direct answers in search

March 3, 2015

Direct Answers in Search

searchmarketingexpo.com

@stonetemple / +Eric Enge #SMX #24a

Who Am I?

Columnist & Contributor

CEO & Founder

40+ person Digital Marketing and SEO firm



Data From

Searchmetrics Changes in Visibility



Examples of Major “Changers” and Increases



Are Factors Other Than Google in Play?

HTTPS Domains Show

Steady Increase in Visibility

Since July 2012!



August 2014 to January 2015 Impact

Average Increase in Visibility of 6% Across All Sites

Which Made the Switch to HTTPS



Data From SEO Clarity A Detailed Study



Study 1: August 2014 to End September 2014

• Monitored top 10 results for 130,000 keywords

• 218,000 domains tracked

• HTTP vs. HTTPS ranking tracked

• Sites which switched from HTTP to HTTPS after

August 7th identified

• Ranking positions measured



Average Ranking of Pages

8/1

0

8/1

7

8/2

4

8/3

1

9/0

7

9/1

4

9/2

1

This is a

Very

Narrow

Range!

5.89 5.93



Study 2: October Through December 2014

• Monitored top 100 results for 139,000

keywords

• Monitored over a 14 week period of time

• HTTP vs. HTTPS ranking tracked

• Ranking positions measured



How Many URLs Made the Switch Between

October 4th and December 28th?

12,095 Total

Domains Made

the Switch



Major Domains That Changed to HTTPS

269 Domains with

a Moz Domain

Authority of 90 or

Higher Switched



Observed Ranking Change After 2 Weeks

New Drop Per

Changed URL of

0.07 in the SERPs



URLs Gainers and Losers in Rankings



Switched Our Own Site Too



Tracked Dates That Indexed Page Changed to

HTTPS



Changeover States – HTTPS Page Not Even

Discovered



Changeover States – Not Yet Indexed by

Google



Changeover States –Indexed by Google



Ranking Scenarios – 12 Pages Indexed as

HTTPS

12 Total Pages Indexed

6 Improved Rankings

5 Rankings Got Worse

1 No Change

Net Impact: No Material Change



SHA-1 Certificates Being Deprecated

• Bought an Extended Validation SSL Cert

• Stricter level of validation

• Heard that this was “better”, so I did it

• Digicert provided us with a SHA-1 certificate by default

• However, these are being deprecated

• Fortunately, SSLGuru flagged this issue for us

• Caused a 2 day delay



Had Some Details to Clean Up



Social Sharing Code – to Show Counts From

HTTP Page

<?php

$httpurl = "http://www.".$_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'].$_SERVER['PHP_SELF'];

$httpsurl = "https://www.".$_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'].$_SERVER['PHP_SELF'];

echo "

<div class='fb-like' data-href='".$httpurl."' data-send='false' data-layout='box_count'></div>

<a href='https://twitter.com/share' class='twitter-share-button' data-counturl='".$httpurl."' data-

url='".$httpsurl."' data-count='vertical' data-via='moz'>Tweet</a>

<div class='g-plusone' data-size='tall' data-href='".$httpurl."'></div>

";

?>

http://www./

https://www./



What This Code Does

• Shows share counts from original HTTP URL

• Will NOT add in new clicks on the buttons after the

site is moved

• Should only use on posts made prior to the migration



Pseudo Code for Ideal Logic

• If Post Date Prior to Migration Date

• Use Code that shows shares from original HTTP URLs

• Else

• Use Code that shows shares from new HTTPS URLs



[email protected] (508) 879-0950 www.stonetemple.com

mailto:[email protected]

direct answers in search

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stonetemple eric enge

https ranking

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