5 Reasons Why Websites Rank High on Google With No SEO
Not all websites are created equal. There are websites that have defied trends and continue to maintain a high page rank on Google despite not being search engine optimised and not having sufficient backlinks.
If you have personally witnessed such cases and have been mystified as to why they’re faring well despite the seemingly minimal effort, here are 7 factors that could be behind their success.
1. High click-through rates
Google’s algorithm looks at the click-through-rate (CTR) of each web page, which is the number of clicks it receives from the total number of people searching for a particular phrase or keyword. The higher the CTR, the higher your page ranking is compared to other competing sites. Google will give you a prime spot in its search engine results page as it has determined that your listing is relevant.
As many sites write misleading site descriptions in an effort to generate more site clicks, a high CTR would not be enough to assure your page of a high ranking. Google also looks at its bounce rate, or the number of users who exit your page by hitting the back button to return to the search listing page. For instance, if Google directs 5,000 users to one of your web pages and all of them leave your page in just a few seconds, the relevance of your page will decline. A lot of these non-optimised sites have the winning combination of a high CTR and a low bounce rate.
2. Website and domain age
It has been observed that most of the sites that rank well are at least a couple of years old. And even if it has the requisite number of backlinks and relevant content, a brand new site won’t get higher rankings than an older more established website.
Patience is a virtue that’s great to have if you have a brand new website. Focus your efforts on improving your site using SEO best practices. You’ll see an increase in search traffic as the domain and website matures.
3. It has relevant high quality backlinks
Google is no longer impressed with the quantity of backlinks a website has; it now looks for quality. Relevance and authority are two criteria by which it judges websites.
Non-optimised sites that rank well may have backlinks that refer readers to the right web pages. And even if a site only has a few backlinks, it won’t matter at all. If these are from established or authoritative sites with .edu and .gov extensions, it will continue to be on Google’s priority list.
4. High quality content
With its recent updates, Google can analyse a site’s content and compare it with content in other websites within the same vertical. Google is now able to determine if a site has duplicate content, or has no relevant content at all.
It pays to make sure that the content you publish is well-written, relevant, and useful to your audience. With a site worth reading, you will be able to outrank competitors in the long run.
5. Site links are growing at a steady rate
Writing high quality content and creating a lot of backlinks is a sure way to get a really high Google site ranking. However, Google has the ability to know if the site’s growth is natural or if it’s too fast to be real. As a result, you will probably see a lot of older sites getting a favourable ranking as opposed to newer sites whose links appear to be manufactured. For this reason, you see a lot of older sites ranking well as they are growing at a “natural” pace versus one that seems “un-natural”.
There will always be high ranking websites that are not optimised for search engines. A combination of the factors mentioned above have allowed them to perform well, sometimes even better, than their more dazzling competitors. But imagine how they would perform if they included some optimisation into the mix!?
Focus your energies on creating the best version of your website. Ultimately, it will all come down to having a platform that offers the best products and services to your target market.
Having proved its relevance, people will keep coming back to your website for more.
Can you think of other reasons why there non-optimised sites rank well on Google and other search engines?
