2013 Search Engine Ranking Factors |
| 2013 Search Engine Ranking Factors Posted: 08 Jul 2013 07:19 PM PDT Posted by Matt Peters Yesterday at MozCon, I presented the results from Moz's Ranking Factors 2013 study. In this post I will highlight the key takeaways, and we will follow it up with a full report and data set sometime later this summer. OverviewEvery two years, Moz runs a Ranking Factors study to determine which attributes of pages and sites have the strongest association with ranking highly in Google. The study consists of two parts: a survey of professional SEOs and a large correlation study. We'll dive into the data in a minute, but some of the key findings include:
SurveyCyrus Shepard and Matt Brown organized this year's survey of 120 SEOs. In a few weeks, we'll release the full survey data. For now, thank you to everyone who participated! This wouldn't have been possible without your help, and we appreciate the time and effort you put in to answering the questions. The survey asked respondents to rate many different factors on a scale of 1-10 according to how important they thought they were in Google's ranking algorithm. We present the average score across all responses. The highest-rated factors in our survey had average scores of 7-8 with less-important factors generally ranging from 4-6. CorrelationsTo compute the correlations, we followed the same process as in 2011. We started with a large set of keywords from Google AdWords (14,000+ this year) that spanned a wide range of search volumes across all topic categories. Then, we collected the top 50 organic search results from Google-US in a depersonalized way. All SERPs were collected in early June, after the Panda 2.0 update. For each search result, we extracted all the factors we wanted to analyze and finally computed the mean Spearman correlation across the entire data set. Except for some of the details that I will discuss below, this is the same general process that both Searchmetrics and Netmark recently used in their excellent studies. Jerry Feng and Mike O'Leary on the Data Science team at Moz worked hard to extract many of these features (thank you!): When interpreting the correlation results, it is important to remember that correlation does not prove causation. Rand has a nice blog post explaining the importance of this type of analysis and how to interpret these studies. As we review the results below, I will call out the places with a high correlation that may not indicate causation. Enough of the boring methodology, I want the data!Here's the first set, Mozscape link correlations: Correlations: Page level Correlations: Domain level Page Authority is a machine learning model inside our Mozscape index that predicts ranking ability from links and it is the highest correlated factor in our study. As in 2011, metrics that capture the diversity of link sources (C-blocks, IPs, domains) also have high correlations. At the domain/sub-domain level, sub-domain correlations are larger then domain correlations. In the survey, SEOs also thought links were very important: Survey: Links Anchor textOver the past two years, we've seen Google crack down on over-optimized anchor text. Despite this, anchor text correlations for both partial and exact match were also quite large in our data set: Interestingly, the surveyed SEOs thought that an organic anchor text distribution (a good mix of branded and non-branded) is more important then the number of links: The anchor text correlations are one of the most significant differences between our results and the Searchmetrics study. We aren't sure exactly why this is the case, but suspect it is because we included navigational queries while Searchmetrics removed them from its data. Many navigational queries are branded, and will organically have a lot of anchor text matching branded search terms, so this may account for the difference. On-pageAre keywords still important on-page? We measured the relationship between the keyword and the document both with the TF-IDF score and the language model score and found that the title tag, the body of the HTML, the meta description and the H1 tags all had relatively high correlation: Correlations: On-page See my blog post on relevance vs. ranking for a deep dive into these numbers (but note that this earlier post uses a older version of the data, so the correlation numbers are slightly different). SEOs also agreed that the keyword in the title and on the page were important factors: Survey: On-page We also computed some additional on-page correlations to check whether structured markup (schema.org or Google+ author/publisher) had any relationship to rankings. All of these correlations are close to zero, so we conclude that they are not used as ranking signals (yet!). Exact/partial match domainThe ranking ability of exact and partial match domains (EMD/PMD) has been heavily debated by SEOs recently, and it appears Google is still adjusting their ranking ability (e.g. this recent post by Dr. Pete). In our data collected in early June (before the June 25 update), we found EMD correlations to be