This week we will be reviewing Stone Temple's recent Search Ranking Factors Study. We'll also discuss Bright Local's study of top onsite ranking factors. Join us as we review and discuss these studies.
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Welcome to the weekly HubFeed, where we unpack the important digital marketing news for small business. I'm Chad Hill and I'm joined by Adam Stetzer.
Today, we're gonna be covering two stories. One, we have a new study that shows that links are still a major ranking factor. And we also have a study on how onsite SEO is important for local businesses. This is really important because small businesses are constantly being fed information about what to do and what not to do online.
In the ever-evolving world of search, it's hard for small businesses to decipher what they should do and what they shouldn't do. So Google's algorithm, of course, is always changing as it tries to improve user experience, and get people the information they're looking for.
Yeah, Chad this is... you know it's gonna be an amazing punchline here as, you know, what's Google looking at today? Well it turns out, links are still really important.
So we're talking about this new study today from Stone Temple Consulting. And specifically, they show that links are still a major factor in how your website ranks in the search engine. So in their study, specifically to get a little bit into the numbers. The number of links per URL showed a higher ranking correlation than both domain authority and page authority. These results, again from Stone Temple Consulting, show that links are statistically more important. And in some of the other studies that we've seen or we've talked about from Moz and Search Metrics.
So what does this all mean for small businesses? Well the punchline, links are still very important. There's been tons of debate about this. And perhaps, they're less important in the ranking than they were before but they are still very, very important. And until Google really finds another way to determine the legitimacy and the quality of the site, this is the signal they seem to be relying on very, very heavily.
Now the caveat here, that I think a lot of people would agree with, is that the old days of link building, you know the way things used to be, just doesn't cut it anymore. So, while links are still really important, it's a different way of approaching how you get those links. And specific emphasis on content, real high quality content, focusing on the user. And one of the things that I think surprises a lot of people. Is if you wanna get to those really, really awesome links, you're actually gonna end up building relationships with people who then are very interested in what you have to say and then react to that high quality content.
Great and that brings us to our second story. And we're gonna be talking about a recent study by BrightLocal on some of the onsite ranking factors. So BrightLocal conducted survey of some of their consultants and individual consultants and companies that use their platform of about 550 of these users. Ninety-three percent of them said that on-page SEO is effective for local business rankings. And they listed the items that were most effective in getting this ranking. Sixty-eight percent said that title and metadata optimization still are the most effective onsite SEO tactics. Amazing that that still hasn't changed overall these years. Forty-two percent said that it was quality content. And your content only works if you have good titles and optimization on the content. Twenty percent said that having and providing good details about services and products was very important. And then 18% said that reviews and testimonials were very important.
So what does this really mean for small business? Well, it means you really can't neglect your SEO. Adam covered important things and how important links are but it's necessary, but not sufficient, to have good on-site SEO. And, you know, again if you have fantastic content about your services, you wanna make sure that's very clearly written about on your website. The days of having a services page that has a bulleted list of all the things you do are over. You need to break up that content and provide more information for the search engine. So again, create that good content. Make sure it's very specific. And look for keywords that your clients might be looking for but don't over optimize. Be detailed about what services that you do and which ones you don't. And of course, make sure that those title tags, the meta description tags, and other onsite optimization is set up correctly.
Thanks again for joining us today. Please subscribe to our YouTube channel and we look forward to seeing you next time.
