What Top Ranked Sites Have in Common
What separates the heavyweights of the program rankings from everyone else? That’s an issue every good SEO constantly asks themselves as they appear to outrank sites that appear to dominate Google for each relevant keyword (like Wikipedia or WebMD).
Unsurprisingly, these sites have quite a couple of things in common. It’s not just their age or authority either—factors that other sites can’t hope to match. There are many similar qualities that help top sites stand aside from their competitors that you simply can copy and improve today.
Let’s review five of the foremost important and surprising factors and explain what you’ll learn from them and the way you’ll use that to enhance your own site.
1. Backlinks Reign Supreme
Let’s get the smallest amount surprising commonality out of the way first. The top-ranked sites on Google all have a significant number of back links. As we all know, high-quality back links nearly always mean high rankings.
Research from Backlinko finds the primary result on Google has a mean of three.8 times as many back links because the remainder of the results on the primary page.
The big boys have it made when it involves acquiring more back links, too. They still get more back links over time as a results of their position in Google.
Research by Ahrefs finds that the highest three results generate more new referring domains than the remainder of the pages on Google. Pages ranked first and second get significantly more new referring domains. Those pages ranking first get between back links at a faster rate of between five percent and 14.5 percent per month.
It’s not just an outsize number of back links that are important. they have to be top quality, too. What does a top quality back link look like? It comes from an authoritative domain, is placed within its content, and has topical relevance to your website.
Let’s say you’ve got a car blog. A link from another high-ranking car blog carries more weight and is of upper quality than a link from a serious health website because it’s far more relevant to your niche.
You shouldn’t discount internal links, either. the most important websites (and news outlets in particular) nearly always put tons of effort into ensuring every new piece of content links back to many previous posts.
Great internal linking makes it significantly easier for Google to crawl your website and index your information. the better your site is to crawl, the more likely Google will find and rank your content. they’ll not have an equivalent power as back links, but internal links can still end in higher rankings.
All this is often to mention that you simply got to build back links during a scalable way if you would like your site to compete with the most important brands in your industry.
2. Provide High-Quality Content
Most top-ranking websites are documented for the standard of their content. Okay, some major sites don’t publish high-quality content all of the time, but every high-ranking site does produce exceptional content, a minimum of a number of the time.
Don’t forget, high-quality content doesn’t necessarily mean it’s longer or more detailed than everyone else’s. it’d contain unique research that other companies can’t hope to repeat. Or it could break a story and it might be designed better. Or it could go viral. There are many ways to make amazing content.
Doing so matters when it involves SEO because high-quality content helps boost several ranking factors. It’s a magnet for back links, it reduces your bounce rate, and it should end in a better click through rate (CTR).
The top-ranked sites don’t just believe the target quality of their content, though. They also take steps to optimize it to perform better in Google. meaning including keywords in header tags, throughout the content, within the page title, and within the URL.
Creating high-quality content isn’t easy, especially when there’s no objective thanks to determine how good your content is. That’s the work of your users. That being said, there are still steps you’ll fancy make it more likely your users think highly of your content.
The first is to form sure it’s written by an expert. this is often a reasonably walk in the park for a few top-ranking sites like media outlets. Journalists, by default, are experts on certain topics. However, there’s nothing stopping you from writing about your expertise or hiring expert writers, either.
You could even use a technique adopted by some health websites, where content is written by knowledgeable writer then fact-checked by a medical professional. Doing so has the double advantage of having content written by a superb writer while also being medically accurate.
3. Specialise in User Experience
Top-ranking sites on Google put a premium on the user experience and do everything they will to stay customers returning. this suggests having an excellent design, high-quality content as discussed above, an intuitive layout, and an excellent browsing experience generally. Yes, a number of the highest-ranking sites may serve ads on their pages, but they don’t ruin your browsing experience with them or use intrusive popup ads, either.
A great user experience is one among the explanations these sites are top of Google, after all. Google announced that user experience metrics would be wont to rank sites, beginning in 2021. How your site loads, what it’s like, and the way users interact with it contribute to your rankings, along side other factors like HTTPS, safe browsing, mobile friendliness, and therefore the presence of interstitials.
