Long Click determines search success because it is when a user stays on the page for a long time without going back to the search results for another source of information or to modify their keywords. Achieving a long click means that you have satisfied the user query with sufficient and relevant information that they are looking for.

It has been a part of SEO for a long time now but you have to admit it, there are times when it can be overlooked. More than the numbers, we have to evaluate site performance based on the quality it provides to users. User behavior is too complex even for a revolutionary search algorithm and it is our job to study how it all plays out in determining rankings.

Take a look at how the long click is still relevant today and how you can optimize your site for it.

Revisiting the old patent

It has been four years since Google has filed a patent describing how click-through rates and other user behavior information can influence rankings in search results and I’m writing this today to help remind SEOs that this is a factor that shouldn’t be overlooked.

Here is the patent’s abstract:

In general, the subject matter described in this specification can be embodied in a computer-implemented method that includes determining a measure of relevance for a document result within a context of a search query for which the document result is returned, the determining being based on the first number in relation to a second number, the first number corresponding to longer views of the document result and outputting the measure of relevance to a ranking engine for ranking of search results, including the document result, for a new search corresponding to the search query.

According to the patent about modifying search result ranking based on implicit user feedback, “the measure of relevance to a ranking engine in determining the ranking in search results corresponds to longer views of the document”, which also applies to shorter views of the resulting document in the search engine pages.

Given that it talks about views, it is also important to note that viewing time is not the only factor affecting how search queries are addressed. This means that the specific category and intent also plays a role in the viewing length differentiator as governed by user behavior. I have written about how Google keeps search fresh and relevant and if you have read that particular blog post, then you know that they manifest these evaluations through their SERP features. This also goes to show that viewing time can be affected by its presentation and rankings in the pages; and vice versa.

The true meaning of the long click

Because of this patent, the term “Long Click” made its way around the search industry. This usually happens when the user searches for a term organically and remains on the site that provides information about a particular query for a long time. Basically, it has pitted long clicks vs. short clicks together, with the latter representing dissatisfaction and a decrease in relevance for the site.

For Google, long clicks are important because they can use this to measure the results of user behavior. It just goes to show that the number of clicks is not as important as the dwell time that a user exhibits for a particular site The long clicks determine the feedback mechanism which makes up for the lack of character and humanity that a search engine can exhibit.

As an SEO Specialist, I acknowledge that the search algorithm still does not match up against the human quality that will keep users engaged which is why the Google Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines is a great playbook for SEOs.

How does this affect your rankings?

It all boils down to the question, “Why am I optimizing for organic results?” The simplest answer is to comply with user satisfaction. However well-designed, technically adept, or how well your business is doing in its niche, Google will not care about those things if you have the lowest return rate for user experience and satisfaction. Think of it this way, if you are ranking as a top result and the user does not maximize most of his dwell time then the search algorithm will categorize this as a failure which can be a cause to question your position in the SERP.

One way to measure this is to consult your Analytics tool and review your content according to your site visitors’ average time on page as compared to the entire site’s average. You can start by looking at your page views.

After that, you can review the user’s average time on your high-traffic/high-ranking pages. Do take note of the pages with negative dwell time results because this can help you find where your content is lacking. Maybe it is not enough to keep users engaged or you have presented the information in an unnatural way.

Make sure that your content is interesting enough to achieve that long click. If users land on your website, and they are not satisfied with the information you provided, then you have failed to provide significant value to them. Your job is to keep your site relevant through up to date information that people can apply to their lifestyle and if your pages do not have satisfactory dwell time, then you should rethink your content strategy.

Tips to achieve long clicks for your site

Some tips to keep in mind in order to win in rankings and make your site relevant to users:

1. Keep your site updated
   Obviously, users are more likely to leave if your website is outdated so you have to keep your content relevant to help people find what they want. If not, the back button can be easily clicked, and they will be back to the search results to find info elsewhere.
2. Target specific keywords
   More than your initial keyword research, you should also make your SEO strategy viable by making sure that you target keywords that provide value to users. This means that you have to address your business’ pain points and how you can satisfy user query through your products and services.
3. Provide a positive experience for users
   You have to optimize your site in terms of speed, readability, and relevance. It pays to be critical of your own site and evaluate it in terms of user behavior. Monitor the way that your content is promoted and compare it to its organic performance. This will help keep your site valuable for the target market you are serving.
4. Optimize for Featured Snippets
   Effectively presenting your content starts with a magnetic headline or an attractive snippet which will ensure that the click results are utilized. Avoid being a content farm, be strategic as a writer and this will reflect in your rankings as well as user engagement.

