WHAT ARE THE

MOST IMPORTANT

SEARCH RANKING

FACTORS?

#

Marcus Tober

SearchMetrics

@marcustober

#SMX #13B

October 1, 2013

#

Founder of

Searchmetrics

I‘m in love with SEO

and search since

2001

Study of computer

science in Berlin, so

I’m the techie

Made with Love in

Berlin

120 passionate

People

Innovator in SEO

Software since 2007

Follow us

twitter.com/searchmetrics

facebook.com/Searchmetrics

Business

Product

Website

World Wide Web

RankingS

Wait……there‘sone more thing

Click!

What do users click, like, share…?

Relevant Content!

Ranking Factors – US 2013

10/1/2013 ® Searchmetrics Inc. 2013 │Page 16

• Basis: • google.com / bing.com

• Top 3 SERPs

• 10.000 Keywords

• Organic

• Objectivity

• Average Values according to the respectivePosition/s in the SERPs

• Correlation ≠ Causation

Google Ranking Factors US 2013

10/1/2013 ® Searchmetrics Inc. 2013 │Page 17

Ranking Factors – US 2013

10/1/2013 ® Searchmetrics Inc. 2013 │Page 18

Algorithm Changes

Google Ranking Factors US 2013 vs 2012

10/1/2013 ® Searchmetrics Inc. 2013 │Page 19

Change

Google Ranking Factors US 2013 vs 2012

10/1/2013 ® Searchmetrics Inc. 2013 │Page 20

EMD

Panda

Penguin

Bing Ranking Factors US 2013

vs

Ranking Factors US 2013 Google vs Bing

10/1/2013 ® Searchmetrics Inc. 2013 │Page 23

Difference in Numbers – URLs

Ranking Factors US 2013 Google vs Bing

10/1/2013 ® Searchmetrics Inc. 2013 │Page 24

Difference in Numbers – DOMAINS

LinkFeatures

Google Ranking Factors – US 2013: Links

CrucialCorrelations!

Link Level

Bing Ranking Factors – US 2013: Links

CrucialCorrelations!

Link Level

10/1/2013 ® Searchmetrics Inc. 2013 │Page 28

Anchor Text!

Ranking Factors – US 2013: Links

10/1/2013 ® Searchmetrics Inc. 2013 │Page 29

Ranking Factors – US 2013: Links

Ranking Factors – US 2013: Links

Much more Backlinkson foremost Positions!

Ranking Factors – US 2013: Links

High SEO Visibilityof Link Sourceon foremost Positions!

Ranking Factors – US 2013: Links

BRANDS

More Nofollow Linkson SERP 1!

AnchorTexts

Ranking Correlation – Keyword Links

10/1/2013 ® Searchmetrics Inc. 2013 │Page 34

Ranking Correlation – Keyword Links

10/1/2013 ® Searchmetrics Inc. 2013 │Page 35

Rest In Peace

Too much irrelevant stuff?

Penguin Loser!

Penguin 2.0 – Loser reeds.com

10/1/2013 ® Searchmetrics Inc. 2013 │Page 39

Penguin 2.0

Penguin 2.0 – Loser reeds.com

10/1/2013 ® Searchmetrics Inc. 2013 │Page 40

Penguin 2.0 – Loser reeds.com

10/1/2013 ® Searchmetrics Inc. 2013 │Page 41

!

Penguin 2.0 – Loser reeds.com

10/1/2013 ® Searchmetrics Inc. 2013 │Page 43

Penguin 2.0

Recovered!

Penguin 2.0 – Loser reeds.com

10/1/2013 ® Searchmetrics Inc. 2013 │Page 44

Penguin 2.0 – Loser reeds.com

10/1/2013 ® Searchmetrics Inc. 2013 │Page 45

Anchor Texts - Evolution

10/1/2013 ® Searchmetrics Inc. 2013 │Page 46

BrandLink

www.domain.com

„Domain“ / Company, Product

DilutedAnchor

DO:

More (Stop)Words

in Anchor Text

DON‘T:

„Hard“

Anchor Texts

Neutral Anchor

here

Generic

Terms

„Natural“ Link Profile

You know thisguy?

Where is Waldo?

Discover the Honey Pot

# Backlinks Page A# BacklinksPage B

# BacklinksPage C

# BacklinksPage D

Discover Honey Pots - Approach

10/1/2013 ® Searchmetrics Inc. 2013 │Page 52

Customer Case Study #1

Penalty

Discover Honey Pots - Approach

10/1/2013 ® Searchmetrics Inc. 2013 │Page 54

Customer Case Study #1

Penalty

Recovery

Discover Honey Pots - Approach

10/1/2013 ® Searchmetrics Inc. 2013 │Page 55

Customer Case Study #2

Penalty

Discover Honey Pots - Approach

10/1/2013 ® Searchmetrics Inc. 2013 │Page 57

Customer Case Study #2

Penalty

Recovery

Discover Honey Pots - Approach

10/1/2013 ® Searchmetrics Inc. 2013 │Page 58

Customer Case Study #2

Penalty

Recovery

® Searchmetrics Inc. 2013 - Marcus Tober59

• #1 Export backlinks via SEO tools• Use available tools to get a lists of your backlinks

