Anyone who understands a thing or two about website promotion knows that Google's search engines use direct parameters to determine positions and rankings (Direct Ranking Signals). These are famous parameters such as links from quality websites in the relevant niche, optimization for the website structure, loading speed, quality content, etc. Although promoters argue about the scope of the parameters, and many disagree about the power of each and every one of them, they all play by the rules.
The problem arises when website promoters work blindly and invest all their energy and strength in the fight for the direct signals. That is, the ability to improve the visibility of the site by non-direct parameters is ignored. wait, what? Well, let's look at it from another angle. We will examine how indirect ranking signals can improve your SEO strategy.
Confused? Here is an example
A business owner participated in the fair and distributed about 1,000 flyers to interested customers. The marketing flyers also included his website address. Obviously, Google does not know that our business owner visited the exhibition and handed out flyers. So that's it, Google is about to find out. why? It turns out that:
- The distribution of the flyers generated 300 new hits to the website – Traffic.
- The customers who came to the site through the flyers stayed on the site for a long time – Time on Site.
- Most of the customers navigated between the various content pages on the site – Bounce Rate.
- Ten customers blogged about the exhibition on their website and included a link to the business's website in the post – Backlinks.
- 200 additional customers posted statuses on Facebook mentioning the name of the business (the statuses on Facebook were shared with 3,000 other surfers) – SMO.
Advertising at the business fair was an indirect signal that yielded a return in the form of a series of direct signals. Diverse signals that had a significant impact on the website's exposure and browsing traffic. These are elements that immediately correspond with Google and improve visibility on the results pages.
What are indirect signals?
Indirect signals to the website are a wide range of marketing means "external" for Google ranking. Some of them are related to advertising in traditional media such as newspaper ads, billboards, marketing flyers, participation in conferences, television interviews, radio commercials and the like. All these marketing means can increase the power of the brand and lead surfers to the business website. It is not for nothing that many business owners who advertise themselves in traditional media ask their customers to search for them on Google. Obviously, if half a million potential customers heard an advertisement on the radio about a certain business, and 10,000 of them became unique visitors, the data will appear on the web-master-tool behind the scenes.
Indirect signals can also be digital means in the network. The classic example of this is the Meta Description, which is known to site promoters as not being a parameter in Google's ranking. However, a correct description of the page on the website on the search results pages affects the number of hits and this is already a direct signal. Another example of this is links from social networks.
Between a good website promoter and an excellent website promoter
SEO is a competitive field and one of the biggest problems that characterize it is thinking within the"bubble". Many website promoters who are asked about indirect signals tend to dismiss the idea with a wave of the hand. For example, Google has long announced that Twitter tweets are not a parameter in its website ranking algorithm (post by Matt Cutts in January 2014). On the other hand, it is clear that if tweets pointing to the site generate high-quality browsing traffic and improve the direct signals (external links, dwell time, reduction of abandonment rates, etc.) this will be reflected in Google's algorithm.
The difference between a good SEO and a great SEO is the big picture. Indirect signals that are not recognized as parameters for improving the position in the search results can change the balance of power against the competitors. The better the web developer understands this matter, the better the SEO strategy will be. This is an excellent technique that is suitable not only for websites in competitive fields but for any website in any industry.
The author of the article: Randy Fishkin (MOZ) Translation and editing: Shahar Danieli