Search Ranking Factors Report 2015

[samtaylorseo]

MOZ have just posted their search ranking factors report for 2015

https://moz.com/search-ranking-factors

Interesting to see the page-level factors increasing again this year, taking the attention further away from the home page and onto the landing pages.

Also, HREF lang declaration (https://moz.com/search-ranking-factors/correlations) appears to be more important than what I first thought.

Anyway, I just wanted to share this incase it can help anyone, but also I wanted to get people's opinions on where they think technical SEO is going.

 

[ADNattan]

Very few surprises there. It did make me laugh when that was published - restating the importance of links about six seconds after an SEO company I follow had posted the phrase "We know links aren't important any more..."

 

[fisicx]

"This year, Moz surveyed over 150 leading search marketers who provided expert opinions on over 90 ranking factors."

As normal it's just the opinions of people rather than objective testing. According to the opinions in the report I'm doing everything wrong so my ranking must be a fluke.

 

[sirearl]

I would love to know how google et al can tell quality content.

 

[samtaylorseo]

I always find the 'quality' factor really interesting because they can only tell the quality from user's outcome (e.g. shares, time on page, bounce rate) and basic onpage factors (e.g. length, keyword stuffing and language). We should all be very afraid when their algorithms can look at a piece and decide on it's own that it's good quality, because that means Google's invented AI.

 

[boring-friday]

Mostly agree with the overview but:
Relevance of linking domains more important than popularity of the page as measured by PR etc? Lol thats why pbn's don't work anymore then. Oh wait...

Duplicate content as a big negative pretty much goes out the window with e commerce too

 

[samtaylorseo]

Duplicate content on ecommerce is still very bad, but if you manage it correctly then you can counteract a lot of the issues.

 

[crelding]

What is 'stripped chars in a doc body', anyone know?

 

[samtaylorseo]

I think it's when you strip out all non essential characters and basically make it plain text. Anyone else got any other guesses?

 

[fisicx]

My guess it's mozspeak for 'we don't really have a clue what we are talking about (again)'.

Moz lost all credibility for me a while back when their super duper ranking technique (link sculpting) turned out be a load of bollox.

 

[Shopclicks]

Just another example of seo 'experts' trying to turn seo into a science (which can only be interpreted by those who 'speak' seo).

"A ? in text after last slash" .......... How do they check that????

 

[crelding]

Yeah, I was also wondering what was meant by "A ? in text after last slash" - any thoughts?

 

[websensejim]

Its true that the Google algo can't directly measure the quality of content, but they don't have to. They have plenty of other signals to look at including user behaviour (as Sam pointed out) and social engagement, page segmentation (block level analysis) and inbound link analysis. If enough of these other signals are telling Google not to trust the content on the page, then that page will see a reduction in rank, or just not rank well from the start.

 

[GoldenLeads]

Content quality factors: unique content, time spent on the page, bounce rate, grammar mistakes, pictures, outbound links what else ?

 

[StevePoster]

I already read the content of MOZ Ranking Factors and I noticed that most of the high percentage in high rankings is correlated with the links from related authoritative websites. Also some positive signals on rankings are from social media. Engagement is still important.

 

[Tolbest-Keith]

I saw this report a few days ago, to be honest I've not read it all but the high factors (Domain-level link features) and Page-level link features. Are they basically the number and quality of external links to your site? i.e. other people that are linking to you?

 

[GoldenLeads]

I saw this report a few days ago, to be honest I've not read it all but the high factors (Domain-level link features) and Page-level link features. Are they basically the number and quality of external links to your site? i.e. other people that are linking to you?

Yes, authority/quality of the page that the backlink is on is far the most important thing. You can read whatever guru posts about them preaching SEO "truths" I tend to trust people who makes 6/7 figures doing what actually works in the real world and makes money.

 

[money road]

I would love to know how google et al can tell quality content.

quality content?- well it can measure user experience, e.g. is your content helpful, how long user stay on particular page, are there any actions after.

 

[boring-friday]

quality content?- well it can measure user experience, e.g. is your content helpful, how long user stay on particular page, are there any actions after.

Any actions after? You mean like building a link? lol. Not sure I believe them but google say they don't/can't even measure what people do once on your website. All they can measure is grammar lol, even duplicate content doesn't seem to get penalized for ecommerce, can find so many sites ranking with pure duplicate content