Key Takeaway

The competition in SEO is as stiff as ever before, but revisiting these old strategies can still work today. It’s not just about ranking as a top result, it is also about staying there and the best way to do that is to maximize long clicks on your site.

I have been in the business for over a decade now but even so, I always make sure that I learn every day. Optimizing for dwell time is a call for new strategies and some of the previous ones as well so stay on the winning side by taking note of this reminder: “Always optimize for value.” The long click is one of the ways that you can get there.

The post Magic of the Long Click: How User Behavior Affects Rankings appeared first on SEO Services Agency in Manila, Philippines.

Expertise, Authority, and Trust, or better known as E-A-T is now a famous standard that SEOs try to follow. Two of the biggest algorithm updates from the past year gave more attention to E-A-T, the Medic Update on August 2018 and the Google June Broad Core Update on June 2019.

Many of the websites that were hit were said to have low E-A-T. When asked how can they recover, you’ll probably get the same answer from experts and even from Google’s Search Liaison Danny Sullivan over and over again.

Great content. Something that everyone is trying to do but a few is able to achieve. When someone says “create great content”, it’s honestly not much of an advice, but in this tweet from Danny Sullivan in 2018, he referred to the Google Quality Raters Guidelines that talked about what we call today as E-A-T.

In this article, I’ll be taking a deep dive into E-A-T to better understand what really does Google mean by great content and how do they judge it and a bit of historical background to how it all started.

Google+ AuthorRank

Do you remember AuthorRank? If you’ve been doing SEO since 2012, then you’ve probably heard of it.

Back in 2013, I wrote an article on AuthorRank. It was the time when lots of false and spam content was circulating around the internet and Google had to take steps to better identify real content from real authors. At the same time, Google also released Google Authorship where the name and icon of the author appear along in the search results.

AuthorRank pulled up data of webmasters from their Google+ profile. Before, you can add a short authorship markup rel=”author” where you can link your Google+ profile to the content you publish on your website. It was a popular on site optimization factor before. But as you know, Google+ has shutdown but if you are interested in checking this out, you could take the time machine and read this post on Google Authorship Markup in 2012.

So why did I bring this up? In my opinion, AuthorRank is one of Google’s stepping stone in coming up with E-A-T. It touches on the importance of having a good online reputation, far different from technical SEO factors like links and meta tags. At least we know that E-A-T is a long time coming. Since the boom of AuthorRank in 2012, Google has been trying to find a better correlation between good content and a good author. 

There were different ways to measure AuthorRank before. One of which was on how many +1 you received in Google+ and how many people add you in their Circles. Social media presence was also a factor and of course, backlinks.

Google ended their 3-year experiment with Authorship in 2014 but many said that AuthorRank is still alive.

Google Medic Update

In early August 2018, just a month after Google announced the revised version of the QRG, a huge core algorithm update was released. Many websites reported that they were hit hard. Most of those are health/medical websites hence the name Google Medic Update.

Panic was in the air. Webmasters here and there were asking “how can we recover?”. But apparently, there was no “fix”. Then, E-A-T took the spotlight.

Marie Haynes, an expert Google Algorithm Changes and E-A-T, pointed out the qualities of the website that were hit does not adhere to E-A-T standards. In her example, an author named Bridget Montgomery wrote a review of Top 10 Glucose Meters. However, when you go to the author’s profile, there were no information that the author is an expert in the medical field, just a list of articles she published.

Even though many websites were hit, Marie also pointed out that there were websites in the same niche that had these qualities have gained:

1. Clear identity of authors of the articles
2. Main purpose of website content is to inform not to sell
3. Lots of signs of authority such as comments and reviews

Because of correlations such as these, people started theorizing that E-A-T is a ranking factor. Many counted out this theory, however, in another post by Marie Haynes, she pointed out that a whitepaper that Google published in February 2019 on their fight against disinformation confirms that E-A-T is indeed a ranking factor.