relatively high at 0.17 (0.20 if the EMD is also a dot-com), just about on par with the value from our 2011 study: This was surprising, given the MozCast data that shows EMD percentage is decreasing, so we decided to dig in. Indeed, we do see that the EMD percent has decreased over the last year or so (blue line): However, we see a see-saw pattern in the EMD correlations (red line) where they decreased last fall, then rose back again in the last few months. We attribute the decrease last fall to Google's EMD update (as announced by Matt Cutts). The increase in correlations between March and June says that the EMDs that are still present are ranking higher overall in the SERPs, even though they are less prevalent. Could this be Google removing lower quality EMDs? Netmark recently calculated a correlation of 0.43 for EMD, and it was the highest overall correlation in their data set. This is a major difference from our value of 0.17. However, they used the rank-biserial correlation instead of the Spearman correlation for EMD, arguing that it is more appropriate to use for binary values (if they use the Spearman correlation they get 0.15 for the EMD correlation). They are right, the rank-biserial correlation is preferred over Spearman in this case. However, since the rank-biserial is just the Pearson correlation between the variables, we feel it's a bit of an apples-to-oranges comparison to present both Spearman and rank-biserial side by side. Instead, we use Spearman for all factors. SocialAs in 2011, social signals were some of our highest correlated factors, with Google+ edging out Facebook and Twitter: SEOs, on the other hand, do not think that social signals are very important in the overall algorithm: This is one of those places where the correlation may be explainable by other factors such as links, and there may not be direct causation. Back in 2011, after we released our initial social results, I showed how Facebook correlations could be explained mostly by links. We expect Google to crawl their own Google+ content, and links on Google+ are followed so they pass link juice. Google also crawls and indexes the public pages on Facebook and Twitter. Takeaways and the future of searchAccording to our survey respondents, here is how Google's overall algorithm breaks down: We see:
Finally, my MozCon slides contain some more details and data: Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read! |
| #MozCon Speaker Interview: Carrie Gouldin Posted: 08 Jul 2013 05:11 AM PDT Posted by Lindsay As Web Community Manager @ThinkGeek, Carrie Gouldin built the company’s social media presence from the ground up and now engages hundreds of thousands of followers through multiple social platforms. We’re excited that she is bringing her valuable insights about social media to MozCon! In her talk, “Using Metrics to Build Social Media Engagement,†she’ll share practical advice about how to track links, read metrics, and keep your followers hungry for more. Recently, we got the chance to talk to her about her dynamic job, social metrics, and how a well-coordinated social media response helped ThinkGeek turn around an internet meltdown. Tell us about the presentation you have planned for MozCon. I'm going to talk about how the right content at the right time and the right metrics tracked with the right tools drives ThinkGeek's social program. I'll show examples of the kind of stuff that gets us thousands of retweets and a 25-50% Talking About This rate on Facebook, some of our behind-the-scenes data on traffic and revenue, and tips and tests you can try right away. You’re currently the web community manager at ThinkGeek. Could you tell us a bit about how you got into that role? I started at ThinkGeek almost five years ago. At that time, ThinkGeek had a very strong brand and passionate fans, but we weren't really available to our customers out there on social networks. I came in at the right time â€" before Oprah joined Twitter, even â€" and was able to start building a community organically and trying new things without the burden of so-called "best practices." It also wasn't my only role (and still isn't; I also head up our email program), so I was able to justify my existence beyond Faceyspaces and Twitlogs to those who were on the fence about the value of social networks for internet retailers. What do you think are the top three qualities of an effective web community manager? First and foremost, 100% dedication to the brand, values, and public persona of the company they represent. If they're going to manufacture the Kool-Aid, they have to drink it first. This is why I feel social media should always be kept in-house. Second, the ability to communicate clearly, interestingly, and like a real human being â€" which is to say with humor, compassion, and enthusiasm. That includes strong (and concise!) writing skills, some Photoshop mojo, experience with HTML and web publishing, and unflagging attention to detail. And lastly, a thick skin and knowing when to take a break. Being at the beck and call of the internet is not easy. Which social metric do you think