3 Indirect Ways to Increase Your Search Engine Rankings

When we think of search engine optimisation or SEO, we often think about keyword integration and backlinks.

All these things are important. There is no doubt about that. In fact, keyword optimisation and backlinks can be some of the most important search engine ranking factors for your website.

However, working on them can be very tough — especially if you do not have much help.

But the good news is that there are plenty of other ways that you can use to increase your search engine rankings.

In this post, I’m going to discuss 3 indirect ways to increase your search engine rankings.

Here we go…

1. Improving CTR

Did you know that you can now improve search engine rankings of your website by improving the CTR you get in the SERPs?

By the way, CTR means Click Through Rate and SERPs means Search Engine Results Pages, in case you didn’t know that.

So, the point is to encourage more and more search engine users to click on your website whenever they see your listing in the search engine results pages. It sends a very positive signal to search engines, such as Google, that people are liking your website.

More importantly, it sends a signal to search engines that your website — because of the fact that it gets the most clicks — is the most relevant listing in the SERPs for that particular keyword.

As a result, in an attempt to showcase the best possible results to its users, search engines eventually promote listing with the best CTR in the SERPs.

In other words, you won’t have to do anything on the backend, but you will still be able to enjoy higher search engine positions.

How can you achieve better CTR in the SERPs? Here are a few ways to do that:

• Make sure that your page is ranking for the perfect keyword. If it is ranking for an irrelevant keyword, nobody will click on your website link, and you will get a very low CTR — which will eventually demote your website in the SERPs.
• Create an irresistible headline for your blog post. 80% of the users will click on a search engine listing solely because of its headline.
• Optimise its meta description and URL slug to make it more user-friendly and engaging.

All of these 3 factors lead to higher CTRs and, eventually, higher search engine rankings.

2. Reducing Pogo-sticking

What is pogo-sticking?

It is a huge problem in the search engine optimisation world, and most SEO experts, webmasters, and website owners are unaware of it.

When someone finds your website in the SERPs and clicks on your website’s link and then immediately quits it without spending a reasonable amount of time on the page, it refers to pogo-sticking.

Search engines hate it.

Why?

Because it sends them a negative signal that your website wasn’t what they thought it was. Or, at least, it wasn’t suitable for the keyword it was ranking for. Otherwise, why would someone jump out of it so soon? It must mean that the information you have on your website wasn’t worth spending any time on it.

By understanding this whole process and reducing the pogo-sticking you get from search engine users, you can instantly increase your website’s search engine rankings.

In other words, make sure you do everything possible to make your search engine visitors stay on your website for as long as possible. Also, it would be even better if they end up clicking another link deep within your website. It will send a positive signal to search engines that your website is exactly what it should be. And, ultimately, search engines will then improve its rankings.

Here are a few tips for it:

• Make it easy for your first-time website visitors to navigate your website.
• Do not spam them with email subscription forms or ads as soon as they land.
• Make the content highly relevant and of superb quality.
• Use great graphics and colours to support the content of your website.

3. Loading Speed

How quickly does your website load?

The loading speed of your website is now an important search engine ranking factor. Ideally, it should be loaded within the first 2 seconds of someone clicking it. If it takes more than that, then you might be losing some search engine rankings.

And by simply improving the loading speed of your website — especially in comparison of your direct competitors — you can easily improve the search engine rankings of your website.

Pingdom is a great tool to check any possible issues with your website. You can also use the Google Search Console for some great suggestions about it.

Final Words

Backlinks, keywords, and meta tags are all very important search engine ranking factors. But there are many other factors that also play their parts.

I hope you’d use these 3 factors that I mentioned in this post to indirectly improve your search engine ranking in the SERPs. If you have any questions, feel free to ask.