Google Quality Raters Guidelines

In 2015, Google released the full version of the Quality Raters Guidelines or QRG that contain the criteria in evaluating a website hence called the “Google Quality Raters Guidelines”. It was revised in June 2018 and was last updated on May 2019. 

To help evaluate each website on its index, Google contracted more than 10,000 employees to evaluate pages that appear in the search results especially those in the top pages. They are called the “Quality Raters”.

Quality Raters cannot directly affect a website’s rankings. When a page is given a low-quality score, it does not lose all of its rankings and traffic overnight. However, the data from Quality Raters are used for further improvements in Google’s search algorithm.

The QRG taught Quality Raters on the factors they need to consider when judging a page’s Page Quality (PQ). It talks about reputation, quality of a page’s main content, samples of low-quality pages, and of course, the E-A-T.

In section 3.2, the QRG first mentioned E-A-T. It said that websites or pages the don’t have any purpose or benefits for users should receive the lowest Page Quality (PQ) rating. However, for those websites or pages that provide value to users, the amount of E-A-T is important and Quality Raters should consider the following:

• The expertise of the creator of the Main Content (MC)
• The authoritativeness of the creator of the MC, the MC itself, and the website
• The trustworthiness of the creator of the MC, the MC itself, and the website

Optimizing for E-A-T

Now that we know what E-A-T is and the importance of it in today’s SEO landscape, the next question is, how do you optimize for it?

The first thing you should know is that there is no way to know what your E-A-T rating is or if your website has been rated by a Quality Rater. What you could do is continuously build your reputation. Here are a few steps you could do:

• Author Profile

To Google, high-quality content must come from an expert of the topic an author is writing about. There are topics that only specific experts in certain fields can write and provide valuable information about.

In section 3.2 of the QRG, it stated a few examples of this:

• High E-A-T medical advice should  be written or produced by people or organizations with appropriate medical expertise or accreditation.
• High E-A-T news article should be produced with journalistic professionalism
• High E-A-T information pages on scientific topics should be produced by people or organizations with appropriate scientific expertise and represent a well-established scientific consensus on issues where such consensus exists

From these bullets alone, it’s easy to say that before you write for a certain topic, you should be an accredited expert on that matter. Author pages or Author bios play a huge role in this. It should be clear in your profile your field of expertise and links to your other social profiles should be included.

• Links and mentions from authority websites

Links are and always have been a measure of authority. It is a no brainer that to be considered authoritative, you need links. Also, note that it’s not just about anchor texts. When other websites are citing your name or your business or website’s brand as a source in an informative article from a relevant website, your website is gaining more authority.

While links are ideal, do not count out unlinked mentions. Being mentioned in news articles or other articles also count. Yes, you could still take your time to let the webmaster know that they didn’t link to your website when they mentioned your name, but it still gives you value anyway.

You could use tools like Google Alert that will notify you if your name or brand is mentioned around. You could also use Google Trends to monitor how your brand is doing.

• Reviews

Reviews play a huge role in establishing trust in your website. In section 2.6.1 of the QRG, it says that Quality Raters should do research when rating a website to look for what real people think of it. 

“Look for reviews, references, recommendations by experts, news articles, and other credible information created/written by individuals about the website.”

If you have a business, make sure it is listed in legitimate local directories where you can ask clients and other users for reviews. Your number 1 target should be getting a verified Google My Business listing.

Key Takeaway

Moving forward, E-A-T will play a huge role in Google’s future algorithm changes knowing that the data Quality Raters produce are used for algorithm improvements. While you can never know how your website is evaluated, following these guidelines should be part of your foundational SEO strategy.

The post Everything You Should Know About E-A-T appeared first on SEO Services Agency in Manila, Philippines.

I have been involved in the digital marketing and SEO industry for 11 years and, in that time, I have seen the internet grow and develop in ways that nobody could have predicted. This experience has resulted in a deep understanding of the ways in which businesses, and even individuals with personal websites, can achieve more from their online presences.

