It’s an area of marketing where approaches differ, but ultimately the goal will always remain the same – to build a stronger backlink profile and increase domain authority. This often feeds into a wider marketing strategy.

Given that there are different approaches to link-building, a lot of research has been carried out in this area to determine just how important it is in a strategy, and also how important it is to marketers.

In this blog, we’ve rounded up 30 key statistics about the topic, so you can educate yourself on how and why link-building should form a key part of your marketing strategy!

Here at Embryo, we craft tailored organic strategies based on your KPIs, some of which will involve link-building. To learn more about our approach to SEO and what we could do for you, please get in touch with our team after you’ve read this blog! You can call us on 0161 327 2635 or email info@embryo.com and one of our team members will assist you.

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30 Link-Building Statistics Every Marketer Needs to Know

1. The majority, 93.8%, of link builders emphasise the importance of link quality over quantity. (Source: Authority Hacker)
2. The majority – 65% – of marketers gauge link quality by assessing domain authority, while domain rating (48%) and page authority (36%) are also common methods. (Source: Aira)
3. A significant 79.7% of SEOs view link-building as a crucial component of their SEO strategy. (Source: Authority Hacker)
4. A survey reveals that personalised email outreach remains the most successful method of acquiring backlinks, with 79% of respondents achieving success using this approach (Source: BuzzStream and Fractl).
5. More than half, 52.3%, of digital marketers find link-building to be the most challenging aspect of SEO. (Source: Authority Hacker)
6. If limited to a single metric for evaluating link quality, 34% of marketers would choose domain authority, while 22% would opt for domain rating. (Source: Aira)
7. A mere 2.2% of content manages to secure links from multiple websites. (Source: Backlinko)
8. Sending follow-up emails in link-building outreach campaigns results in 40% more links being acquired. (Source: Authority Hacker)
9. Google’s page ranking algorithm places significant emphasis on links, ranking them among the top two criteria considered. (Source: Search Engine Land)
10. A considerable 41% of SEO experts find link-building to be the most challenging aspect of search optimisation. (Source: Ascend)
11. According to SEO experts, backlinks rank as the third most critical factor for site ranking. (Source: Databox)
12. It typically takes an average of 3.1 months for the impact of links on search rankings to become noticeable. (Source: Authority Hacker)
13. Approximately 94% of online content fails to garner any external links. (Source: Backlinko)
14. A notable 38% of marketers prioritise page rankings as their top Key Performance Indicator (KPI) for assessing the effectiveness of their link-building efforts. (Source: Aira)
15. The quantity of backlinks a web page possesses is directly associated with the amount of organic traffic it attracts. (Source: Ahrefs)
16. Among factors contributing to successful SEO, referring domains to a URL, specifically through backlinks, exhibit the strongest correlation. (Source: Authority Hacker)
17. An overwhelming 89.2% of link builders report that it takes between 1 and 6 months to witness the effects of links on search rankings. (Source: Authority Hacker)
18. Links constitute one of the top two criteria considered by Google’s page ranking algorithm. (Source: Search Engine Land)
19. A majority, 65.4%, of SEOs prioritise domain authority over the number of links on the target page when assessing search rankings. (Source: Authority Hacker)
20. The first-ranked page on Google has an average of 3.8 times more backlinks than other pages. (Source: Backlinko)
21. SEO experts rank external linking as the third most crucial factor for search optimisation. (Source: Databox)
22. A study on web content reveals no correlation between backlinks and social shares. (Source: Backlinko)
23. The majority – 65% – of marketers gauge link quality by assessing domain authority, while domain rating (48%) and page authority (36%) are also common methods. (Source: Aira)
24. Only 2.2% of content manages to generate links from multiple websites. (Source: Backlinko)
25. 28% of SEO budgets go towards link-building. (Source: Authority Hacker)
26. Pages ranking in the top 10 search results have a diverse anchor text profile, with only 13% of anchors being exact-match keywords. This emphasises the importance of employing a range of anchor text phrases when building links (Source: Ahrefs)
27. 51% of SEO professionals regard competitor backlink analysis as a vital element of their link-building strategy, emphasising the value of identifying and targeting high-quality sources similar to competitors. (Source: SEMRush)
28. There is a positive correlation between social media shares and the number of backlinks a page receives, indicating that promoting content on social platforms can indirectly contribute to link-building efforts. (Source: Hootsuite)
29. Guest posting is the most popular link-building tactic, with 64.9% of link builders using it. (Source: Authority Hacker)
30. Content that is widely shared on social media receives 2-5 times more organic traffic and backlinks. (Authority Hacker)

Ready to Find Out What Your Recommended Organic Strategy Would Look Like?

As you can see, there’s no doubt that link-building is an important strategic element, and marketers – and search engines alike – do still value strong backlink profiles.

Just like link-building though, any broader organic strategy will differ in approach depending on your industry, website, and your goals. We take pride in conducting thorough research during our initial strategic phase, to understand exactly what needs to be done to take your domain authority and organic visibility to the next level.

But, don’t just take our word for it – our results speak for themselves! Like what you see and keen to learn more? Get in touch with us by contacting 0161 327 2635 or info@embryo.com.

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You might’ve heard that SEO is a long-term approach compared to other digital marketing channels, whilst that is somewhat true, there are plenty of short-term wins you can incorporate into your new SEO strategy to give your site the boost it deserves!

At Embryo, our team of SEO experts will look at ways to improve a website’s organic performance through a range of short and long-term approaches. If this sounds like something you would benefit from, feel free to give us a call at 0161 327 2635 or email info@embryo.com. But, before you do that, make sure to give this article a read, as there could be some SEO quick wins that you too could easily implement. 

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1. Find Unlinked Mentions

The first quick win you can look to incorporate into your SEO campaign is ‘unlinked mentions’. Now, if you haven’t heard of these before, it’s simply finding where your brand has been mentioned on the web without it being linked to. 

One of the main pillars of SEO is backlinks (a link from an external website back to yours), so turning these unlinked mentions into backlinks could be a great way to strengthen your domain. 

Admittedly, this tactic works best with bigger brands, but there’s nothing stopping you from giving it a go! Simply head over to the ‘content explorer’ in Ahrefs and type in your brand name in quotation marks. Then click ‘in content’ on the search dropdown bar. Next, click the ‘highlight unlinked’ filter option and add your domain. Once you have your results, review those pages and look for unlinked mentions of your brand. 