Google puts such an enormous emphasis on your site’s user experience because it aligns with its goal of giving customers the simplest possible browsing experience. The search giant finds over half (52 percent) of users are going to be less likely to interact with a brand after a nasty mobile experience. So why wouldn’t it rank you if you’ve got a high bounce rate?
Improving your site’s user experience and aligning it with the experiences provided by the top-ranking sites won’t just improve your rankings; it also makes commercial sense. Ad network Ezoic generated a 186 percent increase in earnings per 1000 visitors by improving the UX of a publisher.
4. Confirm Your Page Speed Is Competitive
You’ve never had to attend for the ny Times to load, have you? That’s because top-ranking sites know the importance of delivering content as fast as possible. Page load speed has been a ranking factor for desktop searches since 2010, and Google announced it had been also a ranking factor for mobile searches back in 2018.
Say it with me: A slower site means lower rankings.
You need to optimize for page speed if you would like to combine it with the highest-ranking sites. It’s not such a lot about getting the sting over your competitors and making your site 0.1 seconds faster, however. It’s about having a site that’s fast enough to not impact the user experience negatively.
Research by Google finds over half (53 percent) of tourists abandon a mobile site if it doesn’t load in three seconds.
If you’ve got a slow site, you won’t just get penalized for a poor load time. You’ll also get penalized for having a high bounce rate as users get uninterested with waiting and choose a special site instead.
The easiest thanks to check your page speed is by using Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool. it’ll allow you to skills fast your site is, provides it a erase of 100, and suggest improvements.
Top ranked sites page speed
If you would like to possess a seriously fast-loading page, read my advice on getting an ideal score with Google PageSpeed Insights.
5. Consider User Intent
Have you noticed how some top-ranking sites have several pieces of content that each one seem to approach an equivalent topic from a rather different angle? That’s because they understand the facility of user intent and therefore the value Google places thereon.
Google wants to serve the simplest and most appropriate content for every query. an enormous a part of that’s understanding what the user is trying to realize from their search. Are they trying to find out something? Research a topic? Make a purchase? Google delivers different results for every intent.
For instance, Google shows e-commerce pages where it thinks the user is trying to form a sale, but it serves up blog articles for information-related queries.
Knowing what sort of content Google thinks users want to ascertain is vital to becoming a top-ranked site, because you’re far more likely to urge ranked if you create content that matches the user intent for every target keyword. this is often why numerous top-ranking sites have similar content targeting an equivalent topics: to catch every user intent.
It’s not simply a matter of informational vs. commercial, either. There are dozens of sorts of informative content that users might want to access. In some cases, it’s a listicle. For other queries, a video could also be more appropriate.
Taking time to know the user intent for every keyword or topic you’re targeting can yield serious results. Marketing SaaS CoSchedule saw a 594 percent increase in search traffic once they aligned content with user intent.
Top Ranked Sites: FAQs
What do the top-ranking sites have in common?
They all have tons of high-quality backlinks, great content, a superb user experience, a fast-loading website, and content that matches the user’s intent.
Why do the highest sites have numerous more backlinks?
This is partly due to the standard of content but also thanks to the very fact that they sit at the highest of Google. This makes them a simple target for people trying to link to an authoritative source.
How can better content improve my rankings?
Better content can improve your rankings in several ways. High-quality content attracts more backlinks, but Google also rewards in-depth content and leads to users spending an extended time on the page.
Why does user experience matter?
Google wants to supply the simplest experience to its users. a part of meaning sending them to sites that are easy to browse. It’s why user experience factors are now ranking factors.
How am I able to check my page speed?
Use the Google Page Speed Insights tool.
How am I able to gauge user intent?
Google the keyword you would like to rank for and appearance at the pages that appear within the results. If all of the content has an equivalent format, that’s the sort of content you ought to create.
Conclusion: What you’ll Learn From the highest Ranked Sites
You can’t turn your website into a top-ranking site overnight. However, you’ll learn tons from them and implement tactics they use to enhance your site’s Google ranking. There are quite a couple of things they are doing in common, as you’ve learned.
Make sure you’ve got a scalable system for generating backlinks, create high-quality content, specialise in the user experience, ensure your site loads fast, and consider user intent once you create content.
Do these five things, and you’ll be on your thanks to having a top-ranked site within the future.
What are you getting to work on first?