Suggested Answers:

1. One way of assessing the quality of a website is to use measures of popularity. This is based on the assumption that websites with good content will be more popular than sites with poor quality content. On the assumption that people are more likely to link to high-quality websites than poor-quality sites, one measure of popularity is the number of backlinks—external links that point back to a site.

Search engines attempt to determine if the content on a webpage is relevant to what the searcher is looking for. As with quality, the search engine cannot determine relevance directly, so algorithms have been developed to look for clues that suggest a site might be relevant. Factors which affect relevancy:

Keywords related to the search topic suggest relevant content.

Page titles: Words in the page title that are related to the topic suggest relevant content.

Relevant phrases in text: In addition to keywords, search engines look at the words and phrases on the page to determine relevance.

Amount of text on page that appears relevant: The proportion of relevant text to non-relevant text can influence relevance.

Backlinks from relevant sites and Web directories: Webpages that are listed in relevant categories of Web directories are more likely to be relevant because they were reviewed by human editors.

SERP click through rate (CTR): Searchers are more likely to click on listings that contain relevant content.

Onpage factor: Metadata (such as page titles, page descriptions) and descriptive URLs should reflect the page content. People use the information in search listings to determine if a link contains relevant information. This affects CTR.

Dwell time and bounce rate are impacted by how relevant a website’s content is. Long dwell times and short bounce rates suggest relevant content related to the search.

Search engines want their customers to be satisfied. As a result, SERP ranking is influenced by factors that impact user satisfaction. Factors that are likely to influence a search engine’s user satisfaction rating are:

Dwell time: Users that stay on a site longer are probably more satisfied.

Site speed: Slow page loading time on websites reduces satisfaction.

Reading level: Reading levels that are too high or too low frustrate users.

Hacked sites, malware, spam reduce user satisfaction significantly.

Website satisfaction surveys: Google created user satisfaction surveys that webmasters can embed in their websites. Positive responses to these surveys can improve ranking.

Barriers to content: Making people register, provide names, or fill out forms to get to content has a negative impact on user satisfaction.

Other factors: Too many ads, page-not-found errors, duplicate content/pages, content copied from other websites, and spam in comment sections all detract from user satisfaction.

2. A backlink is an external link that points back to a site. The use of backlinks is based on the assumption that people are more likely to link to high-quality websites than poor-quality sites. Since the number of backlinks is believed to be a heavily weighted factor, SEO professionals have developed several creative strategies for increasing legitimate backlinks to their websites while avoiding certain tactics that Google disapproves of. Google downgrades websites that use methods that artificially inflate their backlink count.

3. Black hat tactics try to trick the search engine into thinking a website has high-quality content, when in fact it does not. The search engines have stronger detection systems in place and when they are discovered, Google and other SEs will usually punish the business by dramatically lowering the website’s rank so that it does not show up on SERPs at all.

4. On-page SEO factors are elements that can be controlled by the web designer. Off-page factors can be influenced but not directly controlled by SEO professionals.

5. Perhaps the most important action an organization can take to improve its website’s ranking and satisfy website visitors is provide helpful content that is current and updated regularly. When SEO practices are combined with valuable content, websites become easier to find in search engines but, more importantly, contribute to building brand awareness, positive attitudes toward the brand, and brand loyalty.

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