Rand Fishkin's presentation from Be Wizard, San Marino 2011 on the evolution of Google's rankings and how marketers can optimize for the next generation of ranking signals.
1. The Evolution of Google RankingsHow Google’s algorithm has changed over the years and where it’s heading in the future Rand Fishkin, SEOmoz CEO, March 2011
2. At SEOmoz, we make SOFTWARE!! We don’t offer any consulting.
9. From 1999 – 2008, What Page Ranked #1for the Queries “Exit” and “Leave”? http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.html http://searchengineland.com/google-kills-bushs-miserable-failure-search-other-google-bombs-10363
10. From 1999 – 2008, What Page Ranked #1for the Queries “Exit” and “Leave”? http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.html http://searchengineland.com/google-kills-bushs-miserable-failure-search-other-google-bombs-10363
11. Keyword Match Domain Names http://www.seomoz.org/blog/exact-match-domains-are-far-too-powerful-is-their-time-limited
13. Topic Modeling LDA correlates w/ Google rankings better than any other on-page feature http://www.seomoz.org/blog/content-optimization-revisiting-topic-modeling-lda-our-labs-tool
20. Twitter Data Danny Sullivan: If an article is retweeted or referenced much in Twitter, do you count that as a signal outside of finding any non-nofollowed links that may naturally result from it? Google: Yes, we do use it as a signal. It is used as a signal in our organic and news rankings. We also use it to enhance our news universal by marking how many people shared an article http://searchengineland.com/what-social-signals-do-google-bing-really-count-55389
21. Twitter Data Page A 646 links from 36 root domains 2 tweets Page B 1 link from 1 root domain 522 tweets http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.html http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-do-tweets-influence-search-rankings-an-experiment-for-a-cause
22. Twitter Clearly Influencing Google Page B – the tweeted version – ranks #1! Page A 646 links from 36 root domains 2 tweets Page B 1 link from 1 root domain 522 tweets http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.html http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-do-tweets-influence-search-rankings-an-experiment-for-a-cause
23. Twitter Data is Very Powerful in QDF http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.html http://www.seomoz.org/blog/tweets-effect-rankings-unexpected-case-study
24. Don’t Try Abusing Twitter for SEO http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.html http://www.seomoz.org/blog/tweets-effect-rankings-unexpected-case-study#jtc133590
25. Author Authority Danny Sullivan: Do you try to calculate the authority of someone who tweets that might be assigned to their Twitter page. Do you try to “know,” if you will, who they are? Bing: Yes. We do calculate the authority of someone who tweets. For known public figures or publishers, we do associate them with who they are. (For example, query for Danny Sullivan) Google: Yes we do compute and use author quality. We don’t know who anyone is in real life :-) http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.html http://searchengineland.com/what-social-signals-do-google-bing-really-count-55389
50. The Survey itself asked for more detail/specificity(which may be responsible for some of these shifts)The new version of the ranking factors will be online in April, 2011
51. A Look at Google’s “Farmer”(aka “Panda”) Update
52. Sites that Lost Visibility http://www.seomoz.org/blog/googles-farmer-update-analysis-of-winners-vs-losers
53. Sites that Gained Visibility http://www.seomoz.org/blog/googles-farmer-update-analysis-of-winners-vs-losers
54. From the Mouths of Googlers Wired.com: How do you recognize a shallow-content site? Singhal: (W)e asked the raters questions like: “Would you be comfortable giving this site your credit card? Would you be comfortable giving medicine prescribed by this site to your kids?” Cutts: (Using) a rigorous set of questions, everything from. “Do you consider this site to be authoritative? Would it be okay if this was in a magazine? Does this site have excessive ads?” Singhal: And based on that, we basically formed some definition of what could be considered low quality. http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/03/the-panda-that-hates-farms/all/1
55. From the Mouths of Googlers Wired.com: But how do you implement that algorithmically? Cutts: I think you look for signals that recreate that same intuition, that same experience that you have as an engineer and that users have. Singhal: You can imagine in a hyperspace a bunch of points, some points are red, some points are green, and in others there’s some mixture. Your job is to find a plane which says that most things on this side of the place are red, and most of the things on that side of the plane are the opposite of red. http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/03/the-panda-that-hates-farms/all/1
56. Links Didn’t Seem to Have Much Impact http://www.seomoz.org/blog/googles-farmer-update-analysis-of-winners-vs-losers
62. Don’t “Look” Like a Content Farm http://www.suite101.com/content/canada-awarded-fifa-2015-womens-world-cup-of-soccerfootball-a356303
63. Don’t “Look” Like a Content Farm http://hubpages.com/hub/WomensFashionsofthe1920-FlappersandtheJazz-Age
64. Watch Out for “Classic” SEO Tactics Directory Link Building Keyword-Variant Abuse Reciprocal Link Pages Paid Links w/ Manipulative Anchor Text Sitewide, Footer Links Navigation for Engines, Not Humans Low Cost/Quality, Outsourced Content Generic Design and Layout Anchor-Text Rich Internal Links Anonymous Contact Forms Keyword Stuffed Titles + Pages Ad Blocks Dominating the Page It’s great to do good SEO, just don’t look like the only reason the site exists is to draw Google traffic
78. Ignore the offline worldhttp://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-next-generation-of-ranking-signals
79. Find Where Top Brands Earn Citations Where do these brands earn their links? http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.html http://www.opensiteexplorer.org
81. Focus on the User, But Don’t Forget the Engines http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/11/business/media/11search.html
82. Take Advantage of New Opportunities http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/05/introducing-rich-snippets.html
83. Take Advantage of New Opportunities http://www.9e3k.com/9e3k/monday-meme-yoda-spreads-some-9e3k-love/
84. Take Advantage of New Opportunities http://outspokenmedia.com/social-media/quora-hipsters/
85. Embrace All of Inbound Marketing News/Media/PR SEO Email Research/White Papers Blogs + Blogging Infographics Comment Marketing Social Networks Online Video INBOUND MARKETING!(AKA all the “free” traffic sources) Webinars Forums Document Sharing Social Bookmarking Word of Mouth Podcasting Direct/Referring Links Type-In Traffic Q+A Sites