The foundation of search engine optimization is made of trust, authority and relevance. There is no doubt relevance is the most important concept of SEO because it streng…
The foundation of search engine optimization is made of trust, authority and relevance. There is no doubt relevance is the most important concept of SEO because it strengthens the other two values i.e. trust and authority. You can’t imagine your website to have authority or trust if your pages lack relevance to the keywords that they are ranking for. When search engine optimization experts work on your website’s ranking, they do their best to create backlinks for your website from platforms that are most relevant to you. Backlinks coming from websites that have no relevance to your business can actually get you punished.
Here is how relevance plays an important role in your overall SEO rankings.
- Search Engines Give Your Web Pages Higher Rank
Of course, the main purpose of using SEO for any website enhancement is to rank it higher on search engines. Talking about search engines, Google gives relevance a lot of importance because that’s what search engines are all about. However, you have to understand the idea of relevance in great depth to know what really matters and what does not. Suppose you have a website that sells sofas and couches of different types. Now, a backlink coming from a website that talks about home improvements, renovations and interior design will be considered relevant and you will understand naturally why. However, a link coming from a blog that writes about sports won’t be relevant.
You could argue that the link coming from sports blog was talking about the comfort of sports fans and the best sofas for them to relax and watch their favourite sport, but in the context of the website, the relevance is weak.
- Relevant Pages Are Trusted By Users
It is natural for users to stay longer on pages where they find information relevant to their search queries. There are undoubtedly hundreds of ways to deceive users into landing on pages not relevant to their searches but that’s where this black magic comes to an end. As soon as they land on the page they know where to click to go back. For example, you could name your software brand Cherry and appear in search queries related to “fresh cherries” but you understand that a user is not looking for your brand when he/she searches for fresh cherries. You could appear in search results and even lure the customer to click on the link, but the user will never return to your website after landing on it once.
- Relevance Gives Rise to Quality Backlinks
For Google, your website’s ranking depends heavily on the quality of backlinks. With latest algorithm updates Google made it clear to search engine optimization experts that it was not going to accept any low-quality backlinks. What are low quality backlinks? These are links coming from irrelevant pages or taking visitors to irrelevant pages.
These are also links that were be overused the same generic anchor texts. Websites with low quality backlinks were penalized after Google had already provided a disavow tool to get rid of bad backlinks. Now, wise SEO professionals know what to do. They continued to create high quality backlinks that were relevant to their anchor texts on both ends i.e. the pages that hosted the backlinks and the pages they were leading to.
Keep in mind that the element of relevance in SEO is deep and once you understand it well you improve your website as a whole. By including keywords and relevant terms in website URLs, H1 Tags, body texts and intrasite links you optimize your website’s content.