By taking just a few simple tips into consideration, you can hugely increase your chances of ranking highly and enjoying the levels of engagement from your target audience that you desire.

Now, I can’t guarantee that these strategies will result in the number one position that you’re hoping for, but these strategies are more focused on increasing the amount of natural exposure that your site can enjoy and driving traffic to your website without the need for a search engine.

What Is Natural Exposure?

Natural exposure is when your website, or the content that you create, is shared from one user to another. If you’ve created your content cleverly, then every single time your content is shared you have generated a link.

Now, it doesn’t necessarily matter how this person shares your content, simply that it is shared – this means that whether your content is reposted onto a blog or linked to via social media, you are still generating interest in your website. These social signals are picked up by search engines, which then begin to question why people are sharing your content.

Natural exposure is all about getting noticed and driving interest in your website.

White Hat Strategies To Increase Your Website’s Social Visibility

1. Social Media – Focus On Your Brand Awareness, Build A Community; Engage And Interact With Your Followers

It might be true that social media will only have a small effect on your website in terms of search engine optimisation, but there are other advantages to boosting an engaging social media presence. Rather than focus on increasing your SEO-friendliness all the time, your social media should be more about building a relationship with your followers and fans.

This includes making certain that you are relaying relevant information, along with providing unique, captivating content that reflects your personality or your brand identity. In the same way, you need to talk about current trends within your and your audience’s sphere of interests.

But what’s that got to do with marketing? Well, by keeping your followers engaged with your brand and ensuring that they engage with content via your coverage can lead to high levels of continued engagement and growth. As they share your content, they will also provide you with those all-important backlinks to your site, which can drastically increase your reputation as an industry authority, boost your monthly visits and encourage interested users to spend much longer on your site.

Individually, these are great advantages, but when combined together they can be a great way to encourage your site to develop authority for particular search terms, increasing your site’s search engine rankings overall.

There are many social media sites available, and some will be specific to the type of content that you are sharing. For written content, the three major services that you need to be utilising are Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

2. Increase Your Content Exposure – Share Your Content With Reliable Sites Across The Internet

There are a variety of places that you can use to share and distribute your content; these sites typically tend to attract a high number of visitors as they can be relied upon to provide high-quality content which offers advice, covers the latest trends and provides valuable and up-to-date information.

By submitting your content to these sites, you are effectively creating backlinks to your site, which can further work to increase your exposure. Four of the most common content sharing sites are Stumbleupon, Digg, Reddit and Mashable. Whilst these sites can be extremely useful, it is often worth finding websites which offer a focus on relevant topics to your website.

To make the most from these kinds of sites, you need to create content that is wholly relevant to your products, services or community, but at the same time attempt to target a wide, open audience. Remember, too, that people visit these sites, initially, to pass the time rather than browse through products or services.

The major key to creating articles of this kind is to avoid self-promotion or personal product promotion and talk, instead, about industry relevant news and developing trends. Most of the content on these sites is presented as though it were click-bait – therefore, you need to ensure that yours is as well.

Create content in a format which is understandable – for example, top 10 lists.

3. Create Relationships – Utilise A Blog For The Very Best Results

In the past, creating a corporate blog has been regarded as both a positive and a negative thing – in my experience; your website needs to have a blog of some kind for a range of reasons. However, there are still black hat blogging techniques, which are still in use today, which can actually hurt your online presence in a variety of ways.

Black Hat Blogging – Black hat blogging is when you create blog posts on websites which will accept any piece of content. You can tell these apart from good content sites as they will often demand a small fee for the privilege of hosting your content. Another great way to spot these untrustworthy sites is to check their last 10 blog posts – if they all contain multiple links to external sites, then the odds are that they are a black hat site.

By evaluating the content you can sometimes easily tell what the goal of the website is – for example, if the content feels more like a sales pitch, or if the blog posts have no overall topic.

White Hat Blogging – Getting your content published on high-quality white hat blogs and blogging sites isn’t easy.

In fact, these sites are so dedicated to only offering quality content that many business turn to black hat sites either out of desperation or, simply, because they are much easier than white-hat sites. Yes, it can be difficult to get your content onto white-hat sites, but be assured that the eventual pay off in terms of SEO and marketing make the effort with it.

