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3 SEO Ranking Factors To Watch in 2011

 

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SEOMoz has just published their 2011 Ranking Factors Guide, which is the essential reference for search marketers to learn about the new or changing factors shaping their world. While the entire report is very large, I've pulled out some of the most important details to our readers, based on the questions and discussions that I see on a daily basis from HubSpot customers and fans. If you're interested in reading more of the report or looking at their raw data, you can find it on SEOMoz's site here. The overview page alone contains some great insights from a survey of some of the top search engine optimization experts today.

Trend Number One: Exact-Match Keyword Domains Going Away

SEOMoz calls out something specifically that has been a particular thorn in the side of many marketers: Exact-match keyword domain names. If you've never heard that term before, that means domain names that match the exact keyword phrase they want to rank for, such as "www.boston-barber-shop.com" for the phrase "Boston Barber Shop". These used to be an incredibly powerful way to rank for specific keywords, but their value is dropping quickly. Last year, exact-match .com domains had a .38 correlation with higher rankings, which is very strong. This year, they are down to .22 correlation, and the feedback from individual optimizers is much more negative. Lindsay Wassell provided the comment, "Exact match domains, while still highly effective today are beginning to wane in power." There is still some value to that exact-match domain that you might be using, but the value given by that is beginning to shrink and it will only go further downhill. As with all things, as people got better about buying domains up or trying to game the system with exact match domains, Google has turned down the value of them.

Takeaway: If you're on an exact match domain today for a generic phrase, make sure that you're doing other activities that will support the natural ranking of your site so that you don't lose your rankings. If you're not on one, don't sweat it- This just means your competition is losing a trick.

The next two trends have a lot to do with both what Google and Bing have been saying for the last few months, and the opinions of what search engine optimization experts are seeing in the wild: How people use your site matters almost as much as what's on your site. Usage data, social media sharing, and more is important to understanding how you will rank in search engines. Below is a chart from the SEOMoz survey, of the factors that SEOs believe will increase the most in the next year in importance for search rankings.

SEOMoz Chart 1Source: SEOmoz Ranking Factors Report

Trend Number Two: Social Media Directly Affects Search Results

This should come as no surprise to anyone, but social media signals on the pages of a website, such as the number of likes or tweet a page has, appear to be incredibly valuable.  The correlation value of things like Facebook Shares and Tweets had been previously covered by SEOMoz in a couple of different blog articles, their survey of search marketers and their experience is still very interesting. The correlation data shows that Facebook is by far the most frequently correlated with high ranking pages. That is, pages with many Facebook comments, likes, and shares tend to rank better than ones that do not have this. Tweets are similar but not quite as strong a correlation. However, in the survey results, the answers were flipped - Most search marketers believed that tweeted links and the authority of the Twitter users tweeting the links (such as their number of followers) was more important to social search than Facebook activity.

Takeaway: Make sure that it's easy for your visitors to share your content on social networks, so that you can get the full benefit of social sharing for your website. Shares, Likes, and Tweets are all very important to a modern linking profile.

Trend Number Three: More End-User Usage Data Playing Into Search

Google has been using usage data from customers for years to help understand how people use their search engine and what they are searching. Most search engine optimization professionals have indicated that they expect Google to start using this data much more than they do today - For example, tracking the bounce rates of clicks on organic search results back to the search engine. If people are clicking back to the search results page from the website they visited very quickly, it probably means that they didn't find the content or website useful to their query. If Google starts seeing some websites that are frequently in that position, or seeing some websites doing very well on that front, they can reorder the search results to hide things that people do not like to see.

Did you find your own takeaways from the SEOMoz ranking report? Share them in the comments below. We'd love to hear what else you found in here.

Free Download - Improving SEO: A Practical Guide

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Posted by Brian Whalley on Fri, Jun 17, 2011 @ 02:36 PM

COMMENTS

I've been wondering whether or not Google would start to seriously consider bounce rate. It seems to me that that data is more powerful than just generally monitoring traffic to a site. Great article HubSpot and research SEOmoz!

posted on Friday, June 17, 2011 at 2:59 PM by Bryn Adler


More emphasis on the bounce rate definitely makes sense..sounds like there's only one solution..better/more content!

posted on Friday, June 17, 2011 at 3:14 PM by Dan MacAdam


The thing that makes me happiest about the direction in which search keeps heading is that the tricksters continue to lose ground while honest marketing and engagement efforts gain ground. Warm fuzzies all around.

posted on Friday, June 17, 2011 at 3:14 PM by Jon-Mikel Bailey


Hey Bryn and Dan -  
 
I've actually read the entire report (if you choose to do it, make sure you have a BIG cup of coffee before doing so!), and from what I can surmise, the bounce rate IS actually part of the algo. 
 
The search engines, G in particular, are constantly striving to return the most relevant results, and a high bounce rate of certain sites indicates that the results are not relevant. That's important for the learning search engines to incorporate into the algo. 
 
I would anticipate that this will be the case going forward as the engines get ever more sophisticated.  
 
