Source: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/sites-rank-high-google-arent-optimized/132512/
Have you ever encountered websites that aren’t too optimized or aren’t optimized at all for search engines but are ranking high on Google and wondered how it happened?
Why some sites rank in Google without SEO
Here’s why some sites rank high when they aren’t optimized:
High CTR (Click-Through Rate)
– If a website’s CTR is higher than their bounce rate, it means that their listing is more appealing compared to the competetion.
Domain Age
– These websites are at least a few years old, thus they rank high. The more your site gets older (this is assuming that you are continually improving it), the more search traffic it will generally receive.
High Quality Backlinks
– With high-quality backlinks pointing to the right pages and with the right anchor texts, it will naturally perform better.
Cross-linking
– Cross-linking your pages will help you rank well in an overall site perspective even if you dont have the best on-page SEO.
Quality Content
– With the Panda update, Google does not only look at the content on a site, but it also looks at the content on other websites within that space and it compares them.
Keyword Competition
– Results pages for these low competition key phrases aren’t updated by Google as often.
Site’s Growth Rate
– Grow your site in a natural way. Building tons of links on a fresh website can harm it.
