The Google ranking factors in the design are broken down into categories including on-SERP factors, URL and domain factors, backlink factors, user signals, content factors and user experience factors and you can tell which is which by using the colour code at the top.

Check out ranking factors data here and click on the image to enlarge it:

Here are my thoughts on some of the top ranking factors in the study:

Text relevance – I am not surprised that this is the top one. After all, if the relevant text isn’t on the page, then you ain’t gonna come up for it.

URL’s organic traffic – Again, this makes sense. Websites that are already getting a good amount of traffic from Google do tend to rank higher.

Domain occurrences of star ratings – Ratings on Google local and the top business directories can definitely impact your local rankings and would still be helpful even if SEO didn’t exist.

Domain authority score – Domain authority is still very important, but it is not the be all and end all. I have seen websites with virtually no backlinks beat high authority sites lots of times.

Page authority score – Getting quality links to a blog post, article or whatever can really get it ranking very well and pulling in lots of organic traffic.

Content quality score – Of course, the quality of your content is important for ranking well. In depth and well written content has a much better shot at ranking high.

Domain occurrences in featured snippets – I love it when a client gets a featured snippet for a blog post or piece of content – That is when you know that you are doing a good job and I would imagine that sites that have a lot of them will perform better.

Domain’s age – This one has always been an important factor. Brand-new websites have a lot less chance of ranking for competitive keywords than well-established ones.

All in all, a great study and handy resource. I hope that you find it helpful and please go ahead and share it on social media.

Via Search Engine Roundtable

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Some interesting things that they have noticed this year are that the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping the way we communicate, work and create with ChatGPT users sending 6,944 prompts per minute. Digital payments continue to replace traditional transactions with Venmo users sending $463k in payments every minute. Fans are streaming a Taylor Swift song an incredible 69.4k each minute and an increase in cybercrime with cyber-criminals launching 30 DDoS in an internet minute.

Overall the world’s internet population has grown significantly this year and as of November 2023 it represents 5.2 billion people – approximately 64.6% of the global population.

I hope you enjoy this internet minute 2023 infographic design and please go ahead and share it on social media.

(Click to enlarge)

Via Red Website Design

The post What Happens On The Internet Every Minute 2023 appeared first on The SEO Company - Lancashire & UK SEO Services.

The video is about two and a half minutes long and shows the top 10 websites for every month along with the number of monthly visits each one received and the categories they fall into including search engines, social media and news and entertainment.

The video has been uploaded to his YouTube channel and has had about 26,000 views and quite a few positive comments so I thought I would share it with you all today.

According to the data AOL was getting the most hits for the first 7 years or so with Yahoo taking over in the year 2000 and then Google for the first time in 2006.

Here is the video for you to check out, enjoy!

The post Most Popular Websites Since 1993 appeared first on The SEO Company - Lancashire & UK SEO Services.

The design starts off by saying the data analytics market is expected to be worth $550 billion by 2028 and then is broken down into sections including the evolution of web analytics, the birth of Google Analytics, Google Analytics 4 and why you need an analytics partner.

I hope that you appreciate this web analytics infographic and please go ahead and share it on social media.

(Click to enlarge)

The post The History and Future of Web Analytics appeared first on The SEO Company - Lancashire & UK SEO Services.

July 2006 – June 2008

This was the first web design for Seoco.co.uk and it wasn’t a bad effort as far as design goes with a decent template and nice logo. I have to be grateful to this design because it launched my business and got me self employed which is one of the greatest things I have ever done. However, some parts of the website are a little bit cringe-worthy to look back at such as the “text links” page and the various reciprocal links pages but to be fair when it was built I had never even heard of Matt Cutts or the webmaster guidelines. The “fancy a good rank” part is still pretty funny but I ended up taking that down after being told that it wasn’t very professional.

June 2008 – October 2013

This was the second design for Seoco which was created by a guy called James Koster and it might have been a little bit plain but that was the way I wanted it and it served us well. Around that time I was really into blogging and early days social networking and the site was pulling in a good few hundred hits a day and ranking very well in the search engines. I worked incredibly hard to make sure that the code was perfect for the entire site and that each page would validate which was an important thing at the time.

October 2013 – April 2020

The third design was created by the guys at Pixel by Pixel and it was by far the fanciest of all the designs and even got featured on some of the top CSS galleries. You cannot tell by looking at the screenshot but the cogs used to spin around and it looked really cool. I probably would have stuck with this one for quite a while longer but the site was not responsive or mobile friendly and I was told that it would have been too expensive to fix it and much easier just to go for a straight redesign.