However, make sure to avoid low-quality sites, pages talking negatively about your brand and sites that already link to you that the tool didn’t pick up.

To get the full benefit of unlinked mentions you should look to set up alerts in Ahrefs so you can quickly react to any new unlinked mentions. Here’s a resource that will help you to set up the Ahrefs Alerts.

2. Work on Improving Page 2 Rankings

If you own a website, then you’ll know how competitive it is to attract valuable traffic to your website via your organic rankings. To understand this further, Sistrix carried out a study that states the top 3 results receive 55.2% of all traffic.

Thankfully, with this SEO quick win, you are part way there! If you already have rankings that are on page 2, then that means Google likes your content. However, it also means that it’s not good enough yet, to belong within the first page results. 

To turn this into a quick win for your website, simply go to one of your SEO tools and review your keyword rankings. Then filter them by positions 11-20, this will show you terms that you rank for on page 2. 

From here you’ll need to find a way to improve your page to better its chances of ranking on the first page of Google for that specific keyword.

 Here’s a Few Things You Can Check:

• Has the page been well-optimised for the page two-term?
• Can you implement more internal links to that page using keyword-rich anchor text?
• Does your page need updating with new information?
• Do competitors’ pages include information yours doesn’t?
• Can you incorporate keyword clusters?
• Could you add more rich media?

Once you’ve made your changes, analyse your results and continue to make improvements until you feature on page 1 for your desired term.

3. Reclaim Lost Links

Reclaiming lost links is another way to incorporate SEO quick wins into your overall strategy. As mentioned previously, backlinks are one of the key pillars of SEO success. Earning links is arguably one of the hardest parts of SEO, and mastering it can take years to accomplish. But, before you go out and try to build some links to your website, it’s probably best to check that you aren’t losing any of the link strength that’s been built in the past.

The main way to check this is to see if your website has any 404 error pages, and more importantly ones with backlinks. Ultimately, if your 404 pages have backlinks, it’s effectively wasted as those pages are unable to pass link strength throughout the site. 

To combat this, you’ll want to find all the 404 pages that exist on your site and filter them by the number of backlinks. The pages with backlinks can then be 301 redirected to another active relevant page. This will help to pass link strength throughout your site that was previously lost through broken pages.

4. Strengthen Internal Linking

We’ve just spoken about reclaiming lost external links, but now it’s time to take a look at internal linking. Internal linking is an SEO tactic that is often overlooked, or not utilised to its full potential. It involves linking from one page of your website to another, check out some of the benefits below.

Benefits of Internal Linking

• They help to pass link strength from one page to another
• You can target internal links to key pages with specific anchor text
• It helps search engines to effectively crawl your website
• They help to provide a structural hierarchy of navigation
• They improve user experience and browsing accessibility

From the above benefits, it seems like a no-brainer to start implementing regular internal linking into your SEO campaigns. You can find internal linking opportunities by a simple site command, which involves your domain and a term that’s relevant to the page you would like to build internal links to.

Let’s say we would like to add internal links to our Organic SEO service page, a site command like the one below would help us to find relevant pages to link from.

site:https://embryo.com/ “organic seo”

5. Remove or Edit Old Content

Do you ever find yourself being embarrassed when looking through your old work and comparing it to the standard you produce now? If so, you will likely experience that feeling again following this next SEO quick win.

Google doesn’t like ‘fluff’ content that’s classed as low quality – it doesn’t just mean your page is low quality, but it also impacts the overall quality of your website – meaning it will be harder to rank in the SERPs. From here, you will need to collect a list of pages that you should either edit or remove from your site.

Factors to Consider When Reviewing Old Content

• Is the content ‘thin’ with very little word count on the subject matter?
• Does your article provide outdated information?
• Is your piece not fully optimised for a focused term?
• Does your page no longer match the correct search intent?
• Does the page rank for any terms/receive organic traffic?
• Is your page insightful and unique compared to similar pieces on the web?
• Does it contain basic errors like poor spelling, formatting and readability?

Ultimately, how you’d like to approach your content is down to you. However, if the piece you are looking at used to bring in traffic/engagement, an update might be what’s required to give it a little boost. 

If your content doesn’t get any traffic and doesn’t rank well for any key terms, then a full rewrite might be needed to revive the content piece!

6. Set up a Google Business Profile

If you don’t have a Google Business Profile set up, then I’d suggest you get one created. Having a Google Business profile will provide local listings of your business on Google maps and local search results.

If you want to rank well locally, then a Google Business profile is essential.

Claiming your Google Business profile is fairly straightforward and doesn’t take long to do. However, it’s important to consistently review your profile and make sure it’s fully up to date at all times.

7. Work on Optimising Meta Titles and Descriptions

Meta titles and descriptions are one of the first things search engines and users look at when coming across your page. A well-crafted meta title and description will provide users and search engines with information about the page.

Therefore, it’s important to draft out a descriptive, catchy and concise meta title and description that will help to boost your click-through rate.

You can simply run a crawl on your website to find pages that need a lot of attention – these include:

• Meta titles or descriptions missing
• Meta titles or descriptions which are too long/short
• Meta titles or descriptions that have been duplicated

Afterwards, you can look at your other pages to make sure they follow best practices to further improve your click-through rate success!

SEO Quick Wins: The Speedy Path to SEO Triumph

I hope this article helps to emphasise that SEO doesn’t always have to be a long game. There are plenty of quick wins you can take advantage of to help push your organic performance in the right direction. 

If you have any questions about any of the above SEO quick wins or are struggling to carry them out for your own website. Feel free to get in touch with our team of SEO experts at Embryo, by calling 0161 327 2635 or email info@embryo.com.

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It is a frustrating challenge to face, but this is a common question asked by website owners and SEO professionals alike. Even if a site is optimised there can be a number of reasons why it may not be showing on Google. One of the top reasons is that indexing has not been set up correctly for your site, which can impact how Google crawls and ranks pages. 

Although there are many issues which may play a part, the good news is that these are easily rectifiable problems. Below we’ll discuss how to fix these indexing issues and how to get your website ranking correctly.

