Thread: 2013 Search engine ranking factors

The moz.com has posted their search engine ranking factor study,
you can find more info here:
2013 Search Engine Ranking Factors Survey & Correlation Data - Moz

Some interesting read,
as we can see links are still number 1 followed by social signals,
but there are few interesting things as well about on page seo that you should be aware of.

These are not the right factors (in my eyes)... We all know that Moz will never try to destroying google by telling people the SECRETS what webmasters have to do to get a GOOD ranking.

I have my own ranking factors and I will not believing rand fiskin, matt cutts or other "marketing experts"...

I WILL BELIEVE TO BLACK HATTERS and case studies... because they will know the truth, secrets and the way to rank #1.

I've been saying that for a long time that Matt and others can't be trusted....especially not big companies such as google and similar, but this is another story already explained here few times....
That said I don't trust anyone in total not a black hatter or white hatter or what ever hatter, I only trust my own testings, my common sense, but sometimes not even that
Also I must say that not all things coming from these guys or Matt are fake(mostly not), you need to know when they are bullshiting you/us.
So, finally, we all can learn from such and similar studies if you know how to read them and cross reference them with your own testings and common sense.

Oooh Yeah.. lets do some textcases with blogger or wordpress free blogs lol.

By the way.. theres another seo contest here in germany.. the keyword is "seokanzler".

I cant wait to check the #1 ranked strategies and linkbuilding sources. But Nemanja right.. we have to trust nobody only test cases...
Also Google warn us for creating bookmarks.. but it still working well... lol
also they warned not to use linknetworks.. but If you know the ranking stories of SAPE Links and Ghost Rank 2.0 .. then you know that these kind of links still work!

Google dont allow backlinks from bookmarks, guest postings or blogpost... and you know why this not allowed??? BECAUSE IT ALL WORKS WELL!!!

Please do share that here at IMTalk once that contest is over.
In fact from these results(moz.com) they just confirmed that links still do work, there are soooo many "points" for links in this chart that it is insane,
so links are still and will be main part of google algo(yes we know this already),
which brings us to that google anti-link propaganda which they are preaching for about 2+ years now,
so again the best bet is to test things on some wordrepss or similar platform blogs/free for all pages...

Hello guys.. it's been a loooooonnnggg time since the last time i got so active in this forum i just started to find a way..or good time to participate in this forum.. kinda miss to stay active in this forum.. and i really lost so much valuable info here.. by the way yesterday Matt Cutts released video on youtube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7glS_ehpGY

you know its been 8 month since the last time of PR update... do you think that.. or do you still think that.. high PR links still valuable in the eye of Google? IF... i just said IF.. one day Google diminish PR update.. what kind of value we need to depend on? is that mozrank?

What I never understand is... Matt says "nofollow your links in your blogpost if you want to link to another site"

So he says we must nofollow backlinks in blogpost... BUT WHY MATT CUTTS STILL LINKING WITH ANCHORS TO OTHER SITES... also I found some links pointing to Moz and Rand Fiskin lol...

Is Matt like a Boss that can do anything he wants... linking however he wants.. ???? But telling other people ITS NOT ALLOWED???

................... strange .........

PR is still in google core algo considering even new hummingbird.
That said I think it will stay with gogole a looong, long time, but they sure tend to go social route as well.
I think they will adopt behavioral factors/patterns more and more into their algos(as well as other things),
but this is something they will not tell you(us) just like that

yeah i agreed with both of you... sometime i feel like... google just implement and introduced lots of thing.. so as to make us (IM) feel give up or retreat to focus on SEO.. in the end... by giving everything about lots of update and algo... deep inside their heart.. Google just want us to use their advertising platform.. (adwords).. as simple as that

I have been watching a few videos from this channel recently...

http://www.youtube.com/user/jbachyns/videos

The owner of the channel gives information about SEO that he gets from attending Google Hangouts.

This is some interesting stuff that I have heard from him so far...

- He has confirmed that during Google hangouts when people have asked John Mueller(A Google employee) 'How to get good rankings?' John Mueller would say that people should have widgets on their site to make it easier to share(Facebook like/share/recommend buttons, Google plus, Tweet etc...).

- He also says John Mueller has said social media shares/votes can effect rankings.

- He has implied that Google's algorithm can to a degree detect if Facebook mentions/shares are legitimate or artificial and Google pluses since they own it.

- He says John Mueller and Matt Cutts don't always say the same thing regarding SEO and John Mueller's word is more reliable. Due to Matt Cutts being a PR person, he can't reveal too much of what goes on behind the scenes.

- Click through rate plays a role in the Panda algorithm.

- He says that John Mueller has implied on multiple occasions that bounce back rate(not bounce rate from analytics) plays a role in the Panda algorithm.

- Sites that have gotten social media shares/votes/signals(Likes, Pluses, Tweets etc...) alone and no backlinks have ranked well.

- Pre May 2013, Panda used to punish sites that weren't mobile friendly based on user activity with the site on mobile devices. Post May 2013 they still do but only on mobile devices while if user activity with desktop/laptop is good, desktop/laptop etc... rankings won't be punished. He says this is what Matt Cutts meant when he implied Panda would be less harsh.

- He says he has heard from former Google employees that Google can get more usage data from people who use Chrome as their web browser.

- He says according to John Mueller, pages that have backlinks have to also consistently get traffic for the backlinks to have value which means backlinks from pages that never get traffic can be one of the factors Penguin uses to determine if links are spam or not.

- If Penguin sees a site/page as a spam site, that site/page is flagged as a spam site and even if all spam links are deleted/disavowed for that page, Penguin will still label that site/page as a spam site until the next Penguin update.

Yup, Social Network Signals will continue to play a critical role in the rankings of websites. As the web becomes more social and interconnected, citations, reviews, non hyper link references (your brand), etc will all become indicators of popularity and ranking ability.

Great post AaronLuke, sums it up nicely. Now if people would just take it all in they will save themselves time and money.

Of course links still affect rankings, links are signals from others that your site is great. It's just that they have to look natural. Links in blog networks aren't natural. Social signals are, as in someone visits your site and shares it on facebook etc. That's what G is looking for. Social signals are a natural evolution in backlinks and it's something you should focus on. But don't go out and buy 5k likes because that's going to scream 'paid for likes'!

There are services out there that can drip social signals from real accounts and they look natural. Of course the best way is to create interesting content that people will naturally want to share.

Bounce and click-through are indeed important. If you have a backlink and nobody clicks thru that link will not carry much weight. If you have a link that brings you lots of natural traffic that link will then be worth more, regardless of what PR the page is on.

The game has changed, you can no longer rank highly using spammy techniques, at least not in the long run. Sooner or later they will discover your spam and throw you on the rubbish pile.

As always, listening and following only one person or one advice etc.. is not good, as it is in life (look what religion did to us)...
So same thing applies to SEO, I see this trend for years now, soon as something new came out people are "crazy" about it, doing almost just that,
for example, keyword stuffing, hidden text, directory submissions, landing pages, articles, profile links, now social signals, in the future it will be something else like behavioral factors etc...
So pattern is repeating every few years/months over and over again...
But to successfully do SEO you must be ahead of the GAME, FIRST build pages/content for PEOPLE, then you can only "jump start" your SEO with SEO techniques, which needs to be as natural and different as possible,
then if that SEO doesn't continue on its own path(naturally), you are basically doomed and feeding that big machine with more and more "seo fuel" to keep it running, until eventually you have no more fuel and all is lost...
I saw this happening countless times so far and only few people get it right and even that doesn't guaranty that you will have success with particular site.