10 huge SEO factors which are not in your control.

Hi, I’m Praneeth.

In this blog post, you will learn everything related to which SEO factors are not in your control.

Without further ado let’s get started.

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Which SEO factors are not in your control.

Here is a list of 10 SEO factors which are not in your control whatsoever,

1. Algorithm updates of Google.
2. Actual rankings in Google.
3. Crawling and indexing time and errors.
4. CTR in search results.
5. Domain age and authority of the website.
6. Spam backlinks.
7. Security of the website.
8. Backlinks.
9. People’s engagement with your website and business.
10. People’s usage behavior with changing technology.

Let’s learn the things in detail here.

1. Algorithm updates and penalties of Google.

The number one SEO factor Which you don’t have any control over at all is this.

Algorithm updates from Google can either make or break your website on Google rankings.

The common thing that all bloggers and SEOs must cope up with is algorithm updates and changing landscape.

The reason why Google puts so much emphasis on algorithm update is that It is in pursuit of presenting the best highly relevant and authoritative websites on Google search results,

By filtering out and penalizing all the other websites which,

Constantly try to trick and manipulate Google for higher rankings With Black hat SEO strategies that cause bad User experience on the Google search results.

Google invests billions of dollars in hiring Thousands of engineers And upgrading the technology Making the algorithm so sophisticated And always updating the Technology.

As a matter of fact, In one year Google has rolled out over 500 updates both big and small.

People are only aware of the major core updates that happen in Google Forgetting the fact that hundreds of updates happen every year Which goes unnoticed because they are not that impactful.

Overall Google algorithm update is an integral part of Google and the most important factor in SEO. Which bloggers and webmasters do not have any control at all.

By the way, To have a complete look at all the Google updates and changes Click here.

2. Actual rankings in Google.

There are 3 essential things that you not having control in,

• How Google ranks the websites in search results.
• How long does it take to rank a website in search results?
• Rankings in Google search results are always temporary and changing all the time.

Let’s address them in detail here.

It has been a couple of decades now, Since SEO is in the game, 

But we people still have not yet figured out how Google ranks the websites on search results.

All the people have a broad idea of how Google ranks the website, Which we have learned through trial and error method and other information leaks from Google.

We do not know precisely what goes exactly into ranking websites.

Google has invested billions of dollars into its Technology making the most sophisticated and complicated Algorithm and AI In the world.

We cannot also Make sure that the rankings are permanent in Google search results.

Because there is a lot of competition and frequently changing algorithms.

There is no niche in SEO Which is not competitive at all, every niche under the sun has some level of competition fighting for higher SEO rankings and traffic.

Everybody has understood the value of SEO and are looking at grabbing the number one Position of Google all the time.

This is why you should always make sure that you hold your ranking positions in Google all the time by frequently updating the posts and building backlinks to the posts To make sure the rankings are always there.

3. Crawling and indexing time and errors.

It is another important issue which you cannot directly control on your website.

Crawling and indexing time is simply out of your control,

You can just submit the sitemap and submit URLs in the Google search console manually or request indexing but it takes time or build backlinks,

This means your blog will not rank unless it is crawled and indexed by Google.

When it comes to indexing errors,

It takes a bit of research and time to figure out the error on the website.

But it is an important technical SEO part and factor that you cannot control over directly.

4. CTR in search results.

This is another thing that you cannot control in SEO.

Even if you optimize your title tag, meta description and also apply structured data to your webpage.

You cannot guarantee that you are gonna get good CTR in search results.

Over the years many things have been Changed in Google search results like,

• The appearance of featured snippets.
• The appearance of structured data.
• The appearance of shopping results and knowledge graphs.
• The appearance of additional SERP Features like People also ask, searches related to, QNA boxes, etc.
• Appearance and ranking of YouTube videos.
• Appearance and ranking of Google images.
• Increased ads on the search results page.

All these things are constantly decreasing the search results click-through rate by,

Pushing organic listings down and down reducing the visibility and featured snippets that are answering the question right on the SERP page.

Mainly due to featured snippets, The Click-through rate has decreased dramatically over the years.

And now Even if you are ranking on the Google search results page, you cannot guarantee that you will get more CTR because,

Other blogs are fighting for the same too using the same or more techniques that you are and aren’t using on top of the addition of more SERP features which push organic results down and down making it less visible leading to less CTR.

5. Domain age and authority of the website.

Domain age is another most important ranking factor in Google and other search engines.

But,

You can’t do anything about it.

You have no control over this SEO factor whatsoever.

Unless and until you are using an expired domain on your blog.

Look,

There have been many studies conducted in the past, that results in a direct correlation between domain age and higher SEO rankings leading to more SEO traffic because higher the domain age is has a couple of advantages over a newly registered domain name like,

Comparing a domain name between 2 years old and 2 months old, The older domain has a few advantages like

• Increased trust from Google due to constantly writing blogs and building backlinks.
• Increased authority from Google.
• Increased credibility from users and within the niche experts and other blogs.