You can find websites that accept guest posts easily enough, simply by looking for them via Google. Of course, not all of these high-ranking sites will be good ones, so you need to personally validate them and trust your own judgement as to where you would like your content to be displayed.

Validating A Site – An easy way to validate one of these websites is to use Alexa. Alexa is, simply, a traffic estimator and it can be an extremely useful tool when it comes to finding out if a site is any good or not. All you need to do is paste the web address into the search bar of Alexa, and it will display statistics about the site.

Two of the main stats that you need to look for are that site’s traffic from your country of origin and how low the site’s Alexa rank is – the lower the ranking, the better. Additionally, you can use Majestic to see how trusted the site in question is. With Majestic, you need to look at both the Trust Flow and the Citation Flow – the higher these are, the better the site is.

Once you have spotted your potential partners, then your best bet is to contact them directly. Tell them, in simple and honest terms, why you want to be published on their site, and how often you would like to contribute to the site.

Each site will have its own guidelines, and some will even have complete systems in place, so make sure to check for these thoroughly and follow them as best as you can.

4. Press Release And Article Distribution – Attract Relevant Customers, With Relevant Content

This is one of the oldest tricks in the SEO book and, as it has been penalized before, I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t be again. If you don’t take the time to validate the sites you use to submit your PR or articles then you could be in for a nasty shock in the future.

Many people are still choosing to use websites like ezinearticles.com – now, this is one of the oldest PR/Article websites in the world. There are many others, of course but I’m using this one as it has already been tangled in a Google penalty in the past; in fact, it looks to have been caught up in once more.

Basically, the idea of a PR/Article site is to get your content out there as fast as possible. The major problem with this is that the only people who actually want to visit sites like these are people, like yourself, who are looking to submit articles of these kinds. This means that, rather than being presented to the right people, they are wasted on disinterested readers who may only be scoping out the competition.

Best Practices For PR/Article Distribution

In my experience, you need to be actively searching and building relationships with news websites which are relevant to your industry. As many as 60% are likely to be happy to present high-quality content to their readership, but only so long as your content is not self-promotional. The only occasions in which you are able to promote yourself is if the article or PR that you have created is related to a new product/technology, or you want to openly talk about a recent project you have won or completed.

Once again, you need to ensure that the PR/Article sites that you have chosen have the right kind of traffic source. Capturing visitors is one of the main points of a content marketing strategy; remember, though, that your rankings for search engines will increase as you attract more and more visitors to your site.

5. Video Content – Hook Your Customers

More and more customers are consuming content as part of their conversion journey all the time, and I expect this trend to continue into the future. Why? Well, for one thing, it is now estimated that the average human attention span is 8-seconds; to put that in perspective, a goldfish has an attention span of 9-seconds.

With this in mind, if you want to appeal to your customers, video seems to be the winning content format. Videos are more important than ever before, particularly when used to advertise and engage with in social media – they have a hook which other forms of content struggle to match.

Websites who understand the potential impact of video on their customers have the potential to connect with their customers in new ways and let themselves stand out from their competitors; in fact, as many as 64% of interested customers will decide to purchase a product after consuming video content about it.

If the video content that you create is good enough, then it has a chance to go ‘viral’, which will really improve your audience’s awareness of your brand and can have an incredible impact on your profits.

After their “Smell Like A Man, Man” advertising campaign went viral, Old Spice recorded a 107% increase in profits over an extremely short period of time. That just goes to show the importance of great video content!

Key Ways To Make The Most Of Video Content Marketing

a. Use Your Video To Tell A Narrative

When it comes to video content, make sure to ask yourself why you are creating this content. If you’re creating it simply because it is becoming the ‘trending’, then there is little point in creating it. However, if you tie your video creation into your overall business story, then you can use it to support your entire business narrative and identity.

b. Develop A Video Creation Strategy

By ensuring that you have a cohesive strategy across your entire business, you can ensure that you do have a narrative which you can work within. You should always consider the different variations of video content that you can create, from simple, six-second Vines to Instagram segments, animated GIFs and dedicated, full-length videos.

c. Create A Video Distribution Strategy

If you don’t consider an effective way to distribute your video amongst interested parties, then you run the risk of wasting hard-work, in creating a video that no one would see. A solid distribution strategy needs to have a focus on multiple social media platforms, including Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn and even YouTube.