Here at Embryo, indexation and ranking correctly is a core focus of our SEO strategy. To learn more, feel free to reach out to our team by phone at 0161 327 2635 or email info@embryo.com.

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What is Indexation (and 5 Reasons Why Your Website Has Yet to be Indexed by Google)?

Simply put, indexed pages are ones that can be shown in Google Search results. According to Google’s explanation of indexation, ‘a page is indexed by Google if it has been visited by the Google crawler (“Googlebot”), analysed for content and meaning, and stored in the Google index.’. A page which is not indexed cannot show in a SERP, and there are many reasons this may be the case which we will discuss below.

1. Your site is too new

New sites and pages take time for Google to fully crawl for indexability. It may take up to four weeks for a new site to be indexed correctly, but the easiest way to check whether your site is visible in Google search results is to search site:[your website’s URL]. This will load all pages for your website that are visible in Google search results. If you can see results for your website, then you are visible to Google. 

If you can’t see any results, then you may need to create a sitemap and upload using Google Search Console. A sitemap signals to Google which pages are important and the structure of your website, and these can be uploaded to Google Search Console using the following steps;

1. Open Google Search Console.
2. Navigate to Indexing > Sitemaps.
3. Paste your sitemap URL into the empty box.
4. Submit.

2. Your website has ‘noindex’ tags

You can mark pages to be noindex by using custom code, and by doing this you are hiding that page from Google’s crawl. These pages are still accessible to users, but not from any SERP. There may be instances where you don’t remember adding this noindex tag to your page when building it out, but they can often be put in place by developers if a page is under construction or automatically by a content management system (CMS).

Why do we noindex pages to begin with? Generally, we would use these tags for pages which we do not want Google to index for a number of reasons, for example, they are under development or they cannibalise other top pages. However, if a page has been noindexed incorrectly this can be easily rectified. You can either use a Search Console report or run an AHrefs Site Audit, which will be able to identify any pages with noindex tags. Once you have identified the incorrectly tagged pages, remove the “noindex” tags.

3. You are blocking Google from crawling your site

In some instances, you may be inadvertently blocking Google from crawling pages or entire sections of your site by incorrectly using a robots.txt file A robots.txt file instructs search engine bots on where they can and cannot go on your site. If you have blocked certain pages in your robot.txt file from search engines, they cannot crawl and index these pages. 

There are two ways to identify and address this issue. First, you can use the Coverage Report in Google Search Console and find pages which have been highlighted with ‘Submitted URL blocked by robots.txt’ errors. However, this only works if Google has already attempted to crawl the URLs in your sitemap so this may not work if you have only recently uploaded your sitemap. 

The other method is to check manually, which can be achieved by searching [your domain name]/robots.txt. If you find the line disallow: / under User-agent: * or User-agent: Googlebot, this will need to be removed. Why? Because this line will block Googlebot from crawling any part of your site. Be sure to Remove any tags blocking content that you want to show up on Google.

4. Your site does not have a strong backlink profile

There are many factors that indicate to Google that a website has high authority and boosts its rankings, one of which is having a strong backlink profile. If your competitors are ranking higher than you for the same terms, it could mean they have more high-quality backlinks than your own website. You can check the number of backlinks your site has using Ahrefs Free Backlink Checker, which can also give you the number of referring domains your site has as well.

The emphasis here is on high quality over quantity. Having a large number of backlinks from low-authority sites can have the inverse effect of damaging your site, as it can be perceived as spam by Google. 

Using this tool, you can compare the number of backlinks you have to competitors. If you fall short, consider building out your backlink profile with more high-quality external links.

5. Your site has a Google penalty

The last (but certainly not least) reason your site may not be seen in Google’s results is that it has a Google Penalty. This is the least likely reason, but it is always a possibility.

Manual penalties are put in place by Google to deindex or demote your site and are applied when Google reviews your site and it does not adhere to their Webmaster Guidelines. These penalties are very rare, however, and are only put in place if something has been done drastically wrong. Google will alert you of any penalties in Google Search Console, under Security & Manual Actions > Manual Actions tab.

If there’s no warning in there, then you probably don’t have a manual penalty. If you do have a warning, you can submit your site for reconsideration to get your ranking back again on Google

Conclusion: Have No Fear, Indexing Is Near

There are many reasons your site may not show on Google. As we have addressed, the majority of these are easily fixable. Although there are a few which may take more time to address, such as building out your backlink profile, these are longer-term issues and most of your problems can be resolved relatively quickly.

If you are experiencing issues or are looking to expand your website, reach out and contact us here at Embryo and we will help in any way we can.

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Here we will explore how links work, why they’re important, and the various ways that they are used across the web.

If you have any further questions about Hrefs and HTML links, feel free to speak to our team today by phone on 0161 327 2635 or email info@embryo.com.

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The Importance of HTML Links

Links are the pathways through which both users and search engines traverse the digital landscape. For search engines, the discovery of your web pages is pivotal. Without their indexing, your pages remain hidden from search results—a missed opportunity for visibility. Similarly, imagine a user discovering your website without the guiding hand of links; navigating the digital terrain would become a daunting challenge.

In essence, links are the invisible threads that knit the web into a functional entity.

Demystifying HTML Links

At the core of an HTML link lies the tag—a composition of the opening tag (<a>), tag attributes (including the anchor text or object), and a closing tag (</a>). This tag structure takes the form:

<a href=”URL”>ANCHOR TEXT OR OBJECT</a>

The anchor text serves as a clickable text for users, such as “Contact Us.” Alternatively, an object, be it an image or button, can also serve as a link. The href attribute takes centre stage, dictating the link’s destination.

The abbreviation “href” stands for Hypertext Reference, effectively connecting  key elements:

• The clickable text or object
• The URL, which serves as the destination of the link
• Navigating with HTML Links

HTML links possess the ability to transport users to the designated destination outlined in the href. However, the manner in which users reach this destination can be customised. Within the code, you have the power to specify whether the linked page opens in the same tab or a new tab.

The two prevalent options are:

• _blank: Opens the page in a new window, a user-friendly approach that prevents them from leaving your site.
• _self: Opens the page within the same tab or window, ideal for download links and seamless interactions.

