It’s that time of the year again. SearchMetrics, a search and social analytics tool provider, has released its latest SEO ranking factors for 2013. According to reports, the information is comprised of a ranking correlation study the company conducted over the past three months. Thanks to a helpful infographic, any willing marketer can digest this pertinent information easily to apply it to his or her content marketing strategy.
SearchMetrics explains in the infographic that it examined an impressive 300,000 URLs that appeared in top Google search results. The information is thus presented in terms of how these properties correlate with Google rankings.
Findings from the study include:
- Pages from brands often lack perfect on-page optimization; however, they typically boast a lot of very good links and social signals, enabling them to rank highly.
- Google + content appeared 40 percent out of the time in Google rankings, followed by Facebook, whose shares, comments and “likes” are all highly optimized by the search mogul.
- If the growth of Google+ and Facebook continue at this given rate, Google+ will eventually surpass Facebook in terms of social sharing as soon as 2016.
- Not too surprisingly, “unnatural” keyword overuse is increasingly devalued by Google for ranking purposes.
- The average word count in anchor text is 1.8.
- There are currently over 2,250 backlinks.
- Keyword in domain name and keyword in URL were deemed the two lowest influencers for Google search optimization.
- Conversely, the length of the URL and keyword positioned in title (character) are the top two influencers for optimization.
- Top two drivers of high-quality content include the number of internal links and HTML length, followed by word count and the number of keywords in the document.
- The average piece of content optimized is 576 words long.
These figures represent ample opportunity for content marketers eager to strengthen their foothold in the space. For example, since better ranking URLs feature more text, pristine internal linking and additional media like images and video, it would be wise to reevaluate your content if it has no visual stimulation or has sloppy linking in the body.
Similarly, this data advises to not put all of your eggs in the keyword basket, seeing how keyword-focused criteria ranked extremely low within the technical drivers of SEO ranking. Additionally, this information should be signaling to content marketers to leverage the power of social media if they are not already doing so.
Click here to view the infographic in full.