2015 Search Engine Ranking Factors

Need a road map to great SEO in 2015?

MOZ, search engine marketing firm, recently surveyed 150 leading search marketers for their opinions on 90 factors that have been cited as contributing to search ranking measurements. For a detailed version of these results check out the post by MOZ …

For the “Readers Digest” version start here!

Can you believe we are still focusing on link building in 2015? Until Artificial Intelligence takes over the ranking system, link building is still the number one ranking measurement for major search engines such as Google and Bing.
For Newbies … What the heck is Link Building? Links or citations from other web properties to your website.

• Links vary in terms of importance or weight.
• The longer a site has been on the web and is considered a trusted source, the better the link.
• It’s also important to receive links that are subject-relevant to the material that is on your website.
• Links are not just for SEO purposes. They also increase brand awareness and product/service visibility.
• Links to pages other than the home page are good indicators of trusted material and increase search engine ranking.

Authoritative content is at the top of the list for search ranking and in a perfect world it would be the top ranking factor. Search engines would ideally read our websites and related material and then select the very best for page one results.If I were a genie I would make content the number one ranking factor today!

Unfortunately, at this time, Artificial Intelligence cannot accurately evaluate content. It is however, doing a great job at sorting out duplicate content, spammy blogs, and weak information. Bottom-line, it’s not enough to produce a good website. If you want to stand out from the rest, you must generate thought-leading content both on your site and other web repositories. For best results your web material needs to be code-savvy and load very quickly in order to be recognized.Going a step further, if you really want your website to be successful, you will need to push your excellent content to news agencies, blogs, social media, etc.; but that’s a whole other blog in itself.

Make it Mobile! If you take the time to create an impressive message, make sure it translates to every digital medium.
Google provides an excellent tool for checking mobile-friendly URLs. Go to this link and put in your web page URL. In a few minutes you will know if your page is mobile-friendly. If it is not, Google will offer suggestion on how to fix your code.

It’s not how you feel darling; it’s how you look! Search engines measure and give credit to pages that look good, have interesting snippets in the SERPs and inspire readers to dwell on the pages.

Domain-Level Metrics was ranked between 4-6 in terms of importance by search professionals. As for my team, we tend to rank this a little lower as it relates to SEO. Due to inherited branding, domain metrics can often be completely out of our control.

Let’s say for example that you owned Swarosvski Crystals. By the strictest standards this is a terrible domain name! Few can pronounce it or spell it and Swarosvski is not synonymous with precious gems. It is; however, the leading brand in fine crystals since 1895. It’s a no-brainer for this company to exploit the name.

Domain Names are arguably the most intuitive or creative part of Domain-Level Strategy because branding, keywords and mechanical factors such as length or hyphens don’t follow strict rules and often overlap. Sometimes you have to build another path to your product in spite of your domain characteristics.

In terms of Brand Awareness and Customer Retention there’s no doubt that social media warrants a serious part of the budget but if you are counting on it to move your site to page one in the SERPs, the results are mixed. (Remember this conversation is about Website Optimization Factors not Internet Marketing)

Of all the factors that contribute to the current algorithms this is perhaps the most ambiguous in terms of Snippet Value. Google and Bing regularly vacillate between showing Social Media Post in the SERP Snippets and removing the data from the results all together. You can’t count on social media to make the difference in this area.

On the other hand, if you post on social media and more people visit your site as a result of that post then one could reason that your Click Through Rate might be higher. The signal is, however, weak and in my opinion should not push another more important task out of a tight marketing budget.

What’s the official word from Google: Facebook, Twitter Social Signals are Not Part of Google Search Ranking Algorithms.

For more insights and commentary from CCP Web Design Staff, please visit our website at CCPWebDesign.com.

Libby Lucas,
SEO Director
CCP Web Design