Deciphering Relative and Absolute URLs

In the realm of URLs, two terms hold significance: relative and absolute URLs. These concepts dictate how you guide users to web destinations.

Relative URLs: Think of these as directions given within a city—a reference to the “slug” of your URL. Commonly employed for internal links, they offer advantages such as flexibility when changing domains and potential page speed improvements.

Absolute URLs: Think of these as complete addresses including city, postal code, and street number—unambiguous directions. Ideal for external links, they provide precise navigation for both users and search engines.

A Glimpse of HTML Links in Action

On a live webpage, links stand out through their appearance:

• Blue and underlined if not yet clicked
• Purple and underlined if clicked

It’s essential to note that if the link’s blue colour blends with your site’s background, you can customise the link colour using a hex code:

<a href=”URL” style=”color: #HEX”>ANCHOR TEXT OR OBJECT</a>

Diverse Types of Hyperlinks

The world of <a href> links encompasses a variety of types:

• Basic page links: Commonly found in navigation menus or within content.
• Image links: Transform images into pathways to destinations.
• Button links: Engaging for Calls to Action (CTAs).
• Phone/Email links: Connect users directly with contact information.

Hreflanguages

You can also use links to help search engines understand where your website is shown geographically and aid international SEO efforts. If you have multiple versions of one website but each is designed for a different market, say the US, Australia, and the UK you can tell crawl bots which site to show where. It’ll also help you avoid duplicate content penalties.

<link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”en-us” href=”http://www.examplewebsite.co.uk/us/” 

<link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”en-ca” href=”http://www.examplewebsite.co.uk/gb/” 

You can read more about improving your international SEO here. 

Common link issues

While links can help SEO and UX efforts, there are plenty of issues that links can cause. We’ve outlined some of the most common issues incurred by links here. 

• Broken internal links: If you have pointed to a webpage on your own site that is no longer there, then you are sending both users and crawl bots to a dead end. This is bad for UX and SEO. Especially so if the page you’ve removed used to rank. Read more on redirecting dead pages here.
• Broken external links: Similar to sending a user to a dead page on your own site, you’ll want to avoid broken links out to other websites too.
• Too many links on one page: When creating content be mindful of stuffing links into the page. Only add links where you believe it adds value to the content. It’s thought that too many links on one page may have adverse effects on SEO efforts.

• Redirect chains & loops: If you link out to a page that redirects, which then redirects again, you’re creating what is called a redirect chain. These can slow crawl bots down as they have to navigate multiple links to get to their final destination. Try to always link to the final URL rather than a redirect URL.
• Orphaned pages: A webpage with no links pointing to it at all can be considered invisible. Search engines may find it near impossible to find the page and users certainly will. 

Navigating the Web, One Link at a Time

Links are indispensable guides for users and crawl bots traversing your website. However, excessive or irrelevant links can harm rather than help. Strategic link placement enhances user experience and content usefulness.

As we conclude this journey through the intricacies of HTML links, remember that these seemingly small elements hold the power to shape user experiences and define search engine visibility. Craft your web of links thoughtfully, creating pathways that enrich the digital experience and lead users to their intended destinations.

If you would like help creating your own internal linking strategy or understanding how links are affecting your SEO performance contact us today.

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This is why SEO is such an important part of any company’s digital marketing strategy.  To drive results you need a well-thought-out strategy, but we’ll let you in on a secret, SEO success comes down to three pillars, and by working on these pillars you can establish the contextuality and trust of your website, not only with your customers but with Google too.

The Three Pillars of SEO

Technical – Ensuring your website is in the best shape possible. A detailed SEO audit will help with this, by identifying any issues which need to be fixed to ensure Google can crawl and index your web pages at speed.

Content – Creating high-quality and long-form content that answers the questions your audience has will show Google that your content is more useful and informative and therefore more deserving of high rankings.

Authority – Securing a mix of links and coverage from influential and official websites to your website, gives signals of trust and authority to Google.

So you’ve identified that you need to build your SEO strategy around the three pillars, but how do you create high-quality content that converts?

In the fast-paced digital age, creating content that effectively engages and converts your target audience has become essential. To stand out and drive meaningful results, you need a well-defined content strategy that aligns with your business goals and resonates with your audience. This blog will delve into the key strategies that CEOs can implement to create content that converts.

Creating Content that Converts: Seven Things to Consider

Define Your Objectives

Before diving into content creation, you need to outline clear and specific objectives for your content marketing efforts. Are you aiming to increase brand awareness, drive website traffic, generate leads, or boost sales? Having well-defined goals will allow you to measure the success of your content and adjust your strategy accordingly. CEOs should work closely with their marketing teams to align content creation with overarching business goals.

Understand Your Audience

The foundation of any successful content creation strategy is a deep understanding of your target audience. As a CEO you should be or your marketing team should invest time in researching and creating detailed buyer personas. These personas should encapsulate the demographics, interests, pain points, and preferences of your potential customers. By understanding what drives your audience, you can tailor your content to address their needs and provide value.

Create Useful Content

When creating content for your website you need to remember E-E-A-T which refers to Google’s guidelines that require content to demonstrate experience, expertise, authority and trustworthiness. By ensuring that your content demonstrates those qualities means that Google values you and your content as helpful and reliable and therefore needs to be ranked.

As well as creating content that Google finds helpful, to ensure your content converts, you need to make sure that your audience finds your content helpful too. To do this it should be educational and answer the questions your audience has when searching. This is where extensive keyword research helps identify the most relevant terms you should include in your content. When doing keyword research you should also be analysing the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) for each keyword, as a paid strategy might be more suitable than an organic one. Embryo’s own tool Intermingle can help with this, by quickly showing you different SERPs and strategies for a range of keywords.

Write for the Messy Middle

The buyer journey has never been messier and this can be shown in Google’s explanation of what they call ‘the messy middle’. It refers to the fact that when customers are deciding on a purchase they have a lot more influential factors which has them exploring their options for longer, before the right trigger comes along and results in a purchase.

Creating content that your audience can see across different platforms and in different formats can help make the buyer journey shorter. For example, having detailed product descriptions on your website with real customer reviews and product images and videos is a lot more convincing for a customer to make a purchase than a page with half of that content.

