Google ranking factors: what is important

Recent extensive studies performed by SEMrush and Searchmetrics has showcased what the ranking factors are that will help your real estate website. We take a look at some of the most important in our latest blog.


SEMrush Ranking Factors 2.0

Olga Andrienko from SEMrush, who shared the results of a large-scale study on ranking factors. SEMrush looked at on-page factors, referring domains and traffic data, then compiled their findings to see which ranking factors appeared to be the most important.

 Website security (HTTPS)

SEMrush found that 65 percent of domains in the top three positions for Very High volume keywords are already secure. Although it’s not a huge ranking factor, Andrienko recommended switching to HTTPS to help with conversions and building trust.

Content length

SEMrush found that content length generally had a positive correlation with search rankings; content for pages in the top three positions is 45 percent longer, on average than content in the 20th position.

Even so, Andrienko did not recommend simply writing a ton of content in order to rank better — the key is to write sufficiently long content that is relevant and matches user intent. Look at what your competitors are doing, and figure out how you can create content that provides more value to users.

Keywords

SEMrush had some interesting findings with relation to keywords. They found that:

  • 35 percent of domains ranking for high-volume keywords don’t have the keyword in the title. This suggests that Google’s algorithms are getting better at understanding context/synonyms, and/or that keywords in the page title are becoming a less important ranking factor.
  • Very few links contain a keyword in the anchor text — in fact, even among Very High volume keywords, only 8 percent of link anchors included a keyword. This may suggest that keywords in anchor text are not a major ranking factor, but it also might be a reflection of SEOs adhering more strictly to link-building best practices that see anchor text links as spammy.


Links

High-quality link building is still super-important, both in terms of referring domains and “followed” backlinks. Andrienko noted that backlinks matter, especially for sites targeting keywords with fewer than 10,000 monthly searches.

And in other news

If you haven’t switched over to a responsive website solution, now is the time to do so. Google’s Webmaster Trends Analyst Gary Illyes has said that ‘mobile-first indexing’ has rolled out for a number sites. And it will continue to do so slowly over the coming months.

Now is the time to make sure you aren’t left behind! Order your Flex responsive real estate website and have it up-and-running in no time!

Popular posts from this blog

Easily link Base with external CRM systems

Image
What is the Base Zapier integration? The Entegral Base system was recently improved with a native Zapier app integration . This allows estate agents to exchange data and create automated workflows with over 2000+ popular apps, including all the leading CRM specific apps.  Why even link a CRM system? Although Base has contact management, contact categories, automatic lead import, and other great CRM features , users sometimes require very specific CRM functions that we don't (yet) cater to. With our Zapier integration , we allow agents to link any popular app with Base. Once linked with your app, you can for instance automatically synchronise your contacts from Base to the external app or vice versa.  The added benefit is that you can create automated workflows and link more apps (e.g. insert contact details into a Mailchimp drip email campaign  and ZOHO CRM at the same time). This makes the Zapier fee irreverent compared to the derived benefits.  Automated portal lead import from
Read more

Property24 acquires Private Property, what do estate agents think?

Image
Property24.com, South Africa’s largest property portal owned by Naspers, has bought rival Private Property . The deal is likely to come under the close scrutiny of competition authorities as it involves the two biggest property portals in the country. Due to the impact of such an acquisition on the industry, Entegral was interested to find out what the perceived advantages and disadvantages of such a deal would be, both through the eyes of the consumer and the estate agent.   Here are the results from around 250 responses received on a survey done over a 2 day period , mostly from agents and agency owners. While the survey presents a small portion of the market (a ccording to the EAAB's latest annual report there are 19,424 registered agents and agency owners, excluding intern estate agents, in South Africa) , f eedback has been received from well-respected agency owners and agents, and we believe this gives a good indication of the current view of agents. The fear from estate
Read more

US trends show more buyers come from internet, less from print

Image
Where home buyers found the home they purchased- 2001 vs. 2008   Have a look at the very interesting figures published for USA home buyers on: http://rismedia.com/2009-03-29/buyers-becoming-more-successful-finding-homes-through-internet/   The NAR statistics show that 7 years on from 2001, 32% of home buyers found their home through the internet. What’s even more interesting is that print newspaper hardly makes an impact, a mere 3% of buyers found their home through print.  
Read more