SEO best practices have changed. After Google Panda, Penguin, Hummingbird and all the other updates, what used to help with getting top ranking doesn’t work anymore. Actually, doing search engine optimization (SEO) the old way may even get your website penalized by Google.
It’s back to SEO basics — creating good-quality content and building high-quality backlinks and social sharing.
Search Ranking Factors and Correlations done by Searchmetrics for 2015 is based on data from 300,000 websites; the top 30 results for 10,000 search terms ranking on Google revealed some important changes in the ranking factors.
- The top ranking results have increased amount of content based on word count.
- Top ranking results have easy-to-read, relevant and logically-structured content.
- Responsive or mobile-friendly websites are ranking higher.
- Websites with more social signals, including, Google+, Tweets and Facebook likes, appear to be ranking higher.
- Keywords are still important for content relevance and stucture. However, increasing numbers of high-ranking websites are NOT using the corresponding keyword in the content body and description. The correlations are decreasing for getting high rank and use of keywords in the domain names, internal or external links. The trend is moving away from keywords to relevant, good-quality and logically-structured content.
- Backlinks still show high correlations with ranking. However, unnatural link building is continuing to show a downward trend. There’s absolutely no need for crazy backlinking strategies that can actually get your website penalized by Google.
Learn more about the changes in SEO best practices:
- A video SEO Guide for 2015 is shown below. It offers a Basic to Advanced SEO course.
- An infographic is also shown below. It shows you what you need to change in terms of SEO content, backlinks, keywords and other strategies.
Learn how you can avoid making SEO mistakes on your website that can lead to Google ranking penalties.
SEO Best Practices: Then and Now
The Complete Guide for SEO Best Practices: Basic to Advanced SEO Course
SEO Best Practices and Content Marketing
SEO for content marketing has changed after all the Google updates. Old-school SEO is obsolete and can even hurt your search engine ranking.
Getting top ranking on Google depends on having good-quality, relevant and well-structured content as well as other search engine optimization factors. Social media sharing has become an important ranking factor for Google algorithm.