media accounts
On-site webspam – pop-ups and ads, poor quality content, hidden links, on-site spamming
Off-site webspam – site hacking, unnatural links, fake links, fake likes, spam traffic.

This variety in ranking factors highlights just how much ongoing work there is to be done to demonstrate to Google how useful and genuine a business’ website is.

Ranking Factors for other search engines

Google has by far the highest market share of search engines. However, there are audiences using search engines other than just Google.

SEO ranking factors aren’t made entirely public for all search engines, but all of the algorithms operate along roughly the same lines. There are some differences that should be noted, though, including:

Bing have commented publicly that social media is a very influential factor in their SEO
Yahoo relies heavily on Bing’s search algorithm and so optimising for Bing will too optimise for Bing
DuckDuckGo does not track users and so results are never based on search history
Baidu hugely favours domains registered in China
Amazon essentially relies entirely on keywords.

Generally speaking, it is best to follow all of the principles of Google SEO in order to rank on other search engines too.

The Importance of Optimising SEO Ranking Factors

Google is an increasingly competitive search engine with 8.5 billion searches carried out daily, so there’s no shortage of traffic. If businesses are to gain competitive advantage over competitors, they must focus on SEO to ensure that they rank higher, are more likely to be found online.

The Most Important SEO Ranking Factors for Google

Not all SEO ranking factors are equal. Although there is no complete transparency over which are exactly the most influential in ranking score, the most important factors are more user-focused than content-focused.

Google prioritises site security, responsiveness and its overall customer experience as a very important SEO ranking factor. This also includes the crawlability of sites – because if it can’t be ‘crawled’, it can’t be assessed for ranking in SERPs.

Content does form an important part of SEO, and Google now considers high quality content more eminent than the presence of relevant keywords and phrases; although they too do influence.

SEO management involves a careful and curated balance of all elements of a website in order to provide the best and most relevant user experience possible – and this acts as an extension of the brand’s overall customer experience. This makes good business sense and cannot be underestimated in its contribution to the overarching brand perception.

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