You can spend a lot of time creating a great-looking website with a wide range of features, but if people can’t find it, there’s only so much value it will bring you.
Getting found online is one of the most important elements of a great digital marketing strategy. But to get more eyes on your products and services, mastering SEO visibility is essential.
SEO visibility is a metric used to gauge how well a website can be found online. It consists of various variables that, when combined, can help you identify whether or not you’re implementing best SEO practices to achieve better search rankings and, ultimately, more traffic.
How SEO Visibility is Calculated
SEO visibility attributed a score between 1-100 that’s based. Each one of these can lower or increase the score based on certain results and metrics. The core elements used to calculate an SEO visibility score are:
- Search Volume: Organic search volume is calculated based on the visibility potential of a website’s different web pages. Traffic potential is calculated on the volume of monthly searches certain keywords and phrases produce through Google. The more keywords a website is ranking for, the larger the amount of search volume it can expect to receive.
- Page Rank: How a website’s pages are currently ranking on SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) is an important variable for calculating overall visibility. Each SERP receives a certain percentage of impressions based on how many clicks it takes users to navigate. In most cases, websites that appear past the third page of search results see considerably less traffic than those within the first couple.
- Click-Through Rate (CTR) Models: Search engines use CTR models to help them estimate how many users are likely to click on a webpage based on their relative position on SERPs. These models use historical customer patterns and actual click data to measure the value that one ranking position has over another.
- Indexed URL Count: The amount of URLs that a website has published and indexed online is another key variable for overall SEO visibility. The greater the number of URLs, the larger the presence and the more likely unique visitors will land on various web pages.
What SEO Visibility Tells Us
While SEO visibility scores are closely associated with your web traffic potential, they can also tell you a lot more than you might think. Overall, a good visibility score is a sign that your website is performing well in multiple areas. Tracking how your SEO visibility changes over time can give you a higher-level picture of whether or not there may be areas you need to improve.
Knowing your SEO visibility score also helps you when comparing your website against other competitors. Monitoring and comparing visibility scores from multiple websites helps to give you some added context on where and how market share is split. Knowing this information also allows you to analyze how visibility scores change over time and whether or not new search engine algorithm changes are hurting or improving your brand’s exposure.
Factors Affecting SEO Visibility
SEO visibility scores are highly dynamic and will go up and down regularly. This is due to a variety of factors that can affect it. These factors include:
- Search Engine Rankings - Where your website appears in search engine results (SERPs) has a significant impact on how visible it is. Landing a top spot, especially on the first page, dramatically increases your visibility. On the flip side, if your website ranks lower (typically past the 50th returned result), it's much less likely to be seen, reducing your chances of attracting new visitors.
- Click-Through Rate (CTR) - Your website’s CTR shows the percentage of people who see your website on search engines and actually click on a redirect link. A high CTR is a great sign. It signals to search crawlers that your page is relevant and useful to people. This in turn helps your page rankings to improve, making your website even more visible to others.
- Backlinks and Authority - The more high-quality links you point to your site from other reputable websites, the more authoritative and credible your site appears. Building this authority is a powerful way to improve your rankings and increase your overall visibility in search results. The flip side to this is that if the majority of the links pointing to your site are from sketchy websites with low authority, it can actually lead to a reverse effect.
- Search Intent Optimization - Understanding what someone using a search engine intends to achieve is very important. This is known as "search intent." It is crucial to ensure that the content on your site meets that intent effectively. Search engines look for the result that best answers the question asked by a user, especially when they're looking to resolve a particular problem. Creating content that addresses the actual interests of people plays a big part in gaining better rankings over time.
- Mobile and Local SEO Visibility - A search engine’s primary objective is usually to crawl and index the mobile version of a website first. This is why it is highly important to optimize a website for mobile site versions. Businesses that have a physical presence should optimize their profiles through Google Business and local citations to improve online visibility in the desired area. Whether or not a business takes these steps will likely contribute to SEO visibility increasing or decreasing over time.
How to Improve SEO Visibility
SEO visibility can be enhanced by putting together various optimization techniques. Focusing on using a visibility framework can help websites improve their rankings, attract increased organic traffic, and maintain a strong online presence long-term.
