In a new series of blog articles, we take a look at Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) for beginners to keep you up to date with the ever changing digital world.
Did you know that SEO can be like science?
Okay, so you won’t get any chemical reactions, but search engines do reward pages with the right combinations of rankings – also known as ‘signals’. That’s why it is so important to ensure that your content generates the right type of ‘signals’ to rank highly on search results.
So, what are the major factors to consider for search engine ranking? And how can the SEO periodic table be of use to support SEO success?
We delve into the science behind the SEO periodic table which has been created by Search Engine Land to help you achieve the best results for your website.
The groups explained
There are three groups on the periodic table on-the-page, off-the-page and violations.
Although violations are in a subgroup all of their own, to make it easier to read for users of the SEO periodic table, they are displayed under the two other main categories to show how they can impact each of the areas which makes it nice and easy to read – especially because they are colour coded.
Two letter acronyms
Like the scientific periodic table, the letters are coded with two literatures which stems from each SEO element – the SEO elements are the subgroups of the main categories – and the second letter stands for each individual factor – this is displayed at the bottom of each square.
The main point to remember is that each element only works if you’ve met the criteria of all the other elements – in effect they all work in conjunction with each other to meet the same objective. This means that is one element is not met, your SEO results will be much less successful.
On-the-page factors
This type of factor is solely based on parts your website which you can physically control such as quality content, the quality of the website itself, duplicate text, page links and the architecture.
A good question to ask yourself is, how does your site architecture support or hamper your search engine results? This will get you thinking about areas for improvement.
Off-the-page factors
These factors are not directly within you control. This could include authority, engagement, locality, the history of your business or reputation.
The reason search engines use these factors as part of the screening process is so that when they rely on ‘publishers controlled’ signals, it will retrieve the most relevant or accurate results. This is because publishers – aka you – want to make themselves stand out and to do this businesses often glamorise content – let’s face it, every marketing department in the world does this.
Violation factors
As there are so many websites to scab for search relevance, looking at the above two signals alone isn’t enough, that’s why search engines consider violations too.
Violations score against website publishers if they don’t comply with the rules and regulations of SEO effectively and efficiently.
In the world of SEO violations are considered as ‘spam’ or ‘black hat’ and these are huge actions that could result in pages which have been ranking penalties or in the worse case scenario banned from search engines completely.
The SEO periodic table simplifies the way the likes of Google scans your website pages and that to look for so that you can make decisions about your website to meet the needs of great SEO choices.
We love the way this has been categorised for ease of use to make SEO understandable for everyone using it.
If you want to know more about how SEO and Google Search Console can help you and your business, get in touch here. We are also currently offering free SEO Health Checks. Click the link to get yours.
