deconstructing the gospel of rankings by leslie to

#SMX #11A @itsleslieto

Four Factors in Focus

Deconstructing the Gospel of

Rankings


And Me

•  Aboutme:

•  DirectorofSEO

•  ResponsibleforSEOstrategyonallclients

•  About3QDigital:

•  Over$400millioninannualmanagedspendonGoogle

•  Search,SEO,mobile,paidsocial,display,creativeandanalytics


•  WhyTestOld-GuardRankingFactors•  Old-GuardFactors:Titles,Descriptions&Content•  UnderstandingRankBrain

Agenda


“Changeistheonlyconstant.” -Heraclitus


A Quick Review of The Ever-Changing Landscape

2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016

(notprovided)

KG

KG

Expands

2.0

2.0

2.0


Ecosystem of Ranking Factors

RankingFactors

Media

DomainHistory

SSL

UX

BoldedTerms

SERPBehavior Page

Speed

LinkEquity

DuplicateContent

Internal

Outbound

KWTargeting

SearchCTR

Title

RankBrain

Htags

MetaDesc.

DomainAge

BodyContent

EMD ContentLength

LSI

Canonicals

Recency

Inbound

Helpfulness

CrawlErrors

Readability

HTMLerrors

DomainAuthority

Architecture

MobileFriendliness


Manyprojectplansstillheavilyemphasizemetadata&bodycopyoptimizationseventhoughtherearesomanyotherleverstobepulledatanyonetime.

I Got 99 Problems and Ranking Factors are Just One of Them


Howmuchdoesexactmatchkeywordtargetingmatterintitletags?CTRisrelatedtometadescriptionsandhasbeenthoughttoimpactrankings.Doesitreally?Isthereadiminishingreturnoncontentinvestment?

Three Lines of Inquiry


Howmuchdoesexactmatchkeywordtargetingmatterintitletags?CTRisrelatedtometadescriptionswhichhasbeenthoughttoimpactrankings.Doesitreally?Isthereadiminishingreturnoncontentinvestment?



Exact Match Titles vs Phrase Match Titles

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Exact Phrase Control


Exact Match Titles vs Phrase Match Titles

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Exact Phrase Control

Changes Pushed ?


NotasmuchaswewereexpectingURLswithphrasematchoftentimesdidjustaswellorsometimesevenbetterthanexacttargeting

How much does exact match keyword targeting matter in title tags?


Howmuchdoesexactmatchkeywordtargetingmatterintitletags?NotasmuchaswethoughtCTRisrelatedtometadescriptionswhichhasbeenthoughttoimpactrankings.Doesitreally?Isthereadiminishingreturnoncontentinvestment?



Howmuchdoesexactmatchkeywordtargetingmatterintitletags?NotasmuchaswethoughtCTRisrelatedtometadescriptionsandhasbeenthoughttoimpactrankings.Doesitreally?Isthereadiminishingreturnoncontentinvestment?



CTR is related to meta descriptions and has been thought to impact rankings. Does it really?

-

2.00

4.00

6.00

8.00

10.00

12.00

2.50%

2.60%

2.70%

2.80%

2.90%

3.00%

3.10%

3.20%

3.30%

Ave

rag

e P

osit

ion

CTR

*CTR Avg. Position



2/28 3/6 3/13 3/20 3/27 4/3 4/10 4/17 4/24 5/1 5/8 5/15 5/22 5/29

*CTR 3.08% 3.03% 2.91% 3.09% 3.22% 3.24% 3.24% 3.20% 3.15% 3.03% 2.96% 2.91% 2.81% 2.87%

Avg.Position 10.08 9.38 9.15 9.47 9.00 8.55 8.86 8.90 9.12 9.67 9.59 9.78 10.29 10.09

+0.33%points

-0.29positions

-0.16%points

+0.42positions


TheyaredefinitelyinverselyrelatedBut…Averagepositionfluctuatedminimally




2/28 3/6 3/13 3/20 3/27 4/3 4/10 4/17 4/24 5/1 5/8 5/15 5/22 5/29

*CTR 3.08% 3.03% 2.91% 3.09% 3.22% 3.24% 3.24% 3.20% 3.15% 3.03% 2.96% 2.91% 2.81% 2.87%

Avg.Position 10.08 9.38 9.15 9.47 9.00 8.55 8.86 8.90 9.12 9.67 9.59 9.78 10.29 10.09

+0.33%points(+11.4%)

-0.29positions(-3.2%)

-0.16%points(-5.3%)

+0.42positions(+4.3%)


TheyaredefinitelyinverselyrelatedBut…Averagepositionfluctuatedminimally



Howmuchdoesexactmatchkeywordtargetingmatterintitletags?NotasmuchaswethoughtCTRisrelatedtometadescriptionsandhasbeenthoughttoimpactrankings.Doesitreally?There’sadiscernableinverserelationship,butrankingsfluctuationwasminimalcomparedtochangeinCTR

Isthereadiminishingreturnoncontentinvestment?



Howmuchdoesexactmatchkeywordtargetingmatterintitletags?NotasmuchaswethoughtCTRisrelatedtometadescriptionswhichhasbeenthoughttoimpactrankings.Doesitreally?There’sainversediscernablerelationshipbutrankingsfluctuationwasminimalcomparedtochangeinCTR

Isthereadiminishingreturnoncontentinvestment?



Website#1:•  DA77/100•  Sampleof79

URLsNodiscernablerelationshipbetweenwordcount&avg.position

Is there a diminishing return on content investment?


Website#2:•  DA36/100•  Sampleof52

URLs

Negativecorrelationbetweenavg.position&wordcount



Website#3:•  DA46/100•  Sampleof1,006

URLs

Biggestclusterbetween500and600words



Thereseemstobeastrongindicatorthat500-600wordsisthesweetspotfor2ofthe3websitesIexaminedBut…Sinceresultsarenotconclusive,ananalysisonthatpointofdiminishingreturnshouldbeexaminedonacase-by-casebasis



Howmuchdoesexactmatchkeywordtargetingmatterintitletags?NotasmuchaswethoughtCTRisrelatedtometadescriptionswhichhasbeenthoughttoimpactrankings.Doesitreally?There’sainversediscernablerelationshipbutrankingsfluctuationwasminimalcomparedtochangeinCTR

Isthereadiminishingreturnoncontentinvestment?Inconclusive



•  WhyTestOld-GuardRankingFactors•  Old-GuardFactors:Titles,Descriptions&Content•  