Google SEO: Best Practices to Help with Search Ranking
If a page’s meta description tag exceeds 156 characters, Google will show as many whole words as it can, and the rest are replaced with an ellipsis (…). What’s more authentic than an explanation from Google itself about its standards for search engine optimization? Google’s SEO guidelines for webmasters recommend plenty of don’ts, but their newer SEO Starter Guide gives a broader understanding of how to do Google SEO.
Title Metadata
The Average CTR is a percentage representing how often users click from the search results to the website. Impressions are the number of times a website appears in the search results. If a user doesn’t have to click a link to see the URL, it counts as an impression. The first core update of 2024 finished rolling out on April 19 – this was a pretty big one but it overlapped with other big changes leading to a 45% reduction in unhelpful content. Sites like CNN, USA Today, LA Times and others are seeing their rented subdomains and subfolders dropping in rankings after they were hit by manual actions. Many are noticing huge declines in the number of links reported in the link report within the Google tool. You can use them to track these metrics and gain valuable insights about your website's performance. Once set up, you can view your overall visibility trend, estimated traffic, and average position on the Position Tracking dashboard. This can help you understand how well you're performing in search results. Google Rank can use Semrush’s Site Audit tool to examine over 140 technical and SEO-related factors. For instance, you can plug these topics into the Keyword Magic Tool to find useful keyword variations. Or you can use them as a reference while mapping out your content calendar.
Free Google Ads Performance Grader
Meta descriptions — the summary below the URL in Google search results — also give Google users a sample of your content. If they spot an enticing meta description, there’s a better chance of them clicking on your result, which boosts your click-through rates. However, you can still hit the standards of other search engines when you adopt basic SEO practices. Sites with a wide distribution of pages with inbound links have a greater ability to rank. This factor has existed for 10+ years, but was highlighted in the May 2024 Google API data leak as more important than previously believed. In the past 2 years, Google increased its scrutiny of content to ensure users aren’t encountering misinformation or disinformation. Examples of its efforts include its Your Money, Your Life algorithm update and its joint patent with IBM on detecting factual information in a document. To optimize for this new factor, ensure that your content is free of provably false claims and contains citations from academic, government, or other trustworthy sources.