• Gather all the data together in one list

• Get rid of duplicate data

• Delete nofollow links, mentions and offline links

Discover Honey Pots - Approach

® Searchmetrics Inc. 2013 - Marcus Tober60

• #1 Export backlinks via SEO tools

• #2 Backlink export via GWT• „Download more sample links“

-> Approx. 100,000 backlinks

• Until now: not representative because of lexikographical order-> when sitewide links etc. only few TLDs

• Recent update: improved selection-> broader, more diverse spectrum of TLDs covered

• Consider link warnings

Discover Honey Pots - Approach

Combine data to one complete list

® Searchmetrics Inc. 2013 - Marcus Tober61

• #1 Export backlinks via SEO tools

• #2 Backlink export via GWT

• #3 Define loser URLs• Highlight URLs with (massive), penalty-like ranking drop

• Reduce list

• Delete duplicate data

Discover Honey Pots - Approach

® Searchmetrics Inc. 2013 - Marcus Tober62

• #1 Export backlinks via SEO tools

• #2 Backlink export via GWT

• #3 Define loser URLs

• #4 Add SEO data• # Organic Keywords

• SEO Visibility

• Social Visibility

• Domainpop

• SPS (Page Strength ~ PageRank)

• PageRank

• IP -> Count of diff. IPs -> Count of Class C

Discover Honey Pots - Approach

® Searchmetrics Inc. 2013 - Marcus Tober63

• #1 Export backlinks via SEO tools

• #2 Backlink export via GWT

• #3 Define loser URLs

• #4 Add SEO data

• #5 Evaluate anchor texts• Brand: domain name (brand name) / URL

• Neutral: no commercial keywords (high search volume) included

• Compound: commercial keywords + stopwords (even brand)

• Money: only commercial keywords or exact search queries to rank for

Discover Honey Pots - Approach

® Searchmetrics Inc. 2013 - Marcus Tober64

• #1 Export backlinks via SEO tools

• #2 Backlink export via GWT

• #3 Define loser URLs

• #4 Add SEO data

• #5 Evaluate anchor texts

• #6 Check links + evaluation manually• Check left „good links“ for outliers

• Check „bad links“ for misinterpretations (known trust sources)

Discover Honey Pots - Approach

Almost reachedthe Honey Pot...

® Searchmetrics Inc. 2013 - Marcus Tober66

• #1 Export backlinks via SEO tools

• #2 Backlink export via GWT

• #3 Define loser URLs

• #4 Add SEO data

• #5 Evaluate anchor texts

• #6 Check links + evaluation manually

• #7 Compare „bad“ link sources toother penalty victims• Check overlapping of link source domains

->domains with links pointing to severeal penalty victims

Discover Honey Pots - Approach

Honey Pot- exterminated

Social Signalsand

Social Graph

Rather than chasing +1s of content, your time is much better spent

making great content.

Matt Cutts - 08/20/2013(Head of Google Webspam Team)

World Wide Web

Relevant Content!

Click!

Social Signals

User Signals

321

Ranking Factors – US 2013 Social

10/1/2013 ® Searchmetrics Inc. 2013 │Page 73

Ranking Factors – US 2013: Social

Just trying to decide the

politest way to debunk the

idea that more Google +1s lead to higher Google web rankings. […]Suffice it to say that I would be

very skeptical of anyone

who claimed that more +1s led to a higher search ranking in Google's web results.

Matt Cutts - 08/20/2013(Head of Google Webspam Team)

We‘ve checkedthis 3 times!

Test Procedure of Tests #1 / #2

10/1/2013 ® Searchmetrics Inc. 2013 │Page 77

Topic

Issue1

Text 1a

Text 1b

Issue2

Text 2a

Text 2b

IdenticKeyword Set

IdenticKeyword Set

Network Signal Takeaways

1.Number of Shares does not influenceindexation

2.Shares alone do not necessarily effectindexation

1.PlusOnes nearlyinstantly effectindexation

2.44 / 48 keywordsindexed and rankedon high(est) positions

Test #1

Network Signal Takeaways

1.Number of shares doesnot influence ranking

2.Shares alone can effectgood rankings,but not in the longterm

1.PlusOnes effectbetter rankings in average

2.Few PlusOnes areenough tooutperform FB-rankings on thesame keyword set

Test #2

Test Procedure of Test #3

10/1/2013 ® Searchmetrics Inc. 2013 │Page 80

Topic

Blog 1

Text 1a

Text 2a

Blog 2

Text 1b

Text 2b

Established DomainExisting Content

New DomainNo Content

Ø Ø

IdenticKeyword Set

Larry Page(Google CEO)

“Google+ […] is a huge and important changeand there is a ton more work to do.But this kind of next-generation search in which Google understands real-world entities– things, not strings – will help improve ourresults in exciting new ways.“

01.10.2013 ® Searchmetrics GmbH 201282

Social - SEO

10/1/2013 ® Searchmetrics Inc. 2013 │Page 84

Ranking Factors – US 2013: Content

10/1/2013 ® Searchmetrics Inc. 2013 │Page 85

Ranking Factors – US 2013: Content

I like…

10/1/2013 ® Searchmetrics Inc. 2013 │Page 88

Searchmetrics – leading vendor of search an social analytics softwarewith international focus

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