5 True SEO Factors and 5 SEO Myths
Search Engine Optimization is the safest and least costly digital marketing practice that can put you at the top of the search engines with positive returns-on-investments [FACT].
The Importance of SEO for Your Website
Consistent SEO prevents you from falling behind your competition, primarily because 1) Google changes its algorithms frequently, so consistently monitoring your website’s performance will mean you can adjust quickly when Google search changes occur that will impact your SEO. And 2) Google favors websites that are updated regularly, fresh content is a huge factor in site rankings, as I will show you a little later.
Remember, SEO not only boosts your search rankings but also helps maintain your website for better user experience. When perspective customers visit your site, the better experience the longer they will stay and its a much better chance for them to engage with your content. And this is long-term, SEO is meant for long-term success.
Why is On-Page SEO so important for small business websites?
But First!
What is On-Page SEO?
On-Page SEO (sometimes referred to as ‘on-site SEO’), is the process of making content on a webpage easier to find and show up higher on search engines. The ultimate goal of On-Page SEO is to make your website simultaneously speak the ‘search engines’ language’ and make your webpages show up for searchers (perspective customers) based on what they are looking for and your content that aligns to their search terms. On-Page SEO helps search engine crawlers understand the meaning and context of your pages.
Why is On-Page SEO important?
On-Page SEO is important because it provides search engines with a number of signals to help them understand what your content is about.
During the indexing and ranking processes, search engines try to associate web pages with keywords and search terms users type in the search box. It’s through On-Page SEO elements that you can guide them as to which keywords you want your pages to rank.
What are the 5 most important SEO Ranking Factors?
1 — A Secure and Accessible Website
The first and foremost SEO ranking factor is the right URL [FACTS]. Search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo have autobots…
NO not those!
These are web crawlers that have to be able to understand what your webpage is about. As the website owner that wants more traffic and more attention from the search engines, help the bots by:
For a business owner that isn’t a professional web developer, a critical aspect of making sure your website is secure, accessible, and technically sound from the beginning is to use a well-coded website builder. Site builders on platforms such as Ionos or Blue Host which have the all of the technical, backend code, professionally polished for you is a solid start for beginners that want immediate positive SEO results.
Many of the backend bots that are a well-constructed robots.txt file which points to the search bots in the right direction on your website. It will be easier for you, or a professional developer, to make a well-designed sitemap of all the web pages and upload it to Google search console.
2 — Page Speed (especially Mobile Page Speed)
Page speed is the top factor for SEO ranking, but get neglected by even the most experienced web developers and designers. Improve user experience by fast-loading web pages.
Use Google’s mobile testing tool, this can indicate how your site is faring on mobile and which pages to index so search engines can learn from each page.
Also, it will help to identify which pages to rank for relevant web searchers queries. Finally, using the tool how to assign link equity.
While we are here, link equity, also called “link juice,” is defined as a search engine ranking factor which is based links passing value and authority from one page to another. The value is dependent on the linking page’s authority (PA = Page Authority), topical relevance, security status (HTTP), as well as a few other factors but these are the most relevant.
Page speed has been cited as one of the leading SEO ranking factors for years. Google wants to improve users’ experience of the web, and fast-loading web pages will do that.
3 — Freshness and Content Updates
Google likes updated pages, in fact, all search engines like updated pages and new content, especially for those with news content.
Regularly updated information on pages improves quality and user experience, which Google bots recognize and like because that means the bots can continually work to show your pages. Such pages have a higher chance of getting ranked.
4 — Mobile Friendly Website
Just like optimizing your website’s speed, a mobile-friendly website operates well on mobiles and this indicates good site quality and user experience for search engines.
The standards of mobile-friendliness
1. Readability — Readability is all about how easy or difficult it is to read something on your website. Readability depends on a text’s presentation (such as font choice, spacing or colors) and context (the words and sentences on the page). Other factors that affect readability include sentence length, sentence structure, and the average syllables per word. These combined factors help assess how well your writing will be understood.
2. Ease of navigation — How easy it is for the visitor of the website to search and find content and basically use the website.
3. Page speed — page speed is vital to providing a good user experience in today’s digital world. Your mobile page’s load time can spell the difference between the rise and fall of your Google rankings and your conversion rates.
5 — Auditing Technical SEO
Technical SEO is all about the coding i.e. the technical side of your website, the functionality and how your site works, beyond the design i.e. look and feel. Technical SEO auditing comprises the examination of the site’s HTML elements, loading speeds, and data structure all in one practice.
Doing this reveals issues with your website due to which the Google Bots aren’t able to crawl and indexing your site correctly. It finds the problems that you cannot easily see or find with a naked eye. It is the deep dive exercise that must be done at the very least every 6-months. If you have an eCommerce website or your website is your hub for affiliate marketing, advertising revenue, or converting visitors into leads, you miss out in potentially hundreds or thousands of perspective customers on a regular basis.
