80/20 Rule in SEO & Top 6 Google SEO Ranking Factors in 2019
What is 80/20 Principle?
80/20 Principle or Pareto Principle named after Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto is an observation that "80% of results came from 20% of efforts" for any kind of activity. It is a concept that suggests that, if we are undertaking a task that requires 100 activities to be done for good results, we need to give more focus on completing the top 20 activities of it. Focusing on 80 activities which are not relevant won't fetch us any good results compared to the top 20.
Or simply: Concentrate more on the top 20% of priority activities that needs to be executed well to succeed in any assignment. Don't ever be lazy on doing that top 20% activities. An expert in any field is one who works on improving his or her top priority tasks.
Why is 80/20 rule relevant in Search Engine Optimization or SEO activities?
SEO or Search Engine Optimization activities includes all the tasks we undertake to take our website on top of Google Search Engine Results Pages (SERP) under Organic rankings for different keywords.
Google Search Engine Algorithm uses over 200+ ranking factors or signals to sort out relevant resulting page for a keyword. Google CEO, Sundar Pichai vaguely mentioned 200+ SEO Ranking Signals in the US congress recently when questioned about President Trump's picture showing up with keyword 'Idiot'.
So, it turns out that we've a lot of work to do! But is it really required to do all the so-called SEO activities to get ranked high in Google SERP?
The answer is, NO!
80/20 rule comes to rescue us at this point. You only need to focus on top 20% of activities to get better SEO Results.
Simply, in SEO also 80% of results comes from only 20% of SEO Activities.
What are those 20% of activities which gives us 80% of results in SEO?
Searching Algorithms are constantly evolving & so do SEO activities. An SEO ranking factor which used to be working well before a decade need not work well today in 2019 & spending time for working on it won't be a good idea at all. Now we are in an era of mobile friendly, voice focused, new keyword phrase searches than a few years back.
Top 6 Google SEO Ranking Factors in 2019
1. Content. Content. Content. Content is "The Queen".
Yes. Content is the Queen: Even the King need to listen!
If you ask me to point out any one top factor which you need to focus more for success in SEO, my answer without any doubt would be Content.
How to do Content SEO & for what all keywords you need to write article or content is a different topic. I will share with you those details in the coming articles.
In short, you need to focus more on content:Unique, Fresh, Useful, Relevant & Comprehensive contents. Not just any content and not just for any topic.
We are all using search engines to get content. Contents of different types: Text, Image, Audio, Video, Map, News, etc. So it is obvious that Search Engines also want to show us good content. If your content is not relevant & useful, then it is highly unlikely that you would get ranked in top 10.
Google Search Engine along with Google Keyword Planner Tool is a good start to identify Keywords based on which you need to analyse & write content.
2. Mobile First Indexing by Google. Mobile is your sixth sense.
Before 3 years Google had officially declared that Mobile Searches surpassed Desktop queries.
In and around 2016 Google moved to Mobile First Indexing.
What it means is, mobile version of your website is given priority for indexing and ultimately for ranking.
Earlier Google Bots used to crawl your desktop version first and started ranking it for mobile as well as desktop rankings. But now it give preference to mobile version for indexing and ranking.
According to Google Official Blog: Today, most people are searching on Google using a mobile device. However, our ranking systems still typically look at the desktop version of a page’s content to evaluate its relevance to the user. This can cause issues when the mobile page has less content than the desktop page because our algorithms are not evaluating the actual page that is seen by a mobile searcher. To make our results more useful, we’ve begun experiments to make our index mobile-first.
Google Official Statement in December 2018:
We've seen websites across the world embrace the mobile web, making fantastic websites that work on all kinds of devices. There's still a lot to do, but today, we're happy to announce that we now use mobile-first indexing for over half of the pages shown in search results globally.
What you need to do?
Simply do a Google Mobile Friendly Test, using Google Tool.
If it turns out be okay, nothing to be worried about as of now. If it is not, give more focus on making your website mobile friendly.
In short, in an SEO Audit, if you find your site not mobile friendly, that's a red flag and you need to fix that issue first before proceeding.
Imagine for a few minutes, would you spent time in browsing that website in your mobile, which requires you to zoom and pan always to read the content legibly? Or would you just prefer pages where you need to focus only on scrolling?
