Periodic table of_seo_kevin_thiele

SMX London

The New Periodic Table of SEO

Kevin Thiele

® Searchmetrics GmbH 2012


About Searchmetrics
Company

• Founded in 2007
• Leading Search Analytics vendor with international
focus
• ~100 full-time employees with locations in Germany, US, UK and France
• Largest aggregated database for SEO, SEM and Social data (Searchmetrics
Suite and Searchmetrics Essentials)

Follow us and stay updated

• Twitter: twitter.com/searchmetrics
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/Searchmetrics

09.07.2012 ® Searchmetrics Inc. 2012 2


„States“ of SEO

When SEOs talk ranking
factors, they tend to
mention these areas.

But which ones matter
most?

Which specific factors are
more important, which one
is nothing but hot air?

09.05.2012 ® Searchmetrics GmbH 2012 3


Take a look into the Google matrix…


Study of google.co.uk SERPs

• Analysis includes
• 10,000 hand-picked top keywords (informational search
only),
• 300,000 URLs
• Billions of backlinks
• Billions of Shares, Likes, Tweets, Plusones
• organic search (“blue links”) only
• Analysis conducted AFTER Panda = latest findings
• Data collected in March 2012
• Many of the factors that we suspected, based on
recent Google updates, do impact rankings but
there are some surprising results.


Correlation Data (causation – correlation!)


Everyone* is connected and has access
to content faster than ever before


Key Finding #1 – Social Signals dominate
Google+ data is not reliable yet, but it„s correlation could be massive:



Finding #1: Social has arrived in international markets
Social networking site activities correlate very well with good rankings

That doesn‟t mean that Facebook Shares, Tweets, Plusones etc. are
definitively a strong ranking factors, but it looks like, as a kind of user
feedback, they are very important and they should take part in SEO
strategy

Search engines definitely don‟t look at a simple number of Tweets or
Shares but it makes a lot of sense to implicate Social Signals / User
Signals within the magic ranking formula



Social Signals are User Signals
• The classical calculation of rankings based on recommendations
(simple hyperlinks)
• That wasn‟t the only ranking factor but the strongest one
• In fact of the high competition to grow organic traffic lot‟s of
search engine result pages weren‟t natural, there were
manipulated

• Search engines are looking for ways and reliable data to improve the
quality of the Serps

• User signals e.g. bounce rate, time on site, CTR in Serps can also be
measured

• Quality became a ranking signal:
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/05/more-guidance-on-
building-high-quality.html
18.02.2012 ® Searchmetrics Inc. 2012 11


Social Signals – Author-Markup on the Rise

Authorship Markup is spreading fast,
might turn into a signal in the near
future.

Looking for author integrations in the
SERPs for a million keywords in
google.com.

For nearly 170,554 keywords, >1
author integration in the SERPs

Higher impact from mentions / links
from important authors independent of
link popularity of URL or page? Make
sense?


SEOs are early adopters…



But also on usual
queries like
“Samsung Galaxy
S3” or “Lady
Gaga” you see
author
integrations



Social Signals – UK vs US results



Social Signals
addthis
Marketers are
adapting fast:
FB 9,0%

usage of Social
Buttons is 27,0%
huge share
12,1 this
(300.000 URLs that 10,8 1,8%
Were used for
the study) 6,4 TW
G+ 13,8%
6,6
15,1%



Backlinks still have a high value for Google


Key Finding #2 – Backlinks still strong, but quality matters
The number of backlinks is still a mayor factor. Quality metrics are
gaining importance.

Backlinks are still very important for rankings, but must vary between
keyword links, no follow links, and “organic” links with stopwords (e.g.
“as.” “the,”…) in them.


Key Finding #2 – Backlinks still strong, but quality matters
SEO Trivia : For our keyword set, you need an average of 2470 Links
to rank first.



Proportion of Backlinks with Keyword in anchor text
0,25

0,2

0,15

0,1

0,05

0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30



Proportion of nofollow links in %
0,04

0,035

0,03

0,025

0,02

0,015

0,01

0,005

0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30



Proportion of Backlinks with stopwords
0,07

0,06

0,05

0,04

0,03

0,02

0,01

0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30



R.I.P Onpage Optimization?



Key Finding #3 – Become a brand, Onpage relevance is decreasing



Key Finding #3 – Become a brand, Onpage relevance is decreasing

Apparently some of the classic ranking
factors like having keywords in the
title and more keywords in the content
don‟t apply to well-known brands.

Some unexpected correlations could
be explained by brands and their good
rankings. They rank because there are
relevant, not because of the best
technical optimization

Note: Only exact keyword phrases
were analyzed



Negative Onpage correlation
0,7

0,6

0,5

0,4
Sites without the
0,3
keyword in title or h1
0,2
rank higher???
0,1

0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

kw_in_description kw_in_h1 kw_in_title



Ads can distract from content

Does this article have an excessive amount
of ads that distract from or interfere with the
main content? (Google 2011)


Key Finding #4 - Ads could be a handicap



What‘s important for SEO in 2012

• Social factors are getting more important:
Start measuring social media signals and motivating users to make
your company become more famous

• Analyze your competitors or best practice sites

• Backlinks are still a key factor for SEO

• Become a brand / Have recognizable products

• Always think of your user first
• The USP of your product
• The reason why you should rank (no me-too products)



What‘s important for SEO in 2012

• Ads could be a handicap if the user experience gets low because of
that

• Make sure that the user recognizes the content

• Classic ranking factors like having keywords in the title and more
keywords in the content are less important

• Search engines will deliver the result that the user expects,
these results are calculated out of more and more parameters



„Search engine ranking factors 2012“

Whitepaper with more information and deeper insight
now available. Get your personal copy:

Email me: k.thiele@searchmetrics.com


32
09.05.2012 ® Searchmetrics GmbH 2012

Periodic table of_seo_kevin_thiele

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