Top Factors that Affect Blog SEO
1. Length of Time Spent on Your Site
An indirect ranking factor is dwell time, which refers to how much time a user spends on one of your site’s pages. As soon as someone clicks on your blog via the SERPs, and right up to the moment they leave a page is considered to dwell time. Google uses this metric to determine how valuable your content is to the person visiting the site. Generally speaking, the longer a person remains on a page, the more relevant that page is to them.
However, this metric is subjective, which is why it’s considered an indirect indicator in regard to SEO. The truth is that Google and other search engines don’t know what kind of content strategy you’re using. For example, you might publish short-form content that doesn’t take long to read, and you might include important info right at the start of your posts because this gives readers a better experience. This means your users spend less time on pages.
Dwell time can have a positive or negative impact on your SEO. However, do not try to manipulate dwell time if it doesn’t make any sense to you. You can use HubSpot to publish high-quality content via their free blog maker tool, which can help you grow your audience.
2. Page Speed
Page speed can be affected by visual elements, but other things can affect page speed. Using too many plug-ins or implementing unnecessary code are two examples of what can cause a blog to load slowly for users. If you want to speed up your pages, then remove junk code. If you don’t know how to remove junk code, then use HTML-Cleaner or hire an SEO agency like Leapfrog Internet Marketing to let the professionals do site speed optimization.
HTML-Cleaner is a tool that will help you find junk code. You don’t need any coding knowledge to use the tool. With just a click of a button, you can easily remove code you don’t need.
Take a look at your plugins, and determine which ones you absolutely need in order to keep your blog running, and which plugins you don’t actually need. You might be surprised at how many plugins can have a major negative impact on page speed. There’s a good chance you’re using plugins you don’t need.
3. Mobile Friendly
In the USA, the majority of Google traffic is from mobile devices. The chances are the majority of your blog’s users are using their mobile devices. The bottom line is mobile is a factor when it comes to SEO, and this means your site needs to be optimised for mobile devices. So, how do you optimise your site for mobile devices?
Generally speaking, pre-made themes for sites are usually designed with mobile devices in mind, so the only thing you might need to do is increase the font size or tweak your CTA button. Just make sure you view your Google Analytics account to check your site’s performance on mobile. Every now and then you should run a mobile site speed test.
4. The Index Date
Finally, Google and other search engines provide the most accurate, as well as relevant info they can find. This is why search engines check the index date of content published when they determine how to rank a site. Indexing allows search engines to locate content quickly.
Once the content is found by the search engines, they will add the content to their index. Later on, the content will be shown on the results pages. So, make sure the content you produce is as accurate as possible if you want your content to rank high in the results.