April 2020 – Present

OK so there is no need for a screenshot here because you are looking at it. The current design was created by Pixel Hero and it functions perfectly. The site isn’t getting anywhere near as much traffic as it was in its glory days but it still comes up well for local searches and gets us enough work.

I hope you all enjoyed the trip down memory lane. Take it easy.

The post The 15 Year History of Seoco.co.uk appeared first on The SEO Company - Lancashire & UK SEO Services.

The inspiring video was posted on Youtube by Google on the 24th of March and has already had more than 6.7 million views and been featured on important websites such as USA Today along with lots of advertising blogs around the web.

The video starts off by showing general COVID-19 search terms like “quarantine”, “social distancing” and “lockdown” and then goes on to provide phrases that could change because of vaccinations including “sweat pants” transforming to “pants” as well as “virtual happy hour” changing to “happy hour” and more.

A lot of the people commenting on Youtube were really moved by the advert which aired in the United States and some of them even said it brought them to tears.

Anyway, check it out and let me know what you think in the comments.

I already had my first jab a few weeks ago and am due to get my second one soon. All I did was call up my GP and ask and they had me sorted out in no time.

The post Google Advert Encourages People To Get Vaccinated appeared first on The SEO Company - Lancashire & UK SEO Services.

We have done a combination of infographics and regular blog posts with cool photographs and stuff for our customers and a lot of them were really great and very well received – I am sure you will like them.

Here is a quick breakdown of each piece along with images and links to the blog posts so that you can see them for yourselves.

To kick things off here are the infographics that we worked on and promoted this year:

Instagram In An Instant

We worked with the guys at S9 to help them design an infographic all about the image sharing social network Instagram which includes facts, the top users, data about its growth and marketing tips. The piece went viral and was featured on plenty of quality websites and blogs.

To check it out click here

Everything You Need to Know About TikTok as a Business

We teamed up with the folks at VizionOnline to help them create an infographic about the hot new social networking service TikTok for businesses. This one was also very successful and helped to promote their web design firm.

To check it out click here

The Growth of DIY during the Pandemic

The team at Buy Metal Online wanted an infographic about the increase in the number of people doing DIY work because of the Coronavirus lockdown so we designed a piece which provides lots of interesting facts and stats. The blog post did well and was cited by some important sites.

To check it out click here

Three Technologies Changing the Face of Construction

We worked with the people at VizionOnline to help them make an infographic for their client called 53 Quantum about the future of construction technology. The design was very popular on Reddit and got posted on some good sites.

To check it out click here

And here we have a list of some of the regular linkbaits that we knocked out in 2020:

30 of the World’s Most Unique Beds

For The Luxury Bed Co we created a huge blog post featuring cool pics and information about some of the most unusual beds from around the World. The piece got lots of likes on Facebook and everybody enjoyed it including the client.

To check it out click here

Flags In The Style Of Other Flags

For the company called UK Feather Flags we searched through the vexillology category on Reddit to find the highest rated flags in the style of other flags which is a very popular thing in that subreddit. The redditors liked it and it has had plenty of traffic throughout the year.

To check it out click here

Pimped Out Drainpipes

We came up with a fantastic blog post for the guys at Lancashire Roofers which includes examples of some of the most creative drainpipes from around the World. It was a very popular blog post and went viral on the image sharing website Imgur.

To check it out click here

Fun and Creative Coronavirus Stuff

For the website called UK Exhibition Stands we put together a blog post with pictures of creative coronavirus stuff that was popular on the internet around that time including face masks, graffiti and things people made in lockdown. The article did good and got lots of shares on Facebook.

To check it out click here

If you like the look of this content and are interested in us coming up with something for your website then please contact us.

The post The Coolest Things We Did in 2020 appeared first on The SEO Company - Lancashire & UK SEO Services.

The designer got the data from the Google Trends year in search report and it lists the top terms and topics that were searched for globally during the year with height being the search interest for a given topic.

As you can imagine a lot of the search queries are Coronavirus related such as Coronavirus symptoms and Coronavirus update and another very popular topic towards the end of the year was the US election with phrases including Joe Biden, Donald Trump and U.S election results getting a high number of searches.

The strangest query in the infographic is probably the phrase death which has consistently been searched for a huge number of times throughout the entire year.

