Search Engine Ranking Factors 2011

[Aidan]

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Fancy a long read on search engine ranking? Every 2 years SEOMoz attempts to ‘average’ the opinions of some heavyweight SEO’s as to the likely weights of the various factors involved in getting ranked.

Its always a great read and its educational to see just how much opinion can differ between experts too!

seomoz.org – ranking factors for 2011

[Craig_Longmuir]

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always causes a bit of controversy..and always an interesting read
just had a quick look thru….seems to be a lot less clear presentation of data than previous formats, no?!

[profitclicks]

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Quite a lot has happened in the past year, especially on Google including:

Panda Update
Google Caffeine
Google Instant
Website Previews

It really does pay to keep up to date on forums such as these and industry sites like searchengineland.com to ensure your site has still got the edge!

Always love reading these kinds of articles – my personal feeling is that while search engines can deliver a great amount of traffic, it is not the be all and end all.

What happens to a visitor once they arrive to your site – are they engaged and do they convert? Are there other forms of traffic that can deliver a more targeted prospect?

I have one client who when he first started as a result of the SEO work I started, was receiving phenomenal traffic. We then started on our social media strategy. Social media is now delivering over half of the traffic he receives!

[Tony Pfitzner]

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A very quick and high-level take away from this report is the perceived increase in importance of high quality relevant content, and potential decline in importance of factors such as keyword match in the domain name.

Great stuff.

My personal view is that the relative dominance of SEO as a concept will decline.

We should be talking about something like ‘network footprint’ or ‘web optimisation’ which includes SEO. There is a more to building an online presence than just SEO.

[JohnW]

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Tony Pfitzner, post: 79611 wrote:

My personal view is that the relative dominance of SEO as a concept will decline.

There is a more to building an online presence than just SEO.
I’m with Tony.

SEO has always been a terrible and misleading term that should have been buried in 96/97. What most of us want is phone or email new business enquiries transmitted via the Internet. Ranking top for a group of search phrases wont’ guarantee that.

The more of these surveys that are released the more new jargon and the less comprehension arrives with them. Even Rand acknowledges that he feels the participants had difficulty understanding some of the questions. That must call into question their answers.

Every time something like this comes out it spawns a new set of SEO piranhas citing it as justification for all manor of extra SEO services.

The next avalanche of useless SEO services will be for review sites and social media links.

Did anyone see these important issues addressed in the opinion poll?

* The impact of the searcher’s location on the results.
* Variances attributable to the different country SEs – google.com.au, .co.uk, etc.
* The impact of the search market size on ranking results.

There are different databases and algorithmic modifications by country, according to Google. If I recall correctly there are around 160 Google country specific SEs and all but one has a local pages only search function.

This seems to be a very USA-based set of opinions. It may pay to remember that we seem to be viewing opinions that represent only one small segment (11%) of the worldwide Internet usage pattern.

Regs,
JohnW

[Aidan]

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… LOL

…part of the reason I now refer to what I do as ‘Online Marketing’… to get away from the narrower ‘Search Engine Marketing’

As for the survey being US centric, yes of course it is thats where SEOMoz and many others are based. The principles apply here nonetheless in my humble opinion anyway

[JohnW]

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Aidan, post: 79936 wrote:

As for the survey being US centric, yes of course it is thats where SEOMoz and many others are based. The principles apply here nonetheless in my humble opinion anyway
Hi Aidan,
We are in agreement.

Yes, it is a very interesting opinion poll. I’m simply passing observations on some areas of omission.

I’m only throwing in some words of caution about its limitations because what usually happens next is that many people start treating the opinion poll as facts. It even gets used by some SEO companies as an excuse to drag more dollars from clients or to push their limited capabilities.

I’m sure that there are attributes listed in it that you have tested and found irrelevant, yet some of the opinion poll participants have asigned some importance to the attribute. That leaves me wondering at the expertise of some of the contributors.

Regs,
JohnW

[lutrov]

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JohnW, post: 79678 wrote:

SEO has always been a terrible and misleading term that should have been buried in 96/97.
Nicely phrased. I’ve always maintained that SEO should be called HRO (human reader optimisation) because that’s who optimising should always be done for, not search engines.

The question should not be “how can I get this to rank highly in search engines” but “how easy is this to understand by a human being”.

If you do that right, the rest will fall into place naturally.

[JohnW]

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lutrov, post: 80798 wrote:

Nicely phrased. I’ve always maintained that SEO should be called HRO (human reader optimisation) because that’s who optimising should always be done for, not search engines.
Hi Ivan,

Thanks for the compliment.

When asked what is the single most important SEO ranking attribute, I have been known to reply that “it is often that key below the “w” and “e” on your keyboard.”

Regs,
JohnW

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