is widely undervalued? Engagement is undervalued, and the metric depends on the network. What good is a jillion followers if none of them clicks your links or retweets or shares your content? On the other hand, revenue and traffic are valued but traditionally achieved through paid placements like boosted Facebook posts or sponsored tweets, while we treat our social streams like network television with great content surrounding our commercials, which does work for us. We haven't seen boosted posts pay off for us on Facebook, but remarketing ads (not under the purview of our "community" team) can be successful. Give us an example of one important test that any business on Facebook should do in the process of building social media engagement. On Facebook, try the same content two ways at the same time of day, one day apart. It's hard to do A/B tests given the nature of the tools we have--that is, in most cases, everyone sees the same thing at the same time--so you have to be creative. I'd suggest an image + text post on Facebook on the same subject versus the same text without an image. Which does better on shares? Clicks? Comments? Reach? Revenue? Facebook targets different kind of content to different users based on their past engagement history, so you might see very different results. A couple months ago, ThinkGeek was caught in the crossfire between FOX and sellers on Etsy, but ThinkGeek came out of it looking great. Can you share a bit about how social media helped manage ThinkGeek’s reputation in this incident, and any insights you gained from the experience? For those playing along at home, the issue was over a licensed knit hat from Joss Whedon's short-lived space western Firefly, owned by FOX. The show ranks up there with Doctor Who, Star Wars, and Star Trek in terms of the geek lexicon, and the hat in question became a symbol of both rebelling against the man (because of the character who wore it) and helping others out (with charitable donations from the purchase of hand-made knit hat replicas on sites like Etsy). So when an unnamed source (a.k.a. the man) went after many unlicensed Etsy sellers (the rebels with hearts of gold) with cease and desist orders, the internet exploded. Our licensed version of the hat (made by another company that is not us) is visible out there in the geekiverse so we got a lot of questions and accusations about our role in the matter via email, Twitter, Facebook, Google+, our blog, our Jayne hat product page comments, the phone â€" every possible method of contact. First, there was a collective "WHAT JUST HAPPENED?" at ThinkGeek HQ, and we told customers we didn't know what was going on (which was true) but we'd find out. After some triage behind the scenes, we learned it was FOX â€" generally unloved by fans because FOX is the reason the show was cancelled in the first place â€" and that in fact FOX had only issued one C&D, so presumably Etsy decided to shut down the other stores. As quickly as we could, we published a blog post explaining our side of things. Neither we nor the licensors who make the hat had any role in it, but then the story changed to "Well, if you didn't sell it, this wouldn't happen." That may or may not be true. FOX would have likely tried to protect their intellectual property regardless, but there we were still selling the hat. So, after much consternation about how to turn our problem into a solution befitting the charitable roots of the hat, we published another post the following day announcing our donation of the proceeds to Can't Stop the Serenity, a Browncoat charity that supports Equality Now: Then Nathan Fillion, who starred in Firefly, very kindly tweeted about the steps we'd taken: Which was very much appreciated by us (because we're fans so OMG <3 NATHAN)... but crashed our blog, and spawned the hashtag #Fillioned. All in all, a good ending to two long days. What did we do that made this work out? We were honest, acted quickly, and responded in the manner that honored and respected the spirit of the hat and the fandom surrounding it. Pretty simple, but in practice it takes serious coordination to pull a response like that together. What is your geekiest hobby? MY JOB. Seriously. Curating a collection of 100+ fan-made cosplay outfits for a stuffed monkey who meets geek celebrities like Adam Savage, Wil Wheaton, and the voice of GLaDOS should count for something. What is a quote that has stuck with you, and why? "Brevity is the soul of wit" from Shakespeare's Hamlet. Comes in handy for Twitter-zen. If you had to be trapped in a TV show for a month, which would you choose? I should say Game of Thrones to stay on message but that's just about the very last universe I'd want to find myself trapped in. My top pick would be Downton Abbey so I could I hang with the Dowager Countess. It was great to speak with you, Carrie! Get geeky updates by following @ThinkGeek on Twitter, and learn test-driven social media tips by checking out Carrie’s presentation at MozCon! Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read! |
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