Searchmetrics recently released a great study on the ranking factors for 2013. With the most current Panda Update shaking things up in the world of SEO again, it is imperative to keep up with the techniques. Som
e of these techniques may come as a surprise. Here are a few key factors that I felt stood out the most :
1. Links - still the biggest emphasis of ranking. There are a lot on this topic and I highly suggest you download the report here and read it if you are interested. Here are a couple major points from the report I believe deserve an extra look at:
- The number of links seems to be making a comeback; however, this is still something that I feel can be unsafe to practice if you do it from a manipulative standpoint.
- Hard keywords
2. Google +1′s seem to impact rankings. Although, in my opinion, it is possible that Google simply ranked good content in those instances and good content, naturally, would get +1′d. So the question is not whether Google +1 did it or it ranked and then it naturally got +1d. Nevertheless, I believe it will become more important and something we should be talking about as well as planning for.
- Subsequent to this, Facebook and Twitter social signals are showing more signs too. Although, I do think it is more due to the “quality effect” that I mentioned above.
3. Page Load Time – An obvious one but very important for clients to understand. If they get bad coding done (WP or Magento) their site will be slow and will not rank.
4. Media – The presence of images and videos (lots of them) seem to have a correlation with efficient ranking.
5. Internal Linking – How you link content internally, deep linking, etc. is still a crucial part of the puzzle; some call this “link architecture”.
6. Brand Factor – playing a huge role, this is sort of obvious. In my opinion, it is because everything above is exasperated due to the brands natural ability to produce PR and get links in WSJ, NY Times and other large publications just as a result of them being “big”. I believe that this eventually has to go the other way as it does not provide quality of results to users like it once did. For example, I know I can buy a BBQ at home depot but I am looking on Google because the obvious choices did not work. Therefore, I am looking for something other than Lowes, Home Depot and the other obvious choices that show up.
7. Keyword Density – KWD is making a comeback. Funny, because “this is so 2001″. We will see how that plays out.