Be Consistent

As well as ensuring your sharing content across different platforms, you should also make sure it is consistent. Having different messaging and even tone of voice can make it confusing for your customers, and can leave them with more questions than they began with.

Structure Your Content

Whilst we recommend having lots of content, no matter how much you write uploading it in one block on your website isn’t going to be helpful to your audience. That’s why you also need to think about the structure, design and layout of your content. If you’ve spent so long writing content which answers the questions your audience has, you want to make it easy for them to digest and take action when they need to.

Optimise As You Go

Throughout the process of writing your content, you should be optimising it with best practices. This will ensure that your content supports your SEO strategy and boosts the traffic and conversions of your website, which was the goal all along.

Conclusion

Overall, results from an organic strategy don’t happen overnight. If you’re looking for quicker results a paid search approach might be more suitable, however this isn’t the case for everyone. You also need to remember that if you want your business to grow then you should be investing time, money and resources into a marketing strategy that is scalable and enables you to scale with it.

Now do you see the importance of a detailed SEO strategy? If you want to find out what it takes to be an industry leader and create a high performing organic strategy then get in touch. Or if you would like our award-winning SEO team to audit your online performance, and help identify ways to improve your organic strategy, then request a free and bespoke report here.

At Embryo, we help businesses get to the top of Google every single day via a range of tried and true SEO tactics, as a result, we’re pretty confident that this blog is the perfect jumping-off point for people looking to get their business to the top of Google’s search pages.

If you’re interested in learning more about how we would use the following five techniques (plus many more) to get your business appearing at the top of Google for keywords that matter to you, then get in touch. You can call us on 0161 327 2635 or email info@embryo.com.

Without further ado, here are the top 5 tactics businesses can use to get their website on top of Google Search.

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Identifying Target Keywords Searched for by Users 

If your goal is to appear at the top of Google for the products or services you are offering you need to make sure you are identifying the relevant search terms or phrases around this. These are known as keywords and they are the terms that your potential buyer or user will be searching for in the hope to find your business.

To identify the relevant keywords your business needs to rank for you need to carry out some keyword research based on your website’s category pages, products or services. Once you have identified a variation of relevant long and short-tail keywords you can then embed these into your web pages within the content, page titles, meta description, heading tags and ALT text to generate optimised content for the user. As a result of this optimisation, it allows Google to crawl your web pages and index the pages for the relevant keywords targeted to that page and therefore are more likely to display in the SERPs.

Keyword Research

When it comes to carrying out your keyword research there are a few tips and tricks to help you out. Everyone uses a different tool when carrying out keyword research but here are a couple of the favourites:

• AHREFs
• KWFinder
• SEMRUSH
• SERANKING

For example, let’s say you used KWFinder to carry out some relevant keyword research for your business which was an online ecommerce website which sold “mystery football kits”. You could search for a relevant keyword such as “mystery football shirts for sale”. The results would give you a list of varied keywords around your original main search terms and an average monthly search volume which let’s say would be 5,000. It would then also give us the KD (keyword Difficulty), which is a score out of 100 on the competitiveness of the industry and how easy it will be to rank in the top SERP positions. Along with this it also gives us a bit more insight into the industry with the current top 10 positions for that selected keywords and a trend in search volume over recent years.

Content Is King 

You may have heard this saying before, and when it comes to SEO it’s true. After the last core Google update in March 2023, there was a massive emphasis on the quality of content you are providing to your user. When ranking your website Google looks at each of the page’s content and ranks it based on how helpful it is to the user. Your content needs to educate and help the user along their journey. 

Along with meeting Google guidelines of providing helpful content for the user it also needs to be optimised for when Google is crawling your webpages. What we mean by this is ensuring that those target keywords match up with the page content. Designating target keywords for each page and making sure it is included in the page title, URL, meta description, heading tag and alt text at least once can all contribute to achieving a higher Google ranking, however, it is important not to go back to those old ways of blackhat SEO and stuff the pages with keywords as we can be penalised for this.

Backlink Profile and Authority

So we’ve spoken about content and that ticks off the relevance part of SEO. However, Google also monitors your website based on its authority and trust and the higher this is the better your website will appear in the SERPs. 

What is a backlink profile many people will ask? This is the number of external links pointing to your website. Essentially what this is doing is giving Google a signal that you are trusted by others therefore a user visiting your website can trust you.

What makes a good backlink?

Some people say the more of these you have the better and that can be partially true however it does come down to quality over quantity. A good backlink can be determined by a few things but here are the most important ones. 

Making sure the backlink you are getting to your site is actually relevant to your blog, product or category page. For example, let’s say we were an online ecommerce website that sold men’s designer clothing and we wanted a link to our “men’s designer t-shirt page”. A great link for our site would be the likes of Vogue who are a luxury fashion magazine so as you can see this is relevant and meeting our target audience.

There is also another reason why Vogue would be a great backlink for our “Men’s designer clothing client”. As Vogue is an industry-leading fashion magazine they have an overall DR (Domain Rating) of 86/100 and are well trusted by Google, therefore the fact they are linking to us will boost our overall DR and help us appear higher in the SERPs.

Optimise and Update Google My Business (GMB) Profile 

A Google My Business Profile is a free business listing run through Google. It is normally found on the right-hand side of the SERPs where the white space is. This appears usually when a user searches directly for your brand.

Making sure this is fully optimised with contact details, images, opening hours, description, recent blog posts and website URL is a great way to increase visibility as you are taking as it enables Google to see all your business information in another place giving you extra credibility. 

This is great for small and local businesses as it gives them a chance to read positive reviews and reach your site through a number of different ways helping to increase CTR.

If you want to discover more about the importance of your GMB profile and why it is more important than ever, try reading one of our latest posts.

Improving Usability through Onsite and Tech SEO

We’ve discussed the authority and relevance when it comes to SEO, however, we can’t leave out usability. Ensuring your website is optimised to the best of its ability to make the usability of your website better for your potential users is vital as it will ensure they are choosing you over your competition. 

Improving the usability of your website can be done through all different aspects of on-site and technical SEO however we will touch on a couple of the important ones now. Things such as URL structure, site speed, internal linking, structured data and many more.

URL Structure

When it comes to URL structure there are a couple of things you need to remember to get it right.