High-Level website audit checklist
To help you visualize the overall steps of a proper website audit, here is an brief checklist for you or your web developer, should refer to regularly:
- Website Performance: Check your page speed and Core Web Vitals
- SEO Optimization: Isolate and update missing information
- Content SEO Optimization: Prioritize quality and fill in the gaps
- Technical SEO issues: Pinpoint and fix
- User Experience: Check functionality and navigation
- Website Accessibility: Identify and resolve barriers to accessibility
Ready to boost your SEO?
As you can see, you shouldn’t do without SEO, in this case, specifically On-Page SEO. There are these 5 critical ranking factors that will help your SEO overall, and then there are 5 myths that will destroy your chances of having a successful small business website. Let’s bust up these the top 5 SEO myths and save your business online presence.
Dangerous 5 SEO Myths
1 — SEO is dead!
No, SEO is not dead and it ain’t going anywhere! In fact, SEO is evolving and is not slowing down [FACTS].
Yes, SEO was different 10-years ago, and now in 2022, it is more advanced and complicated for webmasters. This is why many
SEO is more important now than ever before, this fact was brought to the attention of small business owners and webmasters due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on businesses around the world [FACTS].
Websites on the first page of Google search results still do extensive SEO to secure their spot, no matter how old the sites are and no matter what is happening in the world. Thousands of websites are updated daily to ensure they keep up with changes to Google’s search engine algorithm. So, if you fail to upgrade your SEO practices to compete for higher ranking on search engines, then your website will mostly never make it to the top of search results and struggle to get organic traffic.
As long as search engines exist, and there are many search engines out there, SEO will always exist.
2 — SEO Is A One-Time Thing
SEO is not a one-time thing! And your competitors know this, they are doing these practices every month, and it is growing by the day. If your competitors don’t stop SEO and you do, your rankings will fall especially fast.
SEO is a continuous process due to the fact that it drives your website’s performance only when done regularly. Your search rankings will plummet if you pause your SEO campaigns.
No matter what your ranking on Google is, you mustn’t stop SEO completely. SEO is indispensable for websites that want to rank and boost their businesses and how high your website shows up in search results. Due to the fact that 75% of people will never scroll past the first page on a Google search [FACTS]. For consistent organic traffic and to earn potential leads, you should never stop SEO. You can change the focus and level of investment, but the work cannot completely stop.
If you stop, your ranking will fall and even worse the technical performance of the website could critically suffer.
3 — Google Only Ranks Fresh Content
Google does like fresh content, but it’s not like it won’t rank your older content. In fact, as long as the content is relevant what people are looking for and typing their questions/queries into the Google search bar, content will help websites to rank high.
The needs of the users and their search is what genuinely makes content rank high or low. As long as you keep updating your existing content and keep it relevant, you can possibly rank any piece of content [FACTS]. Hey, even a Google great confirmed this.
4 — Social Media Channels Improve Rankings
Social media channels do not help you improve your website ranking, at least not directly. They only boost your brand presence across Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites.
While it improves your audience engagement and lead conversion, it doesn’t have a direct effect on your website ranking. Think about it, Facebook is not trying to help you, the small business owner, do anything to use Google and Bing [FACTS].
Although, social media does help with Local SEO, and optimizing Facebook especially will help with getting found locally, this will have little impact on your overall SEO ranking for your website. You can encourage your social media followers to visit your website, but whether they do or not, is up to them and that will not drive traffic on Google, Bing, or Yahoo.
5 — Keyword research isn’t important
Not sure where this myth ever started, but if I hear it one more time I will end up like Tommy…
Keyword research is very important! Keyword research, irrefutably, is important for attracting high intent organic traffic.
The content on your webpage would align the keywords with the intent of the page. But keyword research is still important to boost ranking and create more value for your users. Keywords are so important in fact that both On-Page and Off-Page SEO require a well constructed keyword strategy to be effective. It is the only consistent practice that is same for both On and Off-Page SEO.
Moreover, higher volume keywords are more relevant to users and generate more organic traffic for your website. I even wrote an eBook to help you find the best SEO keywords. Grab a copy here and let me know what you how it helped you rank higher on Google!
In fact, selecting the correct keywords are just as important for paid ad campaigns. This is why the Google Keyword Planner is used for both Google Ads and SEO campaigns [FACTS].
Final Thoughts
At first, SEO may be time-consuming, but it is also the most money-efficient strategy for your business to generate consistent and profitable traffic online. SEO is one of the most important components of marketing your business online. For a digital marketing professional, understanding how On-Page SEO can make or break your client’s success is essential. For a small business owner, On-Page SEO can be the difference between you acquiring a steady stream of business or struggling day in and day out for online sales.
I devote my professional life to helping entrepreneurs and small business owners reach their goals. So stay in touch by dropping a comment and connect on YouTube!
I’m Ehren Muhammad, The Brand Builder
Founder of EMPro, Ltd — Branding & Digital Marketing www.emproltd.com
Catch tips like this and more in the latest episode The Ambition Show podcast!
