3 Ways to Improve Site Ranking almost Overnight
I am always telling anyone who will listen, that there are now short cuts with search engine optimisation that will increase your search position in Google or improve your organic website traffic.
So, this post might seem a bit contradictory at first, but hear me out.
Good SEO does take time and the results pay off, when compared to traditional PPC and media advertising by a huge factor of 5x – 10x.
But, in recent months, we’ve seen several indicators that doing a few tedious, but important things on your website can have dramatic effects, even overnight effects, that increase search ranking.
Before I dive in, it’s important that I explain (broadly) a bit about how a site’s rankings are influenced and how we get sites ranked.
Every site has an optimal ranking, and an adjusted ranking.
In simple terms, an optimal ranking is where a site should be ranking based on the primary offsite trust factors – mostly based on the quality and authority of its back links.
The adjusted ranking is where a site actually ranks, after Google adjusts for its on site factors (titles, overall theme, content quality, freshness, page speed, etc.), and user engagement factors (bounce rate, organic search click-through-rates, etc.).
In other words, Google hears about your site (It finds links – trust factors – pointing to you) and goes and takes a look. As Google (spiders and bots) crawl toward your site, it evaluates the sign posts (links) along the way.
Let’s say you get a “link score” of 8 out of 10. When Google arrives at your site, its algorithm starts deducting points.
For example: -2 for stuffing keywords here. -1 for the slow page loading time.
Now, here’s the thing… while it takes time to build up and establish your optimal ranking (links), you can literally influence your adjusted rankings (on site factors) overnight.
And in some cases, we have seen real-time improvements.
And that is what this lengthy article deals with. So, now that I’ve explained why this is the “exception” to the mantra of “SEO results take time”,
Here’s three ways to boost your traffic and adjusted rankingsalmost instantly.
1. Axe or de-index all your thin Content
So what’s thin content? And how do you de-index thin pages? Thin content is basically just any page of your site that isn’t unique text information.
This includes:- Category pages
- Tags pages
- Duplicate pages (eg. PDF versions of existing articles)
- E-commerce listings with very short descriptions
- Scraped product descriptions from other sites or feeds
- Image galleries with no, or very short, textual descriptions
This is all thin content, and it is absolutely costing you traffic. Remember that even a single instance of thin content indexed will impact the rankings of your entire site.
This means that those “tag pages” (that zero people use, ever) could be the reason why your site is only getting 50% of its potential organic referrals.
Yes, you can (and likely will) see your traffic double – possibly more – by removing & de-indexing thin content. It seems counter-intuitive, but we see this happen on a daily basis.
This is why you either need to physically remove thin content or de-index it by using a combination of a noindex command (in robots.txt or in your head tag) and in Webmaster Tools.
Google’s mission, Neil Patel once said, “is to organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” Not just accessible, but useful.
2. Add contextual links out to authority References
Within the context of a few of your site’s key articles (and not just at the end), add some in-text links out to authority references. These should be specific, internal URLs on an established website.
Try to avoid Wikipedia, as this is an obvious “source”. You can nofollow these links.
Instead use those links that you would naturally trust as a source for yourself. Don’t just link out because they matter to Google. Link out because they matter to you.
Many small business websites object to this, thinking it will take the user off site. That’s a possibility. But it isn’t always bad. If by linking to a valuable resource you have satisfied your user’s query, they might trust your recommendations in the future.
Take care when linking out that you have a reason for it. Google checks the content surrounding a link for relevance. Go Blogging Tips has a good list of do’s and don’t when it comes to linking out from your site.
The object of the game is to become a trusted source. Trusted sources become authority sources and as we have seen, Google rewards those signs of trusted.
It also puts you in authoritative company.
Doing this can often boost that page’s rankings in a matter of days. Sometimes, it will help lift your entire site. And it takes 2 seconds – well worth doing!
3. Increase your Organic Click Through Rates
This is huge. Google is increasingly relying on behavioural and engagement metrics from site traffic to determine site relevance.
While this does include things like bounce rate, time-on-site, and other user experience factors, by far the biggest engagement ranking signal is your click-through-rate (CTR).
This is the percentage of people who see your listing and click on it versus those who do not.
The more real, individual people who click on your site in the organic rankings, the more traffic this brings and the higher you’ll rank. Period. And Google reacts to this almost overnight!
We consistently see CTR improvements move a site anywhere from 1 – 20+ positions. It happens like clockwork.
So, How can you increase your Click Through Rate?
The number one way to do this (and ironically, totally overlooked by 90% of Webmasters) is to make your Title Tags & Meta Descriptions Compelling.
These are the content of Google’s Search Engine results and they are all your prospect sees when they search.
Just like adwords, your headline and copy are essential. It’s no different with organic rankings.
And, think about it. Not only will a better click-through rate influence your rankings very quickly… it also instantly increases your traffic, because more people are clicking to your site!
Again, it isn’t rocket science. But that simple fact is lost on many people, for some reason.
I see sites every week, brilliantly designed, good clean code, original content, fast loading…. and nowhere near the first page. Why?
Because they are not getting the click-through rates that would boost their traffic and search position.
To help you start writing better titles and headlines, try this tool:
Now, it’s a double-edged sword. You need clicks in order to boost your ranking, but you need to have a ranking to be seen. Which brings us back to where we started, your off site trust factors.
And to begin, you could start boosting those articles with your new, highly compelling titles and headlines in Social Media (like Pinterest and Twitter), Micro new sites (like Rebel Mouse and Hacker News) and other similar sites that are relevant (and patronised by) your industry.
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3 Ways to Improve Site Ranking
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