• Shows a seamless and clear structure so the users know where they are, at all times on your website. For example homepage/category/product. This also allows the authority to pass through the funnels of the site correctly from the top that is the homepage.
• Include a target keyword so Google can identify what we are trying to rank for, this will also help us with the relevance aspect of SEO.

Internal Linking 

Why is internal linking key? It’s easy for our homepage and those main category pages to be indexed and gain traffic, however, some of our web pages sit a bit deeper and lack authority. Internal linking is a great way to help pass that internal authority to our web pages and guide our users through the site to the next relevant page on their user journey.

Structured Data & Schema Markup 

How can Schema benefit me in the SERPs?

Although schema may not have a direct effect on organic rankings it will help your listings look a lot richer within the SERPs. Adding review, faq and organisation schema code to the backend of your website can massively help when it comes to improving CTR as you are taking up more of that white space over your competition within the SERPs.

Page One Rankings Lead To More Sales and Leads for Your Business

Whether you’re a local business or a multi-million-pound company all these different aspects of SEO will contribute to getting your business on top of Google Search so make sure you consider all of them when looking to boost those rankings.

If you need any help with getting your business to the top of the Google search then be sure to drop us an email at info@embryo.com or call us on 0161 327 2635.

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How can you make decisions for the future of a website without taking factors from those currently leading the industry – and indeed those foraging their own niche within it, too?

At Embryo, we have built our own tool (Needle) that specifically looks at multiple aspects of a collection of sites. AKA an industry, or sector, if you like.

One of the tools within Needle is a 3D graph of how we think that Google views an industry. Using the axes of ‘keyword reach’, ‘unique links’, and website ‘authority’, we are able to plot a much more tangible view of the makeup of a sector than has ever been done before.

We have found that this visualisation helps both non-tech savvy, and those that are tech-savvy to understand what is needed for SEO success in much quicker ways than traditional SEO data/reporting.

It is also helpful that the visualisation is interactive, and the user can pan, tilt, and zoom around the graph to find more information about each node (website).

The 3D graph is just one way for a user to understand an industry. Other reports that help to build a clear picture of what is required for success include ‘search visibility over time’, using the excellent SISTRIX platform data, ‘top pages in the industry’, and ‘common links’.

Just these four reports alone can help to diagnose and create a potent strategy that would help a site to become a real success. Hard work is also required, of course. However, there are another 10+ reports that even with just a brief look at, could produce a winning strategy without any holes.

Let’s take a site from the needle about car leasing – Leasecar – show their current situation, and show what they should do using the data within Needle.

Taking a look at the graph above, from this particular vantage point with keyword reach on the left, and unique links on the right, I know that content on the site needs to be improved. This is because the Leasecar sphere is placed to the right of where these two axis meet. The image below is a zoomed in version of the above.

Sites to the right of where the axis meet almost always don’t have the amount of (quality) content to match their link profile. And because Leasecar has a pretty decent link profile, this makes adding more and better-quality content a very important task to do.

In terms of the number of unique links, Leasecar has the fifth-most links in the sector. However, the four sites leading the way in terms of links lead by some distance. This is because Leasecar has used digital PR very well over the years, which has led to strong, but a limited pool of links.

So with just the information so far, we know that Leasecar needs more and better content to ensure that Google knows that it is one of the leading lights when it comes to the subject of car leasing – and surrounding subjects. And we also know that there is a need for a more diverse range of links.

What is interesting is that we now have probably 90% of the SEO strategy that Leasecar will ever need. And we have taken just a short look at just one of over 40 reports that are contained in the car leasing needle.

Now…think. If I had just looked at Leasecar data in isolation, and not been able to compare it to the other sites in the sector, I would never have known to what extent Leasecar needed to work on both links and content. I would have been making wild guesses.

There is no doubt that as Leasecar adds more and more links from unique websites (and more importantly server IP addresses) that it will climb the authority axis, too. Again, it is already pretty healthy-placed in this regard, but still some distance from the leading few sites.

And as an added extra, when we first started to work with Leasecar, they were much farther over to the right of the 3D graph. This shows that the content has already had an effect. And looking through other data on the car leasing needle, Leasecar is one of only two sites that has gained significantly in visibility over the past six months – almost doubled in fact.

To delve into the great link-baiting debate and understand its controversies and benefits, continue reading.

If you have any questions or want to find out more about link building or explore how link baiting can enhance your digital marketing strategy, reach out to our team at 0161 327 2635 or email us at info@embryo.com.

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What Is Link Baiting and Why Is It Controversial?

Link baiting is a strategic approach to content creation that aims to attract attention and encourage others to engage, share, and build links back to a website. It involves crafting compelling, valuable, and shareable content that naturally entices users to participate in link-building activities. Link baiting is employed as a tactic to increase backlinks from reputable sources, ultimately boosting a website’s authority and improving its search engine rankings.

While link baiting can be an effective strategy, it has not been without its fair share of controversies. Link baiting often involves manipulative tactics, such as clickbait headlines or misleading information, to entice users into clicking and sharing the content. Such practices can erode trust in online content and compromise the overall user experience.

Another concern is the potential for link baiting to encourage unethical practices, including link schemes or spammy link-building techniques. These tactics involve artificially generating a large number of low-quality or irrelevant backlinks, which can lead to penalties from search engines and tarnish the reputation of the linked website.

Understanding the Controversies of Link Baiting

Manipulative Tactics

Certain link-baiting techniques can be manipulative and violate search engine guidelines. This includes using misleading headlines, clickbait content, or deceptive practices to attract attention and gain backlinks. Such tactics can undermine the integrity of online content and lead to penalties from search engines.

Shallow and Low-Quality Content

Some link-baiting practices may encourage the creation of shallow and low-quality content solely focused on attracting backlinks. This can result in a flood of subpar content that adds little value to users and dilutes the overall quality of online resources.

Ethical Concerns

Another controversy surrounding link baiting is the ethical implications associated with some link-building practices. Unethical link-building techniques include purchasing links, participating in link exchange schemes, or using automated tools to generate artificial backlinks. These practices go against the guidelines set by search engines and can result in penalties or even the complete removal of a website from search engine results.

