seomoz search engine ranking factors today & tomorrow (mar 11)

8/7/2019 SEOmoz Search Engine Ranking Factors Today & Tomorrow (Mar 11)

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State of SearchWhere We Are, Where Were Headed

and How to Win

Gillian Muessig

President & Co-Founder, SEOmoz


2/57

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/director-of-bing-discusses-holistic-search-and-clickstream-data-whiteboard-friday

Essentially, we've been doing the

same kind of search now for over a

decade, right? It's basically anchor

text and PageRank and inbound

links, and that's how we've kind ofdecided what page is best for a

particular term But there are

signals beyond this.

Stefan Weitz, Director for Bing Search


3/57

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/11/business/media/11search.html

Matt Cutts, Head of Web Spam, Google

One piece of advice I give to

SEO masters is, dont chase

after Googles algorithm,

chase after your best

interpretation of what userswant, because thats what

Googles chasing after,


4/57

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/11/business/media/11search.html

Rand Fishkin, the Wizard of Moz

Every 3-4 years, there's a big shift or

addition to the key metrics Google

(and, to a lesser extent MSN/Bing

and Yahoo!) uses to order

competitive search results.

1996-1999: On-page keyword usage

+ meta data

1999 - 2002: PageRank + On-page

2002 - 2005: Anchor text + Domain

name + PageRank + On-Page

2005 - 2009: Domain authority +

Diversity of linking domains + Topicmodeling + Anchor text + Domain

name + PageRank + On-Page


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Ranking Correlations Signals Today


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Negative Correlations

http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.html

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/google-vs-bing-correlation-analysis-of-ranking-elements

URLLength

.com TLD extension


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Query Matching in Domain Name

http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.htmlhttp://www.seomoz.org/blog/google-vs-bing-correlation-analysis-of-ranking-elements

Contains

All Query Terms

in Domain Name

Exact Match

Hyphenated Domain

Exact Match

Domain


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Exact Match Domains by TLD Extension


Exact Match .org

Exact Match .net

Exact Match .com

Exact Match


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Keywords in Domain


All Keywords in

Subdomain

Exact Match .*


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On Page Keyword Usage


KWs in Body

KWs in Alt Attribute

KWs in H1 Tag

KWs in URL

KWs in Title


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TLD Extensions


.gov

.edu

.info

.net

.org

.com


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Length of Domain, URL & Content


Content Length

(tokens in body)

URLLength

(chars)

Domain Name

Length (chars)


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Website Home Pages


Exact Match

Domain

Home Page

of Site


14/57

Features w/Highest Correlation


Number ofLinks

Domains Linking

w/Exact Match

Exact Match

Domain

# ofLinkingRoot Domains

Exact Match

.com Domains


15/57

Link Attribute Correlations Today


16/57

Diversity of Domains + Linking C-Blocks


# ofLinking Root

Domains to URL

# ofLinks to URL


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Anchor Text

http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/11/business/media/11search.html

# ofLinks w/ exact

match anchor text

# of linking root domains w/

exact match anchor text


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Features of Linking Pages

http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.htmlData via http://www.opensiteexplorer.org


19/57

Features of Linking Domains

http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.htmlData via http://www.opensiteexplorer.org


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Topic Modeling


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Topic Modeling

Topic models provide a simple

way to analyze large volumes of

unlabeled text.


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A "topic" consists of

a cluster of wordsthat frequently occur

together.

Topic Modeling

http://neoformix.com/archive.html


23/57

Using contextual clues,topic models can connect words with

similarmeaningsand distinguish

between uses of words withmultiplemeanings.

http://www.stanford.edu/~kaisa/research.html


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25/57

Why Engines Need Topic ModelingWhy Engines Need Topic Modeling


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Term Frequency & Inverse Document FrequencyTerm Frequency & Inverse Document Frequency


27/57

CoCo--OccurenceOccurence


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Topic ModelingTopic Modeling


29/57

Content-relatedsignalsrequire

theabilitytodetermine INTENT

Rock or baseball?

Are you SURE?


30/57


31/57

If Your Response Is


32/57

SimplisticTerm Vector Model


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Correlation IsStrong


34/57

Correlation IsStrongStandard

Deviation


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Causation? NotSo Fast!

