At the age of 28, Roy Hinkis already has over 12 years of experience in the digital market industry. Throughout his career, Hinkis has collaborated with a number of Fortune 500 companies, including Lyft, TELUS, Kylie Cosmetics, and Waze either as an SEO or marketing advisor. He is believed to be one of the most successful SEO experts of his generation, often being present at conferences and industry events.
In an interview for Similar Web's series, Lead Generation Leaders, Roy Hinkis explains that SEO can simply not live without high-quality content, that drives organic traffic to a website. Back when Hinkis first started working in the industry, the internet was full of content aimed at the crawlers, not at the public. But this was 10 years ago, and search engines have gotten a lot smarter since then. Now, if you stuff your website with keywords or low-quality content, your risk getting it completely banned from search results.
What changed in the past years is the fact that search engines, be it Google, Bing or DuckDuckGo, are now putting the emphasis on their users. They want their users to find the most accurate results to their searches, meaning any website that has less than good quality content gets moved down on the list.
This is why, as Roy Hinkis explains, it is important that you create engaging content that makes people actually want to read and share it. But at the same time, you can't forget about crawlers, so you need to focus on on-site optimization just as much.
Besides quality content, what makes a website good?
Ensuring you only upload high-quality content is a must, but no matter how well-researched and documented your content is, if you don't make your website easily navigable and user-friendly, you have a lot to lose.
Multiple surveys show that users expect a page to load in 3-5 seconds and will leave a website if it takes more than a few seconds to load. This means that, if your website is not fast, you risk losing traffic and user loyalty. The loading speed can be influenced by several factors, such as unoptimized images, issues with JavaScript, too much Flash content or too many HTTP requests. Consider auditing your website and aim to solve all the encountered issues if you want to increase website traffic.
Ultimately, keywords are what make your website appear in certain search results, meaning you need to learn how to effectively use them throughout your website. Choose keywords that are relevant to your industry and keep it simple, using no more than 5 of them for each website page. It is important not to overstuff your website with keywords, as Google and other search engines will blacklist it.
Last, but not least, Hinkis points out that, besides Google Analytics and Google Search Console, there are a number of external tools you can use for keyword research, trend analysis, and audience targeting. Thinking outside the box is key in this competitive industry!
