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I heard many times web-developers and sometimes even SEO specialists saying….
“Eh..this doesn’t play a role on ranking anymore”…. and there were a few times that I felt really angry.
Ok, many stuff used to be very important a few years ago and now they count less, but they count!
From my experience I know that the little things added up are those that help a website stack up best against the rest!
For Search Engine Optimization strategy starting to analyse a website from the URL and the way it is displayed on the search bar, we are coming to the favicon.
Chances are that an average internet user doesn’t know too much about favicons or maybe didn’t even heard about them!
The term favicon is short for “favorites icon” and it’s a special file that ends in an .ICO extension and it needs to be inserted as to show when a user opens a tab on your website.
I remember once that I replied to a web developer with a lot of anger that the icon isn’t there just for looks. It has two important roles. First, it has a subtile role on building the brand and it makes your site look more professional and second, it has its percent in ranking. It may be very small but as we said, nowadays with so fierce competition are these small things that will help you to rank a few links higher.
If you are serious about creating a brand, then you need to take serious steps and have a clear strategy. Internet is all about what the eye sees and what the ear hears. The logo is one of the most important elements that you can play with.
If the logo is only one element then that can be easily transformed in a favicon. If the logo includes more elements then you have to decide which element of your logo could be the favicon.
If your business website has a favicon that will stuck easily on users’ minds, you have nailed branding with this small element on your site.
Some search engines (I.e DuckDuckGo) started to display favicons on their search results. Bing is testing that too. Google used to display favicons in Google ads, but not anymore. But there are rumours that Google Adsense team is working on bringing the favicons back in the ads format.
When it comes to SEO we have to recognise that it has a very tiny impact (as most of the elements).
However, “most browsers automatically look for a file called favicon.ico in the root folder of a website – if the file doesn’t exist a 404 Not Found error is returned”.
What an 404 error means? We all SEO know!!! Do everything possible to get rid of all 404!
So what do you think? Is it important to have a favicon?
And that is it! ⚽