This year too, Search Metrics has produced its 84-page blob on ranking factors in Google and co. The conclusions it draws on how to beat the competition on the search results page are always a topic of discussion, but it is worth noting a few things. Wanting to play a risky game, you might ask: “ what are the main ranking factors proposed by Search Metrics? ”. Here they are: 1 Contents and length Factor always detected, but it was known, are the quality contents, with variety of typology (video, images), with some relevant keywords and consistent with what is expressed.
Quality and keywords are not enough:
It is necessary to produce texts that are also substantial. 2 Keywords? Less important than in 2013 Keywords are decreasing in relevance compared to the previous year. We are increasingly moving from keywords to entities , synonyms, co-occurrences. I recently ventured with the 5 main concepts of Seo-Onpage . Despite this, in the ranking that Search Metrics proposes, “relevant keywords” remains in second place. It simply changes the way of choosing terms for your texts, while remaining central. The keywords in the domain, then, would confirm a decrease in importance for positioning purposes. 3 Performance A sore point for many websites, the performance of the pages that compete for the best positions in SERP is a relevant characteristic.
Page loading speed website structure
Correct compilation of meta tags, internal linking between pages are factors to be considered indispensable. 4 Backlink Another fundamental thing: the quantity and quality of backlinks (= the sites that link to your pages). Despite Google trying to row in the opposite direction, building linking remains an activity to which you should dedicate some time. In reality, the stimulation of links towards your site should be natural, a direct consequence australia email list of the quality of the content you produce. In reality, especially lately, I have noticed a great flourishing of guest posts . 5 Click Through Rate The study says, in my opinion quite obviously, that the CTR (badly translated: how easily users click on your link compared to the number of times they encounter it) is high in the first links that are positioned at the top of Google search results pages.
And even more surprisingly it would be a positioning factor
The question, here, is all in understanding how much this element is the cause of good positioning or effect . In any case, it is indeed important to have a good CTR (regardless), so you might as well be careful in thinking of effective titles . Closely related to CTR is Bounce Rate, or Bounce Frequency : it is considered a quality signal . Users who “bounce” on a web page – that is, click and then quickly abandon – are a strong signal that on that page, for a given search query , they have not found information of interest.
Ergo: for that query, that page is not that relevant and quality. Trying to keep the Bounce Rate low is a good thing. 6 Social Sharing? Well yes, even Social shares would produce some effect… or not? It had already emerged last year (I remember the deep indignation of many SEOs), but this year Search Metrics also talks about Social Signals . The problem, in this case, is the difficulty in discerning between cause and effect. Simply put: is the high number of shares the effect of the high positioning – and therefore exposure – of a certain content… or the opposite?
The former is more likely (according to many SEO experts)
Search Metrics insists on this key. The strongest social media factors, in order, would be: Facebook, Google Plus, Twitter, Pinterest. Social factors in orange In blue what concerns backlinks In blue the on-page SEO factors on the content side (formerly SEO Copy) In green the technical on-page SEO factors An important premise that Search Metrics makes is the following: they should not be taken as a list of things to do to automatically be up there at the top of Google. The final will become even more popular is a very hot result on Google is a complex correlation of multiple factors , one can only hypothesize a series of good practices but the matter is much more complex than it appears.
PS: click to see the graph in a more defined way. rank factors positioning search metrics 2014 Source: The text readability index Among the many things expressed in the document, I like to focus on the importance given to long contents (despite the speed of reading on the web), but at the same time simple and “readable” , with well-developed “ clusters of similar and coherent contents ”. The Italian mathematician Roberto Vacca studied this value in 1972 together with Valerio Franchina , identifying the formula for Italian . Here it is: F = 206 – (0.65 * S) – P 206 = fixed value 0.65 = fixed value S = number of syllables in a sample of 100 word saverage number of words per sentence.
The value you will get by testing on your content
Will be between 0 and 100: between 50 and 60 you will get an average readability; above 60 an excellent readability; below 50, however, the text becomes difficult… If you don’t feel like doing calculations, you can use the alternative offered by Microsoft cell p data Word to automatically calculate the Gulpease index for Italian texts. To activate it: go to Revisions – Spelling and Grammar – Options and from there check “ Show readability statistics ”. Then clicking on “Spelling and Grammar” will show you all the words in your text that Word considers incorrect: click ignore until the last word; after which you will finally have your Gulpease index.
Again, the higher the number in absolute value, the greater the readability. In general, readability increases – outside of the formula – if you structure the text correctly with paragraphs, bullet points, images, tables, bold, italics , etc… For further information: dimodica.pdf. Even the readability of the text would therefore be a positioning factor. The Brand Effect This aspect is also interesting: domains that have achieved a certain authority are more likely to rank in the top positions on search results pages , even if they sometimes do not satisfy the factors that smaller domains do. Search Metrics talks about “brand domains”. The 3 macro typologies of brands proposed are: Niche brands : they position themselves more easily on specific, long-tail searches. Big Brands : they position themselves on both general and specific searches (ex. Nike) Wikipedia : considered a “universal brand”.