And, that's why Google moved to mobile-first indexing.
3. Page Speed. 10 seconds is Eternity in 2019.
Going to do SEO for a website which takes eternity to fully load?
Hang on a few seconds and let the idea sinks in! Your client want you to do SEO for his/her website which takes more than 10 seconds to load. Keep all the other works aside and identify all the things which are causing the loading time and try to rectify it. Though there is no such so-called best load time, better check a few of your competitors in top 10 rankings and try to out perform them or at least an average loading time.
Page speed performance really matters in SEO rankings and give much attention to it. Don't take it lightly, your awesome & much shared content or tons of backlinks won't give you good rankings if your site loads slower.
There are many tools available to analyse page speed and highlights issues making it load slow. I recommend using two such good tools.
4. On-page SEO - Title, Headings, Keywords, URL, Outbound & Internal Links, Image SEO
No Rocket science here. Just follow the 6 basic on-page factors
- Make your page Title keyword optimized. Better to begin your title with keyword.
- Make your blog or page title in heading 1 tag.
- Keywords optimized URL structure
- Give enough outbound links to relevant resources. It only increases the authority of your article and helps in getting higher ranks.
- Give proper internal links to relevant articles in your site itself. It will make your website look structured in as far as a user or Google Bot is concerned.
- Image SEO - All your images must be properly compressed with proper ALT tag & image name. If not properly compressed, images in your site will make the site load slower.
5. Local SEO. Earth is Flat, but you want it Local.
Searches are getting local. According to Google 46% of searches now have a ‘local intent’.
Local SEO is entirely different from SEO. In local SEO you need to give more focus on Local Reviews, Local NAP (Name Address Phone Number) Citation, Google My Business Pages, Local Link Building etc.
A case study of Local SEO for one of my Client. Plutomen Technologies.
When I started SEO for Plutomen before 2 years, all their required Keywords were hard to rank as they were all over saturated top competitive keywords, like iPhone App Development, Android App Development, Web Development etc. But I noticed, they also have services related to Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality etc. Those I knew would become 'competitive' keywords within a few years and I planned SEO activities such that I gave more focus on local seo keywords like India, Gujarat, Ahmedabad, Bangalore & Delhi.
After around 12+ months of SEO activities they started ranking for ALL local SEO keywords which I wanted them to rank and for the last 8+ months they are ranking Number 1 in local searches.
- augmented reality companies in gujarat - Rank 1
- augmented reality companies in ahmedabad - Rank 1
- virtual reality companies in ahmedabad - Rank 2
- virtual reality companies in gujarat - Rank 1
- augmented reality companies in delhi - Rank 2 Map, Rank 5 Web
- virtual reality companies in delhi - Rank 1 Map, Rank 6 Web
- augmented reality service provider in india - Rank 8
- augmented reality companies in india - Rank 13
So, never ever pay less attention to Local SEO. What would be the case if I had focused only on SEO and leave local SEO all together back then?
6. Backlinks. Quality, Authority & Variety Matters.
Last but not the least. Backlinks building is an important activity associated with SEO. Just like Content SEO, backlinks building is also a long term activity. Backlinks are inbound links from other websites to our website. It is more like a 'vote of support' from other site & it will increases our site's relevancy with respect to that particular anchor text or keyword. Backlinks give signal to the search engines that your link is trusted by people & it ought to contain valuable information.
According to an updated study: Links are still incredibly important for ranking in Google.
While building backlinks you may need to consider the Quality, Authority & Variety of backlinks to your site. Else, remember Google Penguin Algorithm is looking for you. Be warned, Penguin is now a Real-Time component of Google's Core Algorithm.
So, in short, for a successful SEO you need to give more focus on Website Content, Mobile Friendliness, Page Performance, On-Page HTML Factors, Local SEO & Backlinks. These are the essential factors for Google Top SEO Ranking Factors 2019.
Note: 80/20 Rule doesn't mean that you don't need to give focus on other factors, it simply means to give more attention to top ranking factors and all factors are not of same weightage as far as ranking is concerned.
Please feel free to give your suggestions and corrections. If you have any doubts regarding any of the factors I mentioned here, pleae ping me via comments box below. I am glad to help you.
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