Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of driving targeted traffic to your business website. In other words, It helps you to put your website in front of your customers when they Google the products and services you offer. By now, you might have pretty good knowledge of SEO and how it helps you in improving your sales. However, there are some lesser known facts of SEO that you should be knowing. Therefore, in this blog post, we are going to list ten lesser-known facts about search engine optimization.
1. Not all search engines consider links as a ranking signal
Yes, that is absolutely true. Google is the most popular search engine in the world. We all know that it uses backlinks as a ranking factor. However, it does not mean the other search engines also do the same. Let us give an example.
Russia is the world’s largest country. And in Russia, Yandex is the most popular search engine. This search engine does not take links as the ranking factor. In simple words, you can rank your website on Google’s first page without link building. The main reasons behind Yandex not considering links as ranking signals are spamming and black hat SEO. SEO experts believe Google is also heading in the same direction. That is in future you may not see link building is SEO.
2. Rich snippets do not influence your search engine ranking directly
Rich snippets are nothing but structured markup data added to the website by the webmasters so that search engines like Google understand the content on the website better. Many SEO agencies say they add rich snippets. Hence, most of the business owners come to the conclusion that rich snippets are the search engine ranking factor.
Rich snippets do not influence your search engine ranking directly. However, there are other SEO benefits of using rich snippets. That is they can index your pages faster. The other advantage is that it attracts potential customers and improve click-through rate.
3. Customer’s travel time is important
So what is a customer’s travel time? It is the physical time taken by a customer to travel from one place to another. Customer’s travel time is important, in fact, it is a very important ranking factor in SEO.
The websites that have poor on-page and off-page SEO strategies can rank better if they are near to the customer’s location. However, this should not be the only thing to focus on. Invest your time and money on digital marketing methods such as SMM, SEO, PPC, Email marketing, etc. So, if you own a local business, this lesser know fact about SEO can be useful to you.
4. Duplicate content won’t get you penalized
You might have seen on the SEO blogs or heard from your friends that Google penalizes for using duplicate content. Well, this is not true. This is one of the biggest myth in the SEO industry that people still believe.
So, will the duplicate content hurt your site? Well, it depends. Google sees duplicate content different from copied content. Duplicate content will not get you penalized, but copied content will. If Google finds your content is not unique, then it is not a penalty. Of course, Google expects you to create fresh content.
If you find a website duplicating your content, you can fill in a request form to remove the content under the digital millennium copyright act. Just in case, if you are using duplicate content, use canonical tags to tell search engine where the first official version appeared on the internet.
5. 75% of the people never scroll past the first page
SEO companies promise to rank your website on Google’s first page for a reason. Ranking on the first page is the most important goal in SEO. That is because 75% of the people never go to the second page of a search engine. If your website is placed in the second page, you need to contact an SEO agency today.
This information comes handy if you are suffering from a bad reputation. That is when your business name is search, your customers get to see bad things. In such cases, reverse SEO is done, and the bad links are buried in the second, third or fourth page of the search engine results page, where almost no one visits.
6. Among the top 10 popular sites, there are only two content oriented sites
Let us have a look at the world’s most popular sites. Here we go, Google, Facebook, Youtube, Yahoo, Amazon, Wikipedia, Twitter, Bing, eBay, and MSN. You might have already expected these sites to top.
If you watch closely, only two websites among these ten are content oriented websites. They are Youtube and Wikipedia. So, what you can understand from this? The other websites are content gates, where the direct content is not provided. So what makes the other eight websites to top the list. These websites allow visitors to do something, not only to consume content. Hence, it can be said that the use of the website matters the most.
7. Google can detect objects in the image
Not many know that Google can actually identify an object in the image. There is more surprise to it. Did you know? Object recognition is a ranking signal that can affect the online presence of any website. So, when it comes to SEO, never ignore images. Do not just upload images, as you do in your Facebook account. Optimize them so that you gain SEO benefits.
8. A video on your homepage can make a big difference
Youtube is now the world’s second largest search engine. How this became possible? Everyone likes videos and they prefer it over other forms of content. Even social media experts say one should focus more on videos because they by nature gain the attention of the viewers. According to a recent study, videos have a 41% higher CTR than text.
Social media marketers believe that platform we choose to upload our videos impact the ability to rank. So, as a business owner what platform you should prefer? Yes, you guessed it right? Youtube is the most loved video sharing platform. And it dominates Google’s search engine results page. However, there are other platforms that have some influence as well, for instance, Dailymotion, Metacafe, and Google video.
9. Google has indexed only 0.04% of the data
Yes, this is pretty much shocking. Google has estimated that the internet contains roughly 5 million terabytes of data. Out of which the search engines giant has indexed less than 0.1% of data.
So what we should learn from this? There is a lot of data on the internet. You can rank your website only if your web pages are indexed. If your web pages are not indexed, you can never rank them. So make sure your website is indexed regularly.
10. Search and email are the top two internet activities
We all know that the search is the top internet activity. However, we overlook the email part of it. Digital marketing experts usually say email is the most effective path to reach your target audience. Email is so good that social media, PPC or any other digital marketing method doesn’t even come close in terms of results.
Hence, one should not solely focus on search engine optimization and ignore email marketing. Email marketing is the best method to improve brand awareness, brand loyalty, online reputation, lead generation, conversions, and sales.