6. Building Citations – Localizing Your Business

Essentially, a citation in this context is a fancy term for business listings. Your first step in this process needs to be the set up of a Google Places account and make sure that you get verified. I would advice that you list your business on a range of websites, including Yell, 118 and their contemporaries, to match the information that you have provided in your Google Places account. This information will include your company name and your company’s address.

You need to make sure that your description for each site is as unique as possible. Citations are an extremely good way to localise your business, so that Google will show your company in its results for your local area.

There are a range of advantages to this strategy, including the simple inclusion of a backlink to your website.

7. On-Page Optimization

After undertaking research, I’ve found that the keyword density for a webpage is usually somewhere between 0.00% and 0.75%. Typically, the rest of these keywords are composed of synonyms, which are lexical terms that Google considers to be the same as the chosen keywords. This effectively stops keyword stuffing, which usually results in lower-quality content for the end-user.

Even though you might be lowering the amount of keywords in your content, you should ensure that they are still used in the page’s Meta Title, Meta Description and H1 (the main heading of the page), but try not to use this keyword in your other headers or more than once or twice in the content itself. Of course, this depends on the length of your content, but as a general rule of thumb I’d advise that you use, at most, one keyword per three hundred words.

Remember, too, that your keyword will likely appear on other areas of your page, such as navigation, so take this into consideration when creating or editing your content.

You can also find lexical phrases that Google believes to be the same by, simply, searching for them.

Furthermore, you can easily find other lexical terms by searching thesaurus.com, or looking in a traditional thesaurus, for relevant synonyms. You need to use your judgement as to whether a phrase is suitable or not, as they can appear unnatural within your content and give it the appearance of being ‘spun’.

What Is Spun Content?

This content is unique content that has been rewritten via an algorithm, which replaces certain words with synonyms whilst maintaining the structure of the article. This is typically a black-hat procedure and results in much lower-quality content than originally written and effectively researched content by someone who is actually passionate about what they are writing.

8. Image Distribution – Engaging An Audience With Visual Content

Today, people are driven by technology in everything that they do – whether they are working or enjoying some free time. You need to understand that people react much more effectively to visual content; images that can be seen – and engaged with – by many people that are more likely to bring in potential customers like no other medium can.

Image distribution and image marketing are two major digital marketing strategies which can help to attract a huge range of potential customers to your site. There are a variety of image distribution sites that you can use, particularly in the form of social media sites which can hugely increase customer engagement.

Using Instagram For Businesses?

Since 2010, Instagram has grown into the main social media platform with a focus on visual and graphic content. In 2014, more than 200 million people used this site on a regular basis, sharing their images and commenting on others and, above, engaging with other people.

Instagram can be hugely useful to a business as it enables you to reach out to a completely new demographic – this includes a global audience from all walks of life. If you’re struggling to make an impact with any demographic besides your target audience, then Instagram could be the ideal platform for you.

Although it might take a different format, Instagram is similar to every other social media platform – it has been designed for connection and interactivity. With that in mind, you need to ensure that you treat it in a similar way when it comes to management. You need to remain active on the platform and reply to user’s comments and questions.

Depending on your business, Instagram might be the perfect place to share images of ‘behind the scenes’ content. People and potential customers will appreciate the added personality and engage with the real, relatable side of your business – the human side.

Some Final Thoughts

By considering these simple points, and remembering to engage with your potential customers, you can create a complete digital marketing strategy to encompass every aspect of your business.

Above all, don’t forget the human side of your business – that is the kind of content that can drive huge levels of engagement and really cement your brand identity in the mindset of your potential customer.

These strategies have worked for me in the past, and are still working, but it is important that you find a style of online marketing that suits your business. I’d advise that you try out a variety of social media platforms and a range of different styles, before settling on your favorite and most rewarding one. With hard work and patience, you will discover a strategy that works for you and your business.

Remember, building a relationship with people isn’t a race, so remember to take time to understand your audience, get to know what they want from you, and do your very best to leave them satisfied every time they engage with your company.

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