5. Over 200 Google ranking factors
(Source: HubSpot)
Google uses more than 200 factors to rank a website. Whilst no one really knows what these factors are, some of the most important ranking factors to concentrate on include inbound links, keyword intent, page load time, domain security, meta tags and content structure.
6. Keep your content long
(Source: SerpIQ)
Today, longer form content is dominating page one of search rankings and Google just loves content rich websites. In fact, the #1 search result typically has 2,416 words, with the #10th result having 2,032 words.
Of course, it’s important to remember that writing a longer article of over 2,000 words won’t necessarily mean you will jump to page one of Google. There are other ranking factors involved which often correlate with content length such as the number and quality of backlinks, social shares, dwell time and click through rate to name just a few.
7. 90.63% of pages get zero organic traffic from Google
(Source: Ahrefs)
Ahrefs conducted a study with over one billion pages and discovered that a whopping 90.63% of all pages received zero traffic from Google, whilst only 5.29% received two visits per month or less. One of the main reasons for this is that these pages had no backlinks, whilst other reasons include the page topic had no long-term traffic potential, the page didn’t match search intent and the page wasn’t indexed.
So, if you want to be in the 9.36% of pages that receive organic traffic, make sure the page has quality backlinks, talks about a topic with organic traffic potential, matches search intent and is indexed by Google.
8. 66.31% of pages have zero backlinks
(Source: Ahrefs)
Backlinks are incredibly important and are one of Google’s “top 3 ranking factors”. However, 66.31% of pages don’t have a single backlink, and only 26.29% have links from three websites or less. There is a strong correlation that the more backlinks a webpage has, the more traffic it receives from Google. In order to rank highly in Google, it’s essential that you build high-quality backlinks to your page.
9. 50.34% of worldwide website traffic comes by mobile
(Source: Statcounter)
As at May 2020, 50.34% of worldwide website traffic was delivered by mobile device, compared to 46.67% by desktop and 2.99% by tablet. It is important to remember though that this is worldwide data, so it might not reflect what’s happening in your business. I recommend checking the Device reports in Google Analytics to see how much traffic mobile devices are responsible for. However, it’s important to remember that Google is switching to mobile-first indexing for all websites starting September 2020.
10. Refreshing old blog posts can boost organic traffic by as much as 106%
(Source: HubSpot)
Creating new blog content is all well and good, but it can often be time consuming. Rather than creating new content from scratch, you should consider refreshing older content from six months ago or even a year ago. According to a Historical Optimization study by HubSpot, optimizing your old blog content with fresh, up-to-date information, has the ability to generate even more traffic and conversions that it already does.
You can do this by identifying any articles that are worth updating, have become outdated or has the potential to rank for high search volume keywords. You can then refresh the content with new information such as videos, images and statistics and make any page changes to make it easier to read (such as insert headings and add bullet points). Republish this post and share with your audience on social or through email. Google will reward you as it loves fresh content, whilst the post already has a degree of page authority.
11. “Where to buy” + “near me” mobile queries have grown by over 200% in the past two years
(Source: Google)
If you’re a local business then “near me” searches are increasing across almost every category, with people combining locally sensitive searches with other intent signals. Examples include “where to buy flowers near me” or “where to buy apples near me”. Targeting these type of keyword phrases can help you rank higher in local search.
12. “Best” + “right now” mobile queries have grown by over 125% in the last two years
(Source: Google)
People always love lists so having a ‘bests’ list or ‘bests’ article in your content strategy will help to drive traffic to your website, particularly as this search query has grown in the last few years, particularly for mobile. Ideas include ‘best suburbs to buy property in right now’, ‘best cameras in market right now’, ‘best road trips in NSW right now’.