Suggestions to increase Google rankings after being away from SEO

[trinorthlighting]

Hello everyone, It has been quite a while since we have posted here on Webmaster World. We have been away from the SEO the past year working on other projects but now we are getting back into it and we are trying to catch up on all the Google changes. We have been working on a eCommerce website recently to improve its Google rankings and I wanted some suggestions from other members on what else we could target to improve the website even more. Here is what we have done so far in the past 45 days.

1. Made the website 100% mobile friendly.
2. Made the website 100% https
3. Changed the overall layout/navigation.
4. Cut excess code to decrease page load time.

This resulted in the following so far from Google Analytics:

1. Bounce rate went from an average of 80% to 5% (From what I gather very few websites have bounce rates less than 10% correct?)
2. Conversions went from a ½ percent to about 2% which is a little above average.

Most of the website traffic is Pay Per Click currently and we have not seen any real increases in organic traffic yet but I suspect that will change shortly due to the decreased bounce rate and increased conversions. Anyone have any thoughts on the timing on the organic timing?

Does anyone have any more suggestions of things we can look at, target and work on?

[King of Bling]

"PPC handles "buy now" organic results is about information."

Interesting statement. Does anyone have evidence to back this up?

[fathom]

PENGUIN...

Ad copy doesn't inspire natural links.

[Nutterum]

@lucy24 - I have seen many FOTM spammer spam away the meta keywords with plugins like Yoast SEO plug-in in order to spam "relevant keywords" on the GMT. While the meta keywords themselves are worthless to Google bots, they are valuable tool to tell Google "what your website is all about" without adding bad content to the website. I can show real life examples of well ranking spammy websites doing this and getting away with it.

[TheMadScientist]

they are valuable tool to tell Google "what your website is all about" without adding bad content to the website. I can show real life examples of well ranking spammy websites doing this and getting away with it.

They aren't a tool. They are ignored. No one is getting away with anything, because no one, including any modern relevant search engine, cares what a keyword meta tag says, the same as they don't care what your HTML comments in the source code say.

You could tell a story about your horse in the keywords meta tag, another story about your dog, truck and girl in an HTML comment, write it all backward in a CSS and JS comment so you get your horse, dog, girl plus the truck you lost back, and do it all on your site about UFOs on Mars and you wouldn't gain or lose anything, because they're completely ignored [meaning as if they don't exist] by modern search engines -- Test it if you don't believe me.

[fathom]

While the meta keywords themselves are worthless to Google bots, they are valuable tool to tell Google "what your website is all about" without adding bad content to the website. I can show real life examples of well ranking spammy websites doing this and getting away with it.

Comment #1: Wishful thinking.

Comment #2: Correlation does not imply causation.

[Nutterum]

I believe I did not make my post clear - what I meant to say is they tell web master tools or the New Google Search Console (whichever name you prefer) . If you like test it yourself on the relevant keywords on GSC via meta keyword spam. Now I do not know whether Google takes the data from WMT into consideration when ranking, but that does not change the fact that these keywords do have an impact on a core Google analytical tool.

[fathom]

I believe I did not make my post clear

To be perfectly clear Google (which includes Google's Search Console Tools) DOES NOT USE that meta tag so any correlation you believe you saw ... refer to my previous post.

The video is very clear [youtube.com...]

Not sure what value providing you data in Search Console Tools that does not aid webmasters to improve their website.

You can test this pretty quickly... add (viagra cialis levitra etc.) to your keyword meta tag and see if they appear anywhere in GSC?

[TheMadScientist]

Not sure what value providing you data in Search Console Tools that does not aid webmasters to improve their website.

Like much of the info presented in GSC or WMT, it increases webmaster confusion, FUD, and general tail-chasing.

---

Yes, Google reads the whole page, and presents confusing, tail-chasing and FUD inducing information in GSC, but I personally don't see the value of even looking at something known to not count, never-mind actually taking the time trying to analyze anything to do with it, because that's not really helpful or informative WRT what does actually count these days.

As far as keywords, comments, descriptions, and other "on-page source code factors not seen by visitors" [including hidden text*] go they're really not worth time spent on them any more, because they don't count for anything WRT rankings -- Descriptions maybe an exception, but the time spent on those should be for attracting clicks when they're shown in the results, not to try and manipulate rankings higher or lower based on the content they contain, because the content they contain is not a direct factor any more.

The "it just plain doesn't count any more" factors have grown so much that one test someone did here about 3 years ago [I think that's about when] indicated on-page text (or lack-thereof) can actually override inbound anchor text for rankings -- I don't remember who it was or exactly how long ago, but it was a thread about 4 of us, including tedster, were involved in. The test was actually for something else, like PageRank flow, but one of the "interesting side-notes" about what was learned from the test is: If there is not page content related to an inbound link's anchor text, the anchor text of the link may be ignored.

* Hidden text in HTML is largely and mostly ignored, even if positioned off the page via css, but a large amount of "stuffed" or "spammy" text that cannot be displayed by visitors can go from "ignored" to "a negative factor" in some cases, afaik.