If you want to rank a website or page effectively in 2020 you should have a basic understanding of how code, databases, indexing, and basic algorithmic principles. This will go a long way into understanding what impacts your ability to rank and how to improve.
A lot of blogs really push to get your website to load in under a second, but realistically the average website loads in 22 seconds, so as long as you’re under 5 seconds you’re well ahead of the curve. Many benchmark sites don’t provide accurate figures when it comes to things like Google Tag Manager & Facebook Pixel, which can skew your total loading time.
Content quality and content quantity aren’t related, you can have a high-quality piece of content that ranks highly and is under 500 words, as long as it helps Google answer a user’s query better than anything else in the search results.
In many cases less is more, creating content that hooks users and encourages them on a journey takes a lot of effort and is expensive, but it will outperform a page with 3,000 long-form words of brain dumped content on a subject.
Google doesn’t owe you anything, the best content is what gets placed at the top, if you’re not at the top you have no visibility on natural search as a channel.
Google’s job is to categorise and understand pages on the internet. Rather than trying to game Google (good luck) why not spend time trying to understand your target audience and create a web experience that will convert them into customers.
Keyword Stuffing does not work! I’ve audited so many websites that still believe that if they fill their content with the same keywords it will make them rank higher, in many cases it has the opposite effect as it makes your site structure more complex to Google and you end up having internal pages competing against each other. Aim to keep pages focused on a single intent. It’s fine to include your keyword in the Page Title, Meta Description, H1 and within the first sentence naturally without looking spammy!
Domain Rating / Authority have no meaningful impact on a websites ability to rank, it’s a nice insight but a non-factor. Page level metrics such as URL Rating provide a more reliable insight into how a page is rated.
Don’t confuse answering the user’s question with answering the user’s intent.
Finally, don’t ignore the technical side of SEO. A clear site structure combined with a well thought out user journey will make your website rank effectively over backlinking service.