I hope that you find this Google search queries infographic useful and please share it out with your friends on social media.

The post The Most Popular Google Search Queries for 2020 appeared first on The SEO Company - Lancashire & UK SEO Services.

The piece starts off by teaching you about various keyword research tools such as the one from SEMRush, KWFinder from Mangools and Ubersuggest and then goes on to offer a list of the top content optimisation tools, site enhancement tools, SEO analysis tools and lots more lists of helpful gadgets for different aspects of online marketing.

For each tool featured in the infographic you can learn everything you need to know including stuff like the number of users/installations, how high the tools are rated and exactly what you get with the resource to name a few things.

I hope that this SEO tools infographic helps you out and please go ahead and share it with your pals on social media.

Via Social Media Today

The post An Infographic About The Top SEO Tools For Your Business appeared first on The SEO Company - Lancashire & UK SEO Services.

Courtesy of the Way Back Machine I have put together a few screenshots of what some of the popular search engines looked like back in the year 2000/2001. Back then there was a little bit more choice then there is nowadays and it wasn’t just all about Google, Bing and Yahoo.

As you can see from these pics the search engines have changed a lot since back then except for perhaps Google which still looks very similar.

I hope that you enjoy these old search engine pictures which are listed in alphabetical order and I have come up with a little bit of information about each one for you to check out.

Altavista Search Engine in 2001

Altavista was launched in the year 1995 and became one of the most widely used search engines in the World but ended up loosing ground to Google. The site was purchased by Yahoo! in the year 2003 and they kept running it using their own search results up until 2013 when it was closed down. (More info)

AOL Search Engine in 2000

According to Search Engine Land AOL (originally known as America Online) launched it’s own branded search engine in 1997 and it was called Netfind. I would imagine that the site was much bigger in the states but the UK version of the site was still very popular over here for people performing web searches around that time. (More info)

Ask Jeeves Search Engine in 2000

Ask Jeeves is another search engine that was used a lot back in the day and I remember customers asking me if I could get their websites listed on there. The site was launched in 1996 and it is still up and running but now it is called Ask.com and it isn’t as popular as it used to be. (More info)

Dogpile Search Engine in 2000

Dogpile was first created in 1996 by Aaron Flin to provide results from multiple search engines and was a lot of peoples favourite back then. These days the site fetches the best results from Google, Yahoo, Yandex, Bing and others and you can either search the web, images, videos or news. (More info)

Excite Search Engine in 2000

Excite is a web portal that was launched in 1995 that offers a meta search engine and a variety of other content as well as a customisable homepage. According to Wikipedia it was the fourth most visited website in the year 2000 and the company is still running with web portals for many different countries. (More info)

Google Search Engine in 2000

Google was founded in September 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin and quickly became the leading search engine thanks to it’s PageRank algorithm which looked at backlinks to estimate the importance of a site. As you can see the site has always had a nice clean and uncluttered design. (More info)

Hotbot Search Engine in 2000

Hotbot was created in 1996 and originally offered search results from the Inktomi database. The search engine was a very popular site in the old days and was at one point one of the top 20 most visited sites on the web. As of 2020 the site is no longer a search engine and provides a VPN service. (More info)

Lycos Search Engine in 2000

Lycos is a search engine and web portal that was established in 1994 and according to Wikipedia it was the most visited online destination in the world in the year 1999. The company is still providing search results both in the US and in many other countries to this day as well as offering other user focussed products. (More info)

MSN Search Engine in 2000

Microsoft got into the search engine business in the year 1998 and to begin with they also provided search results from Inktomi. The site changed its name from MSN Search to Windows Live Search, then Live Search and then Bing in 2009. As of October 2018, Bing is the third most popular search engine in the World. (More info)

Yahoo Search Engine in 2000

Yahoo started out as a web directory which was launched in 1994 by Jerry Yang and David Filo. In 1995 they introduced a search function that allowed users to search through the results from their directory and it became the first really popular search engine on the internet. Since 2009 the search results have been provided by Bing and according to Alexa the site is still in the top 10 on the web. (More info)

I also wanted to include Alltheweb in this list but I couldn’t get a very good screenshot so i didn’t bother.

Which was your favourite search engine back then? Let me know in the comments.

The post What the Search Engines Looked Like About 20 Years Ago appeared first on The SEO Company - Lancashire & UK SEO Services.