Looking for ways to improve your SEO strategy? We’ve rounded up some significant and thought-provoking statistics that should head you in the right direction on the SERPs pages.
- ZERO: Position zero (also referred to as a ‘featured snippet’) is the information displayed above the first search result on a SERP (Search Engine Results Page), not including paid advertising. It’s not easy to land it, but three good starting points identified by Forbes are keywords, searcher intent and enriched content.
- TWO: The number of seconds Google expects ecommerce websites to take to load (for its own websites, the aim is half a second). Page speed is a primary technical factor that influences search ranking. It also has a detrimental knock on effect on dwell time as readers have been shown to read less when delays occur.
- THREE: Google has three top ranking factors – Content, Links and RankBrain (a machine-learning artificial intelligence system that helps sort through Google’s search results). The SEO value of high-quality content can take your website to the top ranking spot. So whether it is text, video, animation or audio, keep all content relevant and useful with your audience’s needs in mind.
- EIGHT: According to SEO experts Yoast, there are eight crucial steps while carrying out keyword research. From determining your mission to landing page prioritisation and deciding what your cornerstone content should be.
- FIFTY-NINE: Position 1 URLs average 59 characters long, according to a study that analysed 1 million URLs ranking on page 1 of Google to discover what it takes to get to the top. So the shorter your URLs, the better.
- SEVENTY: The percentage of online searches that long-tail keywords (three or more words) account for collectively. That’s because they tend to be much more specific and focused on searcher intent than one or two-word short-tail keywords.
- ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY: Meta descriptions can be any length. But Google generally truncates descriptions to 155-160 characters on desktops, according to Moz. Make sure you include the keywords you want to target, as these will appear in bold in the description if the searcher types them.
- ONE THOUSAND FOUR HUNDRED AND FORTY SEVEN: Was the average word count of the top 10 SERP results in a study by Backlinko, which analysed 11.8 million search results. Comprehensive, in-depth content is also more likely to include backlinks – which ticks off two of the top three ranking factors mentioned above.
In 2020 7bn searches were made in Google every day. That’s up from 5.5bn searches per day in 2016. With results drawn from hundreds of billions of web pages stored in the Google Search Index.
The numbers may seem overwhelming, but we can help. At Redactive we excel in working in specialist markets where we create rich, top-quality, award-winning content. Just what your audience is looking for.