If/When you dive very deep into the data and review the prognostications of the SEO's surveyed, you'll see more about TF-IDF, topic modeling, etc. which suggests that the engines are focusing more and more on relevance (which they've always done, but ever more in the future). 
 
So our best practices continue to ring true: create remarkable content that people want to 1) read, 2) share, and 3) link to!

posted on Friday, June 17, 2011 at 3:36 PM by Brian-Logan Reid


My understanding is that Google has been using bounce rate data for years and it has been an important part of the algo for a long time. Why wouldn't be? It's such a clear indicator of whether your site is delivering the expected content to the user or not. This is another plus in the case for video marketing. Having some good vids on your page will tend to keep a visitor there longer than if they just scan through your text.

posted on Friday, June 17, 2011 at 4:13 PM by Tom Parker


Nice to see that squatters with exact match domain names will have less power.

posted on Friday, June 17, 2011 at 4:40 PM by Dallas


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posted on Saturday, June 18, 2011 at 1:35 AM by hq


Do you see bounce rate being a key factor on a general site to site basis, or keyword to keyword basis. I have one website with a keyword completely unrelated to one of my main sites generating a lot of traffic. I don't know why its ranked so well when I've done ZERO optimization for that keyword. As you can imagine, bounce rate on that keyword is pretty high.

posted on Saturday, June 18, 2011 at 1:36 AM by Justin Dupre


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posted on Saturday, June 18, 2011 at 5:41 AM by Softwharf


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posted on Saturday, June 18, 2011 at 5:47 AM by Softwharf


This was a very interesting read. I'm glad to see that bounce rate is going to be a factor, we have spent a lot of time on this statistic and are under 8% which is an amazing statistic.  
 
I also like the topic of exact domain match. I am always looking to see what my competitors are doing, I check their back links, their site content etc. I have a couple of competitors that own my money keywords in their domains with dashes and they are all above the fold with less relevant links than mine. Last year I bought a premium domain with my money keywords "optin email lists"and just finished putting up the site. There are only a coupe small bugs that we are wrapping up this weekend. 
 
http://www.emaillist.net 
 
Notice how there are no dashes in the domain name. I hope that this is true because I'm covering the requirement as per the article. 
 
Great read, interested facts that I will catalog in my SEO journal and perfect more and more in measurable manageable pieces over time. 
 
Jim Alamia 
Route 72Systems

posted on Saturday, June 18, 2011 at 6:34 AM by Opt in Email List


Interesting news regarding the domain name. I am glad that Bounce rate it is an important factor. This could be a good factor for top ranking websites and I think that it was an important factor in the past too. 
Sharing must be important for Google especially when they will soon release +1 feature. But why Twitter is more important than Facebook?

posted on Saturday, June 18, 2011 at 9:29 AM by WebRoads Directory


Hi everyone, 
 
Bounce rate is definitely part of Google's algorithm already. They've been using it for a while. What the data and interviews are saying is that the influence of bounce rate is going to increase and become more important in the algorithm than in the past. 
 
Great comments all around though, thank you! 
 
Best, 
 
Brian Whalley

posted on Saturday, June 18, 2011 at 2:11 PM by Brian Whalley


Thanks for summarizing and extracting the main points. Seems like social media sharing is changing the SEO game daily.  
 
I wonder how google sees the FB comments plug in and whether it's going to help in rankings. 
 
Thanks again for a great summary!

posted on Saturday, June 18, 2011 at 2:31 PM by Irina Netchaev


Love to see that the exact match domain game is getting less attention in the algorithms. Appreciate the great heads-up on the shifting emphasis.

posted on Sunday, June 19, 2011 at 11:29 PM by Roger


Really impressed! Everything is very open and very clear explanation of issues. It contains true information.

posted on Monday, June 20, 2011 at 6:46 AM by Rhyme


I am seeing the reverse in the Takeaway with Twitter have the value the search engines feels it has. There are way too many Twitter accounts set up for less than Social Reasons which would naturally get ranked higher due to them gathering thousands of Followers of other non-humans. Facebook on the other hand must be seeing they are going to have to get with it before their IPO and are starting to dump the dead accounts and pages set up to play the Number games. It would make sense since a more normal conversation and interaction can be held on Facebook more than Twitter that a person's Facebook page would be ranked far more than their Twitter account.

posted on Monday, June 20, 2011 at 7:55 AM by Scot Duke


I believe in the importance of social media links on the website. This helps increase the fan base and makes your content share-able. Great post.

posted on Monday, June 20, 2011 at 9:22 AM by Gabrielle Jeans


It's always good for someone like me who works on content to hear that it FINALLY counts heavily and officialy in analytics. Keep in mind the other new trend that we're all tracking-- telling a story with the content and attracting people to the site to USE the content. Very excellent article.

posted on Tuesday, June 21, 2011 at 8:42 AM by Melissa Lande


any search engine optimization factors we should be looking for with large websites or CMS type sites such as ning?

posted on Friday, June 24, 2011 at 3:23 PM by jfarrow


Thanks for sharing the great source. Will continue reading on SEOmoz.

posted on Tuesday, June 28, 2011 at 8:48 PM by Roy


Comments have been closed for this article.