Searchmetrics recently released their annual SEO Ranking Factors & Rank Correlations white paper.
You can download the entire document here, but if you’re pressed for time here, here’s 23 takeaways to get you thinking…
Content
- High quality, relevant content is increasingly the focus of search
- Content is no longer an addition to, but is the main focus of, SEO
- Pages with a higher word-count are more likely to rank highly
- Semantically comprehensive wording is a factor
- Pages benefit from being enriched by other media, such as images or video
- Adlinks and Adsense on a page correlate negatively with good rankings
- Content that is easier to read (see the Flesch scale) will rank higher
- 130-150 internal links will aid ranking
- Short loading times have a positive impactOn-Page
- Keywords should be included quite early in the title
- All relevant Meta tags, such as Title and Description, should be used
- Keywords in the URL itself are no longer important as a ranking factor
- The quantity and quality of backlinks remains crucial: the higher quality the better
- On average pages ranked first have 6000 backlinks, sites in second place have ~3000, sites at position 30 have 167
- Keyword anchor text links are no longer as valuable as they wereUser Signals
- The correlation with Click-Through Rate is high
- Sites appearing in the top five results tend to have a lower Bounce Rate
- A high ‘time-on-site’ is very likely to have a positive impact on rankingsSocial
- The correlation of social metrics with better rankings remains high
- The average social signals of top 10 ranking URLs: 1690 Facebook engagements, 162 Tweets, 143 Google Pluses, 36 PinsMobile
- User behaviour is changing: there is a continual shift to mobile platforms
- The SERPS for mobile are different from Desktop, with a smaller number of sites returned
- Mobile search results have typically fewer backlinks
For advice or assistance with your own SEO, please do get in contact.