You just have to wait to Build that natural authority, credibility, and experience from Google and users.

You don’t have any technique to artificially complete the factor and get it in your favor like you would do with the other factors like on-page and off-page SEO.

And talking about Website authority like domain authority and page authority metrics, 

Although you can grow your metrics scores through building backlinks to your website you cannot control and change the scores as per your interests.

There are lots of other factors that are involved in increasing the authority scores of your website like social signals, UX, and website age which cannot directly control.

For more information regarding how expired domains can help you with the domain age and other SEO, factors click here.

6. Spam backlinks.

Backlinks are an important part of SEO.

But not all of them have the same role.

There are few types of links that cause more bad than good to your SEO efforts which are called spam links.

Some of the characteristics of spam links include,

• Backlinks with bad anchor text or overly optimized anchor text.
• Backlinks from free websites like blogger, Tumblr, etc.
• Backlinks from bad or low quality and poorly written content.
• Backlinks from an irrelevant website and content.
• Backlinks in the footer of the websites.
• Backlinks from forums and blog comments section.
• Lots of profile backlinks.
• A backlink from websites that do not appear genuine and real.
• Backlinks from webpages that have lots of external links and fewer internal links.
• Backlinks coming from websites that have lots of numbers included in the domain name.

You will get such types of backlinks to your website either from bots or from your competitors and enemies.

It is easy for someone to run a script or a tool present online or from cheap freelance services on Fiverr and get thousands of backlinks to your website or a competitor’s website.

Although you can disavow these backlinks from Google’s tool.

You cannot directly control these backlinks as if your competitors can do that against you on your website.

And you are always at a risk of getting your website penalized by google.

7. Security of the website.

It does not matter what change you do on your website or what plugins, software, and tools you use to secure your website.

There is always room for uncertainty.

There is always room for extra security that you can do.

If you are using a plugin to Improve your website security,

Maybe the plugin can get accessed by hackers or you forgot to update the plugin or Configuration of some important setting, which can open a room of vulnerability of attack.

Weak passwords, bad web hosting service, website if managed by multiple people, if the negligence of a single person among those people can cause harm to the security of the website.

Although you can make your WordPress website secure to some extent, making your website whether it is managed on WordPress, Wix, Tumblr, blogger, or Joomla, etc,

You simply cannot guarantee 100% safety and security of your website.

For more information regarding how to secure your WordPress website click here

8. Backlinks.

This is another big SEO factor that you cannot control.

Of course, you can build backlinks for your website,

But there is more than just building backlinks, you have got to maintain those backlinks as well.

Here are a couple of things that can happen to your backlinks which result in the fact that you cannot control them.

• Post which passed you the backlink can get deleted.
• Admin of the website can remove the backlink to your website and replace it With someone else’s backlinks.
• Backlinks can get broken.

Because you are getting backlinks from external websites, you don’t have any control over those websites unless and until you own those websites altogether which is not the case for most people,

You don’t have control over the backlinks of your website as your competitors can build the same backlinks from where,

You built presenting a better source of information and resource for the admin of that website and possibly some money for link replacement.

9. People’s engagement with your website and business.

This is another thing which you cannot control and get it into your favor.

Mainly in local SEO, there are lots of factors that are not in your control but play an important role like,

• Review signals (review quantity, review velocity, review diversity, etc.)
• Social signals (Google engagement, Facebook engagement, Twitter engagement, etc.)
• Behavioral/mobile signals (click-through rate, mobile clicks to call, dwell time, etc.)
• The velocity of Searches for Business Name and branded searches in Google.
• Clicks to Call Business.

And even in normal Google rankings, user experience plays an important role like,

• Bounce rate.
• Dwell time.
• CTR.

And you cannot directly or indirectly control this factor in your favor.

10. People’s usage behavior with changing technology.

Technology is always changing with changing user interests and uses.

The SEO factors which you cannot control is, increased growth in other trends that impact SEO efforts like,

• Increased visual search and use of Pinterest.
• Increased voice search and podcasts popularity.
• Fluctuating search volume of keywords.
• Increasing featured snippets and decreasing CTR.
• Increased video search popularity.
• The decreased attention span of people due to social media.
• Increased competition for SEO traffic.

These are a few other important factors that have a direct impact on the SEO efforts of your website but you have no control over these factors whatsoever.

With that said let’s conclude the blogpost.

Ending remarks.

There you go I have answered everything related to which SEO factors are not in your control.

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Read my other blogs,

• Which SEO techniques are best for the long run?
• Is SEO worth it?
• Are SEO tools worth it?

I will catch you next time till then,

Keep learning and keep growing.