1. Focus On Specific Long-Tail Keywords
A "long-tail" keyword is a more detailed phrase that often has a specific search intent associated with it. Using these types of keywords can be highly beneficial for your SEO.
These terms tend to have less competition than broader terms. This makes achieving a higher rank for them much easier. By aligning your content with specific user search intents, you can attract a highly targeted audience, increasing the chance of more conversions happening naturally.
2. Make Your Website Mobile Friendly
Ensuring a website works with Google's mobile-focused indexing is key to better SEO visibility. To achieve this, your business should have a website with a flexible design that works on all types of devices. Mobile load times and ease of navigation are two important things that should also be prioritized to maintain and improve position in search engines.
Google has made it clear to web developers that a mobile-friendly website often increases user satisfaction, and most importantly, is used as a ranking factor when positioning a website in SERPs.
3. Improve Title and Meta Descriptions
Optimizing your title tags and meta descriptions is an effective way to increase your click-through rates. This can subsequently improve your incoming web traffic. The short descriptions and titles you create will change how your webpages appear in search results.
Poorly crafted ones may not give enough context on the link a user clicks on or appear irrelevant to what they're looking for. By including relevant keywords and descriptive meta descriptions, users will be more inclined to click through and explore the content you're providing.
4. Build High-Quality Backlinks
Building high-quality authoritative backlinks using ethical outreach programs is an impactful way to increase the authority and visibility of your website. The backlinks you gain are essentially an endorsement from other authoritative websites that let search engines know that your content is trustworthy.
Try to work towards improving relationships with relevant websites and industry publications while creating high-quality content that's likely to gain more clicks. This creates a win-win situation for everyone.
5. Improve Dwell Time
Increasing engagement with your content by using smart formatting, interactive elements, and improved readability increases dwell time on your site. Dwell time is a metric of how engaging or valuable the content on a webpage is likely to be.
You'll want to work on properly structuring your content so it's easy to understand and read. This means adding images, videos, and other interactive elements that capture interest. The longer the dwell time, the more it signifies user intent is being satisfied, which is great for users and your search engine rankings.
6. Take Advantage of Internal Linking
Distributing your link equity effectively by creating relevant internal links makes the website more accessible and comprehensive. Internal linking helps search engine crawlers to determine how the website is structured and helps them when indexing individual landing pages.
By connecting relevant pages together with helpful redirects, link equity passes to other important pages of content and increases their searchability. Creating an effective internal linking strategy helps improve user experience and provides your website with an organized hierarchy for all your content pages.
7. Expand Your SERP Real Estate
Targeting for featured snippets, sitelinks, and other SERP features can help add more appeal to your brand on your landing pages. These different features help to add more credibility to your website and improve the chances of users clicking on your links.
You can improve your chances of being selected for these features by putting informative content that answers specific user questions above the fold, as well as by using structured data.
8. Carry Out SEO Audits
Conducting regular technical and content-based SEO audits can help you identify gaps in your website that impact its visibility. These audits can help you find local broken links, website loading issues, and content that can be improved.
By carrying out SEO audits throughout the year, you’ll be able to paint a clearer picture of what actions you need to prioritize to maintain your rankings.
Common Challenges and Limitations
Although understanding your SEO visibility is helpful for prioritizing certain website improvements, it's important to understand it has certain limitations. It's not designed to be a direct measure of organic traffic since your visibility score won’t take into account your actual website visits in a given time period.
Other important factors like brand recognition, user experience, and the quality of the content on your landing pages also play a significant role in driving clicks and conversions. There is also the regular shifting nature of search engine algorithms that can have a major impact on rankings and the indexing of your site.
Keeping up with all these changes and adapting your strategy accordingly is crucial for maintaining and improving your visibility. However, your SEO visibility score can still be a helpful “guide” you can use over the long-term to make sure your site is moving in the right direction.
Track Your SEO Visibility Over Time
SEO visibility is a helpful metric for understanding and improving your website's organic search performance. By understanding the factors that influence it and implementing effective optimization strategies to improve it, you’ll likely see ongoing improvements in your online visibility while gaining more qualified traffic to help you achieve your business goals.