search engine ranking factors today & tomorrow by seomom of seomoz #scbcn
DESCRIPTION
SEO trends in search engine ranking factors and signals are covered by SEOmom/Gillian Muessig of SEOmoz at Search Congress Barcelona 2011.TRANSCRIPT
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State of SearchWhere We Are, Where We’re Headed
and How to Win
Gillian MuessigPresident & Co-Founder, SEOmoz
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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 of decided what page is best for a particular term… But there are signals beyond this.”
Stefan Weitz, Director for Bing Search
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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, don’t chase after Google’s algorithm, chase after your best interpretation of what users want, because that’s what Google’s chasing after,”
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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 data1999 - 2002: PageRank + On-page2002 - 2005: Anchor text + Domain name + PageRank + On-Page2005 - 2009: Domain authority + Diversity of linking domains + Topic modeling + 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.htmlhttp://www.seomoz.org/blog/google-vs-bing-correlation-analysis-of-ranking-elements
URL Length
.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 MatchHyphenated Domain
Exact Match Domain
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Exact Match Domains by TLD Extension
http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.htmlhttp://www.seomoz.org/blog/google-vs-bing-correlation-analysis-of-ranking-elements
Exact Match .org
Exact Match .net
Exact Match .com
Exact Match
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Keywords in Domain
http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.htmlhttp://www.seomoz.org/blog/google-vs-bing-correlation-analysis-of-ranking-elements
All Keywords inSubdomain
Exact Match .*
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On Page Keyword Usage
http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.htmlhttp://www.seomoz.org/blog/google-vs-bing-correlation-analysis-of-ranking-elements
KWs in Body
KWs in Alt Attribute
KWs in H1 Tag
KWs in URL
KWs in Title
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TLD Extensions
http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.htmlhttp://www.seomoz.org/blog/google-vs-bing-correlation-analysis-of-ranking-elements
.gov
.edu
.info
.net
.org
.com
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Length of Domain, URL & Content
http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.htmlhttp://www.seomoz.org/blog/google-vs-bing-correlation-analysis-of-ranking-elements
Content Length(tokens in body)
URL Length(chars)
Domain NameLength (chars)
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Website Home Pages
http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.htmlhttp://www.seomoz.org/blog/google-vs-bing-correlation-analysis-of-ranking-elements
Exact Match Domain
Home Page of Site
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Features w/Highest Correlation
http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.htmlhttp://www.seomoz.org/blog/google-vs-bing-correlation-analysis-of-ranking-elements
Number of Links
Domains Linkingw/Exact Match
Exact Match Domain
# of LinkingRoot Domains
Exact Match.com Domains
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Link Attribute Correlations Today
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Diversity of Domains + Linking C-Blocks
http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.htmlhttp://www.seomoz.org/blog/google-vs-bing-correlation-analysis-of-ranking-elements
# of Linking Root Domains to URL
# of Links 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
# of Links 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
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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 words that frequently occur together.
Topic Modeling
http://neoformix.com/archive.html
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Using contextual clues, topic models can connect words with similar meanings and distinguish between uses of words with multiple meanings.
http://www.stanford.edu/~kaisa/research.html
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Why Engines Need Topic Modeling
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Term Frequency & Inverse Document Frequency
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Co-Occurence
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Topic Modeling
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Content-related signals require the ability to determine INTENT
Rock or baseball?Are you SURE?
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If Your Response Is…
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Simplistic Term Vector Model
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Correlation Is Strong
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Correlation Is Strong Standard Deviation
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Causation? Not So Fast!
Perhaps, good links are more likely to point to pages that are more "relevant" via a topic model or some other aspect of Google's algorithm that we don't yet understand naturally biases towards these.
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LDA Tool in the Labs
URL input box
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It’s 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
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Out of the SERPs!
Keyword spamming might improve your LDA score, …but not your rankings
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Compare Your Friends
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There’s Still Lots of Work to Do
• Correlations are good, but don’t get carried away – we haven’t 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
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Link Building Signals of the Future
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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
Page A646 links from 36 root domains
2 tweets
Page B1 link from 1 root domain
522 tweets
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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
Page A646 links from 36 root domains
2 tweets
Page B1 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 don’t 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 for Danny Sullivan)
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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
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Some Future-Looking Link Building
Tactics I Love
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Q+A Sites
http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.htmlhttp://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/question_and_answer_sites.php
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Building Your Own Social Community
http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.htmlhttp://mashable.com/2010/11/15/biggest-facebook-brands/
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Media Coverage
http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.htmlhttp://www.madetostick.com/excerpts/
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Comment Marketing
http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.htmlhttp://www.seomoz.org/blog/recommendations-blog-commenting-marketing-strategy
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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?
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Facebook page
Blippr?
Crunchbase profile
App profile on Blackberry
Twitter account
BusinessWeek Profile
Chrome Extension
Mashable Article
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