Perhaps, good links are more likely to

point to pages that are more "relevant"via a topicmodelor some other aspect

of Google's algorithm that we

don't yet understand naturally

biases towards these.


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LDAToolintheLabs

URL input box


37/57

Its Relative

Don't presume that getting a

15% or a 20% is a terrible result

Some queries simply won't

produce results that fit

remarkably well with given topics


38/57

OutoftheSERPs!

Keyword spamming mightimprove your LDA score,

but not your rankings


39/57

C

ompareYour

Friend

s


40/57

TheresStillLotsof WorktoDo

Correlations are good, but dont

get carried away we havent

reversed the algo We have built a tool to help

grade & improve page content

YOUR in-field results will tell us

whether it can really help improve rankings


41/57

Link Bu

ilding Signals of theFu

tu

re


42/57

Social Signals

http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.htmlhttp://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-do-tweets-influence-search-rankings-an-experiment-for-a-cause

PageA

646 links from 36 root domains

2 tweets

Page B

1 link from 1 root domain

522 tweets


43/57

Social Signals

http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.htmlhttp://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-do-tweets-influence-search-rankings-an-experiment-for-a-cause

PageA

646 links from 36 root domains

2 tweets

Page B

1 link from 1 root domain

522 tweets

Page B the

tweeted version

ranks #1!


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Social Signals

http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.htmlhttp://www.seomoz.org/blog/tweets-effect-rankings-unexpected-case-study


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Social Signals

http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.htmlhttp://www.seomoz.org/blog/tweets-effect-rankings-unexpected-case-study#jtc133590


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Author Authority

http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.htmlhttp://searchengineland.com/what-social-signals-do-google-bing-really-count-55389

Danny Sullivan: Do you try to calculate the authority of someone who

tweets that might be assigned to their Twitter page. Do you try to know,

if you will, who they are?

Google: Yes we do compute and use author quality. We dont know

who anyone is in real life :-)

Bing: Yes.We do calculate the authority of someone who tweets. For

known public figures or publishers, we do associate them with who they

are. (For example, query forDanny Sullivan)


47/57

Brand Signals

http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.htmlhttp://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-next-generation-of-ranking-signals

Brands Generics

Have real people working at a physical address

Have authentic, followed social accounts

Display obvious, robust contact information

Register with government/civic organizations

Receive traffic from diverse sources

Generate branded search query volume

Run offline marketing/advertising campaigns

Often exist only online

Rarely have significant social accounts

Frequently use email forms only

Stay under the radar

Search is often 90%+ of traffic

Have little-no branded search demand

Ignore the offline world


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Domain Name / Brand Name Mentions

http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.htmlhttp://www.seomoz.org/labs/blogscape


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Depreciation/Filtering of Anchor Text

http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.htmlhttp://www.seomoz.org/blog/a-recommendation-for-googles-webspam-team


50/57

Some Future-Looking Link Building

Tactics I Love


51/57

Q+A Sites

http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.htmlhttp://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/question_and_answer_sites.php


52/57

Building YourOwn Social Community

http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.htmlhttp://mashable.com/2010/11/15/biggest-facebook-brands/


53/57

Media Coverage

http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.htmlhttp://www.madetostick.com/excerpts/


54/57

Comment Marketing

http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.htmlhttp://www.seomoz.org/blog/recommendations-blog-commenting-marketing-strategy


55/57

Competitive Analysis of Top Brands

http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.htmlhttp://www.opensiteexplorer.org

Where do these

brands earn

their links?

I ti ti B d M ti S


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Fac k ag

li r?

r c as r fil

r fil lack rry

T itt r acc t

si ss k r fil

r Ext si

Mas a l rticl

Investigating Brand Mention Sources


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Q+A

Gillian Muessig, President & Co-Founder, SEOmoz

Twitter: @SEOmom

Blog: www.seomoz.org/blog

Email: [email protected]

You can now try SEOmoz PRO Free!

http://www.seomoz.org/freetrial

You can now try SEOmoz PRO Free!

http://www.seomoz.org/freetrial

seomoz search engine ranking factors today & tomorrow (mar 11)

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