SEO Guide From Semalt – Types Of Search Engine Success Factors

In the periodic table of factors influencing the success of SEO, it states that there are three major groups: on-page SEO, off-page SEO, and violations. Within each of the groups stated, are other subgroups which Oliver King, the Customer Success Manager of Semalt, will explain. The subgroups contain factors that have significance to the success of the SEO campaign.

SEO Factor Combinations

There is no single factor for SEO that will guarantee the website owner a high rank in the search engines. By ensuring that one has a great HTML title will not rank the page well if it does not contain follow up content. One may have very many links, but if they do not lead back to quality and engaging content, they are of no use. It means that one needs to combine several positive factors, to increase the chance of success. The more the negative factors, the worse the odds.

On-Page Success Factors

These are the factors that are within the control of the owner or the developers. The website owner must consider the content they publish, the HTML cues they use to help both the search engines and the users to determine the relevancy. Also, one must make sure that the site's architecture provides convenience and ease of navigation and should not hinder the work of the search engines.

Off-Page Success Factors

The publisher does not directly control these factors. Search engines mostly use the off-page factors as they determined that relying on the publisher alone did not yield the best experience for the users, and visitors. An example is those site owners who attempt to make themselves seem more relevant than they are in reality. There are many websites that search engines need to crawl. Looking at the onsite factors is not enough to determine whether the pages ranking high on the SERP are the best or not. Online users also do diverse searches which probe the search engines to diversify their tactics as well.

SEO Violations and Ranking Penalties

The primary objective of the search engines is to make sure that people improve their search rankings. They offer several helpful resources to ensure that they achieve the best results. As much as achieving ideal search rankings is their objective, there are those that use techniques deemed "black hat" or "spam" intended to make a site appear more than what it is in reality. There exist certain penalties to websites found to do so. The worst-case scenario is that they get banned in totality from crawling by search engines. A violation is typically any activity intended to deceive search engines to crawl or manipulate its understanding of what is relevant or authoritative.

Weighting Search Ranking Factors

Factors rank between 1 to 3. People need to pay attention to the factors with a score of 3. Those weighing 1 or 2 are not necessarily meaningless. It is just that they are of less importance. Violations also weigh, but in negative numbers.

"Missing" SEO Factors

Some experienced SEOs may ask why some signals do not show. The reason as given by Google is that some of them are not as important. For example, there are over 200 signals used by Google and over 10,000 sub-signals. The idea is not to make sure they encompass every one of these signals. Being ultra-specific may cause problems for the search engines.