Search Engine Optimization Techniques in 2019. User experience signals were HUGE in 2018 from a SEO ranking perspective and they are even more important in 2019
The internet is the wild west and your public facing website can be reached by any user (current clients, potential clients and people simply searching for answers) with access to the internet. But how many of these users actually know the internet address of your website? Most of them start their journey using a search engine like google, bing, yahoo, ask, aol, baidu and etc. For these users to find your website when they enter a keyword and search, your website have to be displayed in the top 5 or 10 of the search result page from the search engine. This means your website has to be optimized for search engines using SEO techniques.
What is SEO?
SEO stands for “search engine optimization.” It’s the practice of increasing both the quality and quantity of website traffic, as well as exposure to your brand, through organic or non-paid search engine results. SEO is about people and search engines. It’s about understanding what people are searching for online, the answers they are seeking, the words they’re using, and the type of content they wish to consume. Knowing this data about your users will allow you to provide high-quality content that your visitors will truly value.
Here’s an example. Sierra Leone Open Business Reviews (a Sierra Leone based digital product that is serving location-based local business review, directory, and citizen generated open data via a web and mobile application) has heard about SEO and wants TpISENT to help them improve how and how often they show up in organic search results. In order to help them, we need to first understand their potential customers:
- What types of local businesses are people searching for?
- Who is searching for these terms?
- When are people searching for local businesses?
- Are there seasonality trends throughout the year?
- How are people searching for local businesses?
- What words do they use?
- What questions do they ask?
- Are more searches performed on mobile devices?
- Why are people seeking local businesses?
- Are individuals looking for health conscious restaurants specifically or just looking to satisfy a sweet tooth?
- Where are potential customers located — locally, nationally, or internationally?
How can you help provide the best location-based content about local businesses to help visitors find the best places to eat, shop, sleep, bank, drink, learn, exercise, relax, watch a game, buy medication, do business with the government, NGOs, Foreign Missions, and play?
Search result screenshot for “Sierra Leone local business reviews”
What is RankBrain and Dwell Time
User experience signals were HUGE in 2018 from a SEO ranking perspective and they are even more important in 2019. Google previously announced that RankBrain was their third most important ranking factor. RankBrain has become the third-most important signal contributing to the result of a search query.
But what is RankBrain and how can you optimize your website content for it? RankBrain is a machine learning system that helps Google sort their search results. It simply measures how users interact with the search results and ranks them accordingly. The head of Google Brain in Canada recently confirmed that Google uses Dwell Time as a ranking signal. Dwell Time is how long a Google searcher spends on your page. He stated that RankBrain measures when “someone clicks on a page and stays on that page, when they go back”. A recent industry study by SearchMetrics supports this statement. They found that the average Dwell Time for a top 10 Google result is 3 minutes and 10 seconds. It’s no coincidence that pages with excellent Dwell Time tend to rank best. In fact, RankBrain is upranking these pages for that exact reason.
Think about it. If you spend a long time on a page, you probably like the content on that page and if enough people feel the same way, Google will uprank that content to make it easier to find.
You can contact TpISENT to help you with the following SEO related services.
- Research and analysis
- Identifying keyword opportunities
- On-site coding and implementation
- Copywriting and implementation
- Speed and site performance
- Marketing and link building
- Ranking report and tracking
- Search engine friendly web design
- Driving target traffic
- Converting traffic to customers
