In the old days SEO experts focused on backlinks, meta data and on-page optimization to make websites rank in search engines. However, the process of SEO has changed in response to factors that contribute to how Google ranks your website. Nowadays mobile friendliness, site speed, secure domains and other factors contribute to how well your site fares in rankings.

The finer points of SEO are certainly not for the faint of heart. According to Backlinko ranking is influenced over 200 ranking factors divided into 9 categories. Most businesses do not have time to devote to mastering every single factor.

So what factors are really important when it comes to SEO? In this connection, do backlinks still matter and which factors are really impactful when it comes to SEO?

Are backlinks still a thing?

The short answer is YES. According to Brian Dean of Backlinko, Google still considers the number of referring domains as an important factor.

Based on the picture, the more backlinks the higher the Google position. Brian is not alone in this assessment. SEO expert Rand Fishkin published a “How to Rank” checklist for 2018. The checklist focused on creating meaningful and amplifiable content because according to him this type of content encourages social sharing and because it is created by somebody “credible” and is therefore worthy of amplification.

If you’re still not convinced SEMRush published a study that lists that backlinks are the 5^th most important factor in determining rank criteria.

Backlinks Factor To Consider For SEO

While it’s true that total number of referring domains is important to Google, there are other factors to consider according to the SEMRush study. They include:

• Total referring domains – the more high quality links to your website, the better.
• Total backlinks – this is different from total referring domains because while your website has multiple backlinks from the same domain, the total number of backlinks still matter.
• Total referring IPs – some of the top websites have 20,000 and 25,000 referring IPs.
• Total follow backlinks – the more of these types of links the better for your site. “No follow” links don’t count. They look like this:

<a href=”http://www.ashworthcreatives.au/” rel=”nofollow”>Link Text</a>

• Total number of anchors – anchor tags are invisible positioning markers that point to different pages of your website. According to SEMRush, anchor tags have more ranking weight for more popular keywords. You might use anchor if web page is very long and you want users to navigate to a certain section more easily.
• Presence of keyword in the anchor – including the targeted keyword in the anchor is good practice. It has the very least influence in domain ranking except in popular keywords.

Old School SEO Still Reigns

Now that we have some info on backlinks, what other practices should you consider for SEO in 2019?

• Content is still king. But not just any content will do. Content should be high quality. Long form content tend to garner inbound links and keep visitors longer in your website which is also an important ranking factor for Google. The premise is that if visitors don’t bounce from our site, it must be relevant and therefore worthy of a higher rank.
• Keyword rich content is an important factor. Google hates it when you stuff content with keywords. Therefore it is important that content really speaks to what people are looking for. According to Rand’s checklist, website owners should conduct keyword research to help discover words and phrases searchers use.
• Meta tags still matter so it’s important to pay attention to title tags and meta description. One of Google’s top ranking factor is still CTR so a compelling link title is important.
• Include H1 and H2 tags in your webpages. This is really old school but using at least 1 H1 or H2 header will help your site rank higher.

Modern SEO Practices To Consider

Aside from the tried and tested methods listed above, modern marketers should also bear these in mind:

• Make sure that your website is mobile-friendly. Google actually crawls this version of your website first before the desktop version. Therefore your website should be responsive across all mobile platforms.
• Your website should also load fast. Mobile and desktop websites should load in 7 seconds or less. According to studies the top 3 websites load in 3 seconds. Top ranked websites load the fastest.
• Make sure your website is encrypted. Always use HTTP encryption. Almost 50% of top ranking websites use HTTP encryption, a 12% increase from 2105.

We hope that considering these practices will help you rank better in 2019.

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Link building methods

The methods of link building are changing from time to time, and the latest updates have to be employed for your website to make sure that your site is at par with the latest technologies and work smoothly on any device and interface that operate on the latest technologies. It is important to have a thorough understanding of the link building campaigns and the benefits that you can get from them. When a website has many backlinks from various sources, it is considered to be a quality site with quality content and hence would rank higher up in the Google ranking. Google now also focuses on the link quality and not just the quantity. That is why you must keep in mind some of the latest link building updates for 2017 when you are creating your own link building strategies.

The page you link back to

There are different kinds of links on the internet, and they can have a different impact on your website ranking. When you are linked back from a relevant web page which has a PageRank powerhouse, it can influence your Google ranking to a large extent. It has been observed from years of research that the authority of the page that is linking to your website has a huge impact on your ranking and is one of the most important factors which must be taken into consideration. The main reason behind this is that the authoritative pages would be able to pass more authority which is also called PageRank to your site, unlike a website which does not have as much exposure or audience online. There are applications like the Ahrefs to check the proxy indicator of the PageRank for a site to determine whether it is powerful enough and would help you at all with your ranking.

Try and get in touch with a website or a blog with is relevant to your site and get a link back to them than getting many link backs from no-name bloggers.

The relevancy of the site

It is important to take note of the relevance of the website which you are linking with to ensure that it does not look like you are trying to manipulate the Google algorithms for increasing your ranking. Further, when you link with a website randomly, it affects the quality of the content that your site has. If your audiences are looking for certain information from your site but end up being redirected to another website which has an entirely different topic of interest on their reading list, the audience would feel betrayed and that their time is being wasted which would have an adverse impact on our traffic and audience psyche. With the help of the SEO keyword research template, you can easily manage this issue of relevancy. You can look up the relevant keywords which are suitable for the links and the content on your website and at the same time make sure that these keywords are taken care of such that you get a better ranking.

When you have the relevant link backs from another website with similar topics and the link is suitable for the context of the content, then it is considered to be a good link building campaign.

The position of the link on the page

When you are publishing an article that has anchor texts that are part of your link building campaign, it is essential to take note of the position of the anchor text on the page. If the anchor text is in the first couple of paragraphs and is the beginning of a sentence, it can send out a negative impression to the audiences. Further, it can look like a manipulation of the Google bots and the Google algorithm and hence a violation of the Google webmaster guidelines. If this is so, the ranking would be negatively impacted for your website. In case the link is further down the article, it may go unnoticed by the audience if they choose not to read through the entire article.

It is always safe and better to use the link back related anchor text in the middle of the content such that it is relevant to the things that you are writing there. One must make sure that the anchor text which is being used for the link building is relevant to the content and whatever you are talking about in the middle of the article.

Conclusion

It can be concluded that when you take note of some of the latest methods of link building you can reap the maximum output from the website. There are various methods of link building that are available to you, and you can come up with prosperous link building strategies when you take note of them.

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