Our tour through the magical world of search engine optimization is now underway
After a trip to the dark side last week, the so-called Black Hat SEO (aka hands-off!), we would like to make a prediction about the direction that SEO techniques are headed in the future. In closing, we will take a quick dive into the world of the master search engine Google in order to see what criteria are needed for a top position. Off we go!
SEO – where will the journey take us?
The white hat SEO techniques you got to know in the first part of our blog series, the methods that stick to the guidelines given by search engines and provide on-page and off-page optimizations for a website, are not set in stone. White hat SEO interacts constantly with its environment, especially with Google, and evolves congruently with search engines. This interplay has become very obvious in the past decade of SEO in particular. The Google algorithmic updates proved to be quite formidable opponents, really trying to put any black hat SEO operations through the wringer. Some legitimate optimization techniques became superfluous and totally vanished, while others were driven forward. All in all, it can be said that the world of search engine optimization is much more multifaceted than previously assumed. It’s not enough these days to want to drive up your ranking by obtaining lots of clicks. First and foremost, a website needs to be user-oriented to create the right user experience, since the ranking factors of Google and others are constantly evolving through a type of artificial algorithmic intelligence, all of which belongs to a complex and thoroughly-synchronized system. Search results are refined and improved daily, moving away from spam toward usability and user-centric content.
Climbing up – Getting a top Google ranking
Despite the constantly-changing ranking factors via AI, there are still several reliable factors that have always helped to drive up a good ranking. Google themselves released a statement saying that their in-house web crawlers follow around 200 ranking signals. An official statement on the weight of these factors was not given, however. We can probably assume that the ranking factors vary from topic to topic, and that individual search queries have an influence on this as well. As the world’s largest search engine, Google is responsible for providing its users with relevant and meaningful content in response to their search queries. In addition to the official ranking factors, popular terms you’ve probably heard of such as reputation, trust, and authority of a source play a role, as do the purpose, expertise, and accessibility of a document.
The official ranking factors confirmed by Google are as follows:
- Page speed
- Content
- Links / backlinks
- Popularity
- Mobile-friendliness
- Brand mentions in the media
- Good content according to a searcher’s true intent (RankBrain)
The following factors also have an impact on the contextual customization for each individual user:
- The user’s location
- The user’s device
- The user’s search history
- The user’s previous clicks on search results
It can generally be said that Google is constantly striving to be better – to favor healthy and fair SEO measures and to create a well-functioning search environment for its global community. A user’s search intent paired with the trust and authority of a website are said to represent the deciding factors in determining a top ranking in general. Of course, this is only if they were already properly optimized…
To be continued…