Unintended Consequences

Link baiting can sometimes lead to unintended consequences, such as attracting spammy or irrelevant backlinks. These backlinks can harm a website’s reputation and negatively impact its search engine rankings. It highlights the need for careful planning and execution when implementing link-baiting strategies.

Link Baiting Can Be Done Well, Here Are Four Best Practices to Follow

1. Create High-Quality Content

The foundation of successful link baiting lies in creating high-quality content that captures the attention of your target audience. Focus on producing valuable and engaging content that addresses their pain points, solves their problems, or entertains them. By consistently delivering quality content, you can naturally attract organic links from relevant websites.

2. Engage with Your Audience

Building a strong relationship with your audience is key to successful link baiting. Encourage social sharing by incorporating social media buttons into your content and fostering conversations around your content. Respond to comments and engage with users to create a sense of community and loyalty.

3. Leverage Visual Content

Visual content, such as infographics, videos, and images, can be highly effective in attracting links and capturing audience attention. Visuals have a higher potential for virality and social sharing, making them excellent link-baiting assets. Ensure that your visual content is visually appealing, informative, and easily shareable.

4. Amplify Your Content

Promoting your content is crucial to maximising its visibility and link potential. Utilize social media platforms, email marketing, influencer outreach, and PR strategies to amplify your content and increase its reach. By getting your content in front of a wider audience, you can increase the chances of earning valuable backlinks.

The Benefits of Ethical Link Baiting

Despite the controversies, link baiting can offer substantial benefits when implemented ethically and strategically. Here are some advantages:

Enhanced Organic Visibility

By creating high-quality link bait content, businesses can attract attention and earn backlinks from authoritative sources. This, in turn, increases organic visibility in search engine results and drives targeted traffic to the website.

Improved Search Engine Rankings

When reputable websites link back to a page, search engines interpret it as a vote of confidence, indicating the page’s value and relevance. As a result, the website’s search engine rankings can improve, leading to increased visibility and potential customers.

Increased Brand Awareness and Authority

Link baiting helps establish a brand as an industry thought leader by creating content that resonates with the target audience. By consistently delivering valuable and shareable content, businesses can strengthen their brand awareness and authority in their respective niches.

Final Thoughts

Link baiting remains a debated topic within the digital marketing landscape. While controversies surround manipulative tactics and low-quality content, ethical link baiting can provide significant benefits to businesses, such as improved search engine rankings, increased brand awareness, and enhanced organic visibility. It is essential to approach link baiting with integrity and focus on creating valuable content that genuinely resonates with users. If you want to explore how link baiting can be incorporated into your digital marketing strategy, contact our team at Embryo by calling 0161 327 2635 or emailing us at info@embryo.com.

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Interested in driving more traffic to your website? Get in touch with our team after you’ve read this blog by phone at 0161 327 2635 or email info@embryo.com.

The Top 10 Keyword Searches

Thanks to great tools such as Google Trends and Ahrefs, we were able to surface the 10 most searched global keywords as of 2023.

Grouping the findings into smaller sections can help provide a clearer understanding of the top Google keyword searches. Let’s categorize them into different sections based on their nature and purpose:

Social Media:

YouTube: The popularity of YouTube highlights the growing demand for video content consumption. From entertainment and tutorials to music videos and documentaries.

Facebook: Despite recent controversies, Facebook remains a prominent social networking platform. It reflects our need for social connection and staying updated on personal connections, events, news, and trends.

Instagram: With its focus on visual content, Instagram has become a favourite platform for sharing photos, videos, and stories. It serves as a creative outlet for individuals, influencers, and businesses to engage with their audience visually.

Analysis: The prominence of social media searches indicates our inclination towards staying connected, consuming visual content, and expressing ourselves through various forms of media.

Communication and Email Services:

Gmail: Gmail’s popularity stems from its user-friendly interface, reliable security measures, and integration with other Google services. It has become a preferred email service for both personal and professional communication.

Whatsapp: One of meta’s fastest-growing communication tools, WhatsApp is used by millions worldwide.

Translate: The “Translate” search term indicates the need for language translation tools, highlighting the importance of breaking down language barriers in our increasingly globalized world.

Google Translate: The specific search for “Google Translate” demonstrates the trust and reliance placed on this particular translation tool, which offers a user-friendly interface and supports numerous languages.

Analysis: These searches underline the importance of effective communication across languages, indicating our desire to connect and engage with individuals and cultures worldwide.

Weather and Environment:

Weather: By searching for “Weather,” users seek real-time weather updates to plan their activities accordingly. It showcases our dependency on accurate weather forecasts and our desire to stay informed about the environment around us.

Analysis: The weather search term reflects our need for up-to-date, relevant information to make informed decisions

E-commerce:

Amazon: The popularity of Amazon as a search term signifies the dominance of this online marketplace. Users turn to Amazon for a wide range of products, convenience, competitive pricing, and reliable shipping services.

Analysis: The search volume for Amazon highlights the ongoing shift towards online shopping, where users appreciate the convenience and extensive product selection offered by e-commerce platforms.

Sports and Entertainment:

Cricbuzz: Cricket has a dedicated fan base in many parts of the world, and Cricbuzz caters specifically to this audience by providing live scores, news, and analysis related to the sport.

Analysis: The popularity of Cricbuzz reflects the immense passion for sports and the desire for up-to-date information and engagement with favourite teams and players.

By analysing these sections, we can clearly see several underlying themes: the need for connection and visual content (social media), efficient communication (email services), breaking down language barriers (translation tools), staying informed (weather updates), convenience in shopping (e-commerce), and the enthusiasm for sports and entertainment. These trends shed light on our online behaviours and the platforms and services that have become integral to our daily lives.

The Top 10 Questions Searched Globally

By breaking down the results into smaller categories, we gain a more detailed understanding of the specific topics that attract users’ attention on Google. It highlights the diverse range of interests and concerns, including financial updates, culinary knowledge, health assessment, celebrity gossip, convenience in daily life, online privacy, mathematical calculations, measurement conversions, and social media account management. These refined sections offer insights into the specific information users seek and the challenges they encounter in different aspects of their lives.

Conclusion

From financial inquiries about tax refunds to culinary measurements, health and fitness calculations, and celebrity gossip, our searches showcase a wide spectrum of interests. The need for convenience and knowledge of operating hours, concerns about online identity and privacy, and the pursuit of mathematical proficiency and measurement conversions are also evident. Additionally, social media management, specifically deleting an Instagram account, highlights our desire for control and privacy in the digital realm.

