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In this knowledgebase, we will be citing statistics related to Google and referring to them as our search engine unless otherwise noted. As the number one search engine worldwide, Google sees over 78% 92% of all search traffic. (That number is even higher for English-speaking countries; the second largest search engine, Baidu, is only available in Chinese.) Google sees over 6 billion searches per day. |
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Increasingly, people are also using search engines to look into places before they visit them in person. From 2017-2019, the growth of “near me” searches grew by 200%. From finding restaurants to fine jewelry stores, Google has become a trusted recommendation tool.
There are three primary categories of SEO:
On-Site SEO. This is what many people think of when they consider SEO to be new pages of fresh content, key phrases to rank for, title tags, etc.
Technical SEO. This is behind the scenes SEO, such as meta descriptions, page load speeds, internal linking and more.
Off-Site SEO. This is SEO efforts you do to gain SEO traffic back to your site, such as building referral traffic, Google My Business updates, and more.
Improving Your SEO
There are many ways to improve your SEO, which the other articles in this guide go more in-depth on. On a high level, your site content and site credibility are both things that influence the search algorithm. Those factors determines what the most relevant results are for each search.
On-Site SEO - Site Content
It is hopefully fairly obvious that the content on your site needs to match the searches you would like to rank for. If you are hoping people will find your site by searching “antique silver jewelry” then you should have a page dedicated to that topic, whether it’s a blog post, a landing page, or an entire page of inventory. The more places on your site that those keywords appear, the more likely Google is to suggest you to the searcher. We’ll get more into site content best practices in other pages within this section.
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Another factor Google considers is your bounce rate.
NOTE - With the release of Google Analytics 4 in late 2020, Google is removing the bounce rate metric. The following information is for informational purposes but still applies to Google Analytics Universal accounts.
Your bounce rate is calculated by how many people only view one page on your site before they leave. If 50% of your visitors leave after only looking at one page, your bounce rate is 50%. Things that cause searchers to leave your site quickly, such as broken links, irrelevant information, and unresponsive or slow-loading sites, contribute to a high bounce rate. (You’re going for a golf score here!) Conversely, if a searcher finds information they are looking for, they are more likely to click on other pages within your website. You can calculate both your overall bounce rate as well as rates for individual pages, such as your Home page or Contact page. Typical bounce rates are between 25-50%. If your bounce rate starts to hover around 75% or more, your website likely needs some updates.
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