SEO Fads Vs Fundamentals: Decoding What Is Worth Your Time
Before we delve deeper, let’s quickly make our stance clear - when it comes to SEO trends, there is a fair bit of smoke and mirrors. Many trends appear every year, only a few of which turn out to be true game-changers. As seasoned web professionals, our primary focus is on the perennial SEO fundamentals and how to tweak them to play along with the evolving algorithms.
Starting with a handy fact from Ahrefs: almost 91% of web pages get no organic traffic from Google, largely because they don't have backlinks. Backlinks remain evergreen in the booming world of SEO. It's common knowledge underlined by the data from Ahrefs - sites with strong backlink profiles receive more organic traffic.
Now, take a moment to digest this: Core Web Vitals are becoming a ranking factor in May 2024. Yes, mate, you've read it right. Google's user experience update will integrate Core Web Vitals along with existing user experience signals. Hence, we can say that Google is tipping its hat to a mobile-first approach with this update.
Navigating the choppy waters of website speed optimization - here’s a major challenge web designers face. Data show that the longer a page takes to load, the higher the probability that visitors will leave the site. Improving speed, minimising redirection, compressing images, adopting browser caching - these areas should be high on your checklist, and not only from an SEO perspective.
Now, let's briefly turn to the phrase that's causing quite a stir in the SEO world - 'Passages Ranking'. Google's recent announcement that it has begun indexing passages of a page rather than the whole page seems to have taken the world by storm. While it can potentially transform information retrieval, your focus as a website designer should remain unaltered - build organised, logical and succinct web pages with crisp, relevant content.
Keyword search and optimisation have been the bread and butter of SEO strategy for ages. Today, more platforms like Google Discover are promoting content to users even before they initiate a search. While keyword targeting shouldn't be abandoned, developing engaging and diverse content that touches multiple platforms is the key to reaching a wider audience.
Wrapping it up - rich snippets. As web pages compete for Google's attention, anything extra to get in the search engine's good books is a boon. Rich snippets are such a tool, improving your appearance in SERPs with additional data displayed. Bear in mind, while rich snippets don't influence rankings directly, they boost the click-through rate which indirectly impacts rankings.
Articulating A Web Designer's Perspective:
Having splashed around in the choppy waters of SEO trends for several years, I reckon the game isn't about blindly following the latest buzzwords. It's about understanding, anticipating and working out an effective strategy around Google’s next moves. As someone who hails from the old school of web design, I’d say that the fundamentals of SEO - having user-focused and organically rich content, maintaining a healthy backlink profile and focusing on mobile responsiveness haven't changed and are unlikely to in the near future.
Being adaptable in the face of changing algorithms, yet staying focused on the primary goal - enhancing user experience - is the balancing act web designers need to pull off. That's why I applaud Google’s move to integrate Core Web Vitals into user experience signals. I believe as web designers, this pushes us to focus on loading, interactivity, and visual stability - factors that are as critical as having well optimised, SEO-friendly content.
The 'Passages Ranking' trend is an interesting one, but it doesn't mean we should switch our focus to creating information-dense pages with multiple topics. Good web design is always about well-structured, easily navigable sites, using simple language that breathes life into your content. That's where the magic happens!
Sure, these bells and whistles make a world of difference if they are used to enhance a strong, robust foundation. So, you've to make sure your foundation is sound before you get caught up in the glamour of the new, shiny baubles in the world of web design.
On the bright side, as web designers from Liverpool, we love a bit of a challenge, don't we? As we step into future, navigating the ever evolving SEO trends will indeed require a little extra sparkle, a whole lot of wit, and an unwavering focus on quality and user experience. This should be a sound approach for any website project, not just from an SEO perspective, but from the broader aim of creating quality web experience. As I always say, put your users first and Google will follow suit.