There are still many SEO secrets for many beginners, but even advanced users must keep up with what is happening in the world of online marketing. We’ve compiled a list of ten SEO facts you’ve probably never heard of. Even if you have, this is a friendly reminder.
There are a lot of SEO data and statistics with more or less known problems. We have tried to compile a list of amazing facts about search engine optimization so you can see the search engine market from a new perspective. This is not a collection of SEO statistics. This is a list of SEO facts to help you improve your SEO and your overall online marketing strategy.
1. Duplicate content is not penalized
The first of the SEO secrets is born from a great unknown. Will you be penalized for duplicate content? No. Is the duplicate content damaging your site? Well, it depends. Let us elaborate on this issue.
To begin with, we will quote the Google Search Quality Assessor Guidelines from September 2019:
“The lowest score is appropriate if all or almost all of the CM (core content) on the page is copied with little or no time, effort, expertise, manual healing, or added value to users. Such pages should be rated the lowest, even if the page assigns content credit to another source”.
Have you seen duplicate content mentioned anywhere? No, this is copied content. And Google treats copied content differently than duplicate content. Duplicate content won’t penalize you, but copied content will.
Duplicate content doesn’t always hurt SEO as most people think. Of course, duplicate content is not an optimal setting for pages. However, most of the time, duplicate content cannot be manipulated.
If you are using canonical tags to let search engines know your preferred content, you need to be sure. We want to emphasize that there are many users who have never looked at what Google says about duplicate content.
As Andrey Lipattsev, Google Ireland’s leading search quality strategist, describes, Google rewards unique content and correlates it with value.
2. Not all search engines use links as a ranking factor.
Yandex, the largest search engine in Russia, no longer considers links as a ranking factor. Before saying that what happens in Russia stays in Russia, you should know that Google might go in the same direction.
The Russian commercial SERPs in Yandex and Google are some of the most gruesome keywords that use black hat SEO techniques to quickly rank sleazy websites. Given the situation, Yandex said their algorithm will be “no links”. Will the other search engines follow?
Will Google remove the links from its algorithm? It seems that Google wants to rank websites based on facts rather than links. They even discussed the idea of excluding backlinks from Google’s algorithm.
“We don’t have a publicly displayed version, but we have conducted such experiments internally, […] we play with the idea of disabling the relevance of backlinks and at least initially the relevance of backlinks. Backlinks still contribute greatly to helping us return the best, most relevant and up-to-date search results. “ – Matt Cutts, former Google representative
3. Top positions have significantly more activity on Facebook
There are many riddles and rumors about the influence of actions, comments, I like, etc. on SEO in general. One question keeps popping up:
Are social reactions a ranking factor?
While no causality can be inferred, a higher presence on Facebook is clearly associated with a higher rank in the search list. One of the most determinants of SEO secrets.
There were some other correlations we have made between Google+ (which is private), Pinterest or LinkedIn and rankings and it seems that higher rankings are correlated with higher Facebook, LinkedIn and Pinterest actions as a whole; however, the strongest correlation was between a high number of Facebook actions and higher rankings.
It is true that correlation does not mean causality, but such a high correlation cannot be easily ignored.
It seems that Facebook interactions affect Google’s search rankings. Therefore, social networking not only provides engagement with your audience, but also affects measurable results beyond engagement, including higher search result rankings.
4. Rich snippets do not have a direct impact on their classification
Rich Snippets has been a preview of the SERP page since they first appeared in 2009. The question is: do they have a direct impact on your ranks? Not really.
Rich snippets have the function of adding additional information to a search list, but according to Google they have no influence on the ranking. Google has stated several times that rich snippets do not currently have a direct impact on the ranking of websites. You can even find answers in the Web Master Help Forum:
Then Google said it all. The rich snippets don’t seem to directly affect our ranking. However, this doesn’t mean that you can’t get indirect benefits from SEO such as: Simply indexing a page or displaying useful data to the reader, for example.
The enriched snippets indirectly help you get more people to visit your website and this, in turn, may help you even more with your ranking. However, the rich snippets do not have a direct impact on your ranking.
5. Only 2 of the 10 most popular websites on the Web are content pages.
To fully understand this, let’s take a look at the 10 most popular websites after Ebizma. It seems that the most popular websites in September 2019 were: Google, Facebook, YouTube, Yahoo! Amazon, Wikipedia, Twitter, Bing, eBay and MSN. It’s not part of the SEO secrets, we know.
However, if we think about it for a moment, we find that only Wikipedia and YouTube are truly content-oriented websites. The others are “content gateways” if we may say so, but they don’t provide direct content like a normal website.
This leads us to an important question: is the benefit more important than the content?
Eight of these websites offer the best users something to do, not just consume. As Northcutt’s Carter Bowles says, they don’t stop while they passively read or watch videos, but give people tools and places to do something.
These websites are popular because the action required by the primary user does not end with the consumption of content.
Is content still king?
We are not suggesting that content marketing doesn’t work. High quality content is excellent, as it is an incredible opportunity to grow. What we’re emphasizing is the fact that interaction seems to work great. If we try to understand why these websites are popular, we will find that content marketing is also, to some extent, part of their strategy.
However, the facts tell us that major websites put communities, tools and interactive platforms before content. In addition, the two most popular content websites, YouTube and Wikipedia, continue to use interactive platforms.
6. Having a video on your home page doubles your chances of appearing on page 1 of Google.
All that YouTube has accomplished in recent years has made it the second largest search engine in the world and also the preferred choice for online video marketing and advertising. Let’s think about that for a moment.
Everyone loves video, right? For many people, they are immediately more attractive than text and it seems that the big G has a special place for Youtube in their hearts. We should also keep in mind that it is ultimately owned by Google.
According to a study by Tubular Insights, videos have a 41% higher click through rate than text.
According to a study conducted by Aimclear, the platform on which we upload our videos seems to have an impact on reviewability. Which platform is preferred? You guessed it. YouTube dominates Google’s SERP, but there are other platforms that also have an influence.
A video can help your visitors stay on your website longer. This is seen as a ranking factor by search engines. We should also consider the option for visitors to share the page with the video on social networks. This increases the chance of getting inbound links from users who notice. This will certainly add value to your SEO.
Conclusion
There is no more effective formula for generating statistical leads, advice or SEO facts that will lead to guaranteed marketing success. However, the SEO secrets we have discussed in this article can help you with your site SEO, integrated marketing or content strategies.
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