These searches remind us of the immense information and resources available at our fingertips. They demonstrate our quest for knowledge, the challenges we encounter, and our constant need for information and connection in the digital age.

Want to know more about growing brand awareness and driving more traffic to your website? Get in touch by phone at 0161 327 2635 or email info@embryo.com.

We have gathered our favourite statistics from many sources and have broken them down into 5 categories: Overall SEO, Mobile SEO, Voice Search SEO, Local SEO and Video SEO. The SEO stats we’ve gone into are the ones we believe can influence strategies and provide valuable insights.

At Embryo, we take SEO very seriously and it forms an important part of our digital marketing strategy. To learn more about our SEO services feel free to get in touch with our team after you’ve read this blog by phone at 0161 327 2635 or email info@embryo.com.

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Six General SEO Stats 

The following statistics demonstrate the importance of SEO within a digital marketing strategy. Search engines have seamlessly integrated with our everyday lives, and SEO allows us to take advantage of that. These statistics show that businesses need to optimise their presence on search engines in 2023 because that’s where their customers will be. 

• Stat #1 –  68% of online experiences begin with a search engine. 
• Stat #2 – Google (+ Google Images) currently holds 92.58% of the total search engine market share, followed by Bing, Yahoo!, Baidu, and YANDEX. 
• Stat #3 – 61% of B2B marketers stated that SEO and organic traffic generate more leads than any other marketing initiative. 
• Stat #4 – Leads from search engines have a 14.6% close rate, while outbound leads (ex. cold-calling, direct mail, etc.) have a 1.7% close rate. 
• Stat #5 – 86% of people ignore paid banner ads, choosing to only click on organic search results. 
• Stat #6 – Bounce rates increase by 9% if your website takes 2 seconds to load and 38% if your site takes 5 seconds to load. 

Mobile SEO Stats

Google indexes mobile results before they index desktop pages – why? Because more people search on phones than they do on desktops these days. That being said, mobile SEO is no longer a ‘nice to have’ element of a strategy, it’s a necessity. Here are a few stats that explain why.

• Stat #7 – 55% of all worldwide internet traffic comes from mobile devices. 
• Stat #8 – More than half of smartphone users have discovered a new company or product while using a search engine on their phone. 
• Stat #9 – 51% of internet users access the internet using only their smartphone (no desktop or laptop computer usage). 
• Stat #10 – The average person spends between 3 and 4 hours on their phones every day, not including work-related phone use. 
• Stat #11 – 53% of mobile website visitors will leave your site if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. 
• Stat #12 – Searches including the terms “Where to buy” and “near me” have increased by 200% since 2017. 

People spend a lot of their time on their phones, and the average time spent is likely to increase in the years to come. Increase your mobile SEO efforts now, and you’ll continue to reap the rewards with each passing year.

Voice Search SEO Stats 

Search has evolved so much over the past decade that users don’t even need to type their queries anymore. Voice search is on the rise, and there are specific ways to get out on top.

• Stat #13 – 40.7% of all answers from voice search are pulled from a Featured Snippet.
• Stat #14 – The average Google voice search result receives 1,199 Facebook shares and 44 Tweets.
• Stat #15 – The average reading level of a voice search result is 9th grade. 
• Stat #16 – Voice search results typically load in 4.6 seconds, which is 52% faster than the load time of the average page.
• Stat #17 – The average page Google voice search result contains 2,312 words. 
• Stat #18 – Roughly 75% of voice search results are from one of the top 3 desktop ranking pages for a given query. 

These stats highlight the importance of high desktop rankings, optimising for featured snippets and a supporting social media strategy to establish your presence in the world of voice search.

Local SEO Stats

Local SEO is a niche part of SEO that allows customers to find businesses close to them. When people are searching for local results, they are likely to be a lot more engaged than typical searchers. Here are some interesting facts about Local SEO:  

• Stat #19 – 46% of all searches on Google are for a local business or local service. 
• Stat #20 – Local searchers view 3.92 pages per session, significantly higher than traffic from paid search, organic search, or referrals.
• Stat #21 – 25% of small business websites don’t have an H1 tag.
• Stat #22 – A Yelp page is present in the top 5 results for 92% of search queries that contain a city and business category.
• Stat #23 – After searching on a smartphone for something nearby, 76% of people end up visiting the business within 1 day.
• Stat #24 – 28% of local searches result in a purchase.

These statistics help you to start seeing a direct ROI for diving into Local SEO. If done properly, almost every local business can increase footfall and revenue.

Video SEO Stats

Google is always rolling out updates that help reward content with the best ‘experience’ – a lot of the time, videos drastically improve the page experience.

Here are a few stats about videos and their rankings:

• Stat #25 – The number of comments, view count, number of shares, and number of likes have a strong correlation with higher YouTube rankings.
• Stat #26 – First page videos on YouTube are an average length of 14 minutes and 50 seconds.
• Stat #27 – 68.2% of first-page YouTube results are HD videos.
• Stat #28 – Videos that bring in new subscribers tend to rank higher on YouTube. 
• Stat #29 – Posts with videos earn more backlinks and see a 157% boost in search traffic.
• Stat #30 – Most marketers are aware of the power of video, and in 2023 91% of businesses said they use video as a part of their marketing strategy.

You can see that video SEO can be split up into two different parts: optimising video for Google and optimising video for YouTube.

Use These Stats to Improve Your SEO in 2023

The statistics listed help demonstrate the importance of SEO in 2023, whilst also giving you guidance on how/where to capitalise. Our SEO team are experts at staying up to date with the industry and using data to drive their strategy decisions.

To learn more about our SEO services feel free to get in touch with our team after you’ve read this blog by phone at 0161 327 2635 or email info@embryo.com. Alternatively, check out some of our awesome SEO case studies that showcase some great results we’ve generated for our clients.

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Sources Used for This Piece

The statistics we used for this post came from all the sources linked below. 

• Search Engine People 
• Backlinko 
• Thinking With Google 
• Fresh Chalk 
• Search Engine Roundtable 
• Search Engine Watch 
• Wyzowl