Periodic table of_seo_kevin_thiele

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® Searchmetrics GmbH 2012 The New Periodic Table of SEO Kevin Thiele SMX London

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Search Metrics 2012 Presentation on Google Rankings Research

Transcript of Periodic table of_seo_kevin_thiele

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® Searchmetrics GmbH 2012

The New Periodic Table of SEO

Kevin Thiele

SMX London

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About Searchmetrics

Company

• Founded in 2007

• Leading Search Analytics vendor with international focus

• ~100 full-time employees with locations in Germany, US, UK and France

• Largest aggregated database for SEO, SEM and Social data (Searchmetrics Suite and Searchmetrics Essentials)

Follow us and stay updated

• Twitter: twitter.com/searchmetrics

• Facebook: www.facebook.com/Searchmetrics

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The New Periodic Table of SEO

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„States“ of SEO

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When SEOs talk ranking factors, they tend to mention these areas.

But which ones matter most?

Which specific factors are more important, which one is nothing but hot air?

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Take a look into the Google matrix…

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Study of google.co.uk SERPs

• Analysis includes

• 10,000 hand-picked top keywords (informational search only),

• 300,000 URLs

• Billions of backlinks

• Billions of Shares, Likes, Tweets, Plusones

• organic search (“blue links”) only

• Analysis conducted AFTER Panda = latest findings

• Data collected in March 2012

• Many of the factors that we suspected, based on recent Google updates, do impact rankings but there are some surprising results.

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Correlation Data (causation – correlation!)

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Everyone* is connected and has access

to content faster than ever before

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Key Finding #1 – Social Signals dominate

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Google+ data is not reliable yet, but it„s correlation could be massive:

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Finding #1: Social has arrived in international markets

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Social networking site activities correlate very well with good rankings That doesn‟t mean that Facebook Shares, Tweets, Plusones etc. are definitively a strong ranking factors, but it looks like, as a kind of user feedback, they are very important and they should take part in SEO strategy Search engines definitely don‟t look at a simple number of Tweets or Shares but it makes a lot of sense to implicate Social Signals / User Signals within the magic ranking formula

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Social Signals are User Signals

• The classical calculation of rankings based on recommendations (simple hyperlinks)

• That wasn‟t the only ranking factor but the strongest one

• In fact of the high competition to grow organic traffic lot‟s of search engine result pages weren‟t natural, there were manipulated

• Search engines are looking for ways and reliable data to improve the quality of the Serps

• User signals e.g. bounce rate, time on site, CTR in Serps can also be measured

• Quality became a ranking signal: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/05/more-guidance-on-building-high-quality.html

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Social Signals – Author-Markup on the Rise

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Authorship Markup is spreading fast, might turn into a signal in the near future. Looking for author integrations in the SERPs for a million keywords in google.com. For nearly 170,554 keywords, >1 author integration in the SERPs Higher impact from mentions / links from important authors independent of link popularity of URL or page? Make sense?

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SEOs are early adopters…

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But also on usual queries like “Samsung Galaxy S3” or “Lady Gaga” you see author integrations

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Social Signals – UK vs US results

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Social Signals

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FB

27,0%

TW

13,8% G+

15,1%

10,8

6,6

12,1

6,4

addthis 9,0%

sharethis

1,8%

Marketers are adapting fast: usage of Social Buttons is huge (300.000 URLs that Were used for the study)

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Backlinks still have a high value for Google

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Key Finding #2 – Backlinks still strong, but quality matters

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The number of backlinks is still a mayor factor. Quality metrics are gaining importance.

Backlinks are still very important for rankings, but must vary between keyword links, no follow links, and “organic” links with stopwords (e.g. “as.” “the,”…) in them.

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Key Finding #2 – Backlinks still strong, but quality matters

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SEO Trivia : For our keyword set, you need an average of 2470 Links to rank first.

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Proportion of Backlinks with Keyword in anchor text

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Proportion of nofollow links in %

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Proportion of Backlinks with stopwords

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R.I.P Onpage Optimization?

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Key Finding #3 – Become a brand, Onpage relevance is decreasing

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Apparently some of the classic ranking factors like having keywords in the title and more keywords in the content don‟t apply to well-known brands. Some unexpected correlations could be explained by brands and their good rankings. They rank because there are relevant, not because of the best technical optimization Note: Only exact keyword phrases were analyzed

Key Finding #3 – Become a brand, Onpage relevance is decreasing

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kw_in_description kw_in_h1 kw_in_title

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Sites without the keyword in title or h1

rank higher???

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Negative Onpage correlation

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Does this article have an excessive amount

of ads that distract from or interfere with the

main content? (Google 2011)

Ads can distract from content

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Key Finding #4 - Ads could be a handicap

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What‘s important for SEO in 2012

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• Social factors are getting more important: Start measuring social media signals and motivating users to make your company become more famous

• Analyze your competitors or best practice sites • Backlinks are still a key factor for SEO • Become a brand / Have recognizable products

• Always think of your user first • The USP of your product • The reason why you should rank (no me-too products)

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What‘s important for SEO in 2012

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• Ads could be a handicap if the user experience gets low because of that

• Make sure that the user recognizes the content

• Classic ranking factors like having keywords in the title and more keywords in the content are less important

• Search engines will deliver the result that the user expects, these results are calculated out of more and more parameters

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„Search engine ranking factors 2012“

Whitepaper with more information and deeper insight now available. Get your personal copy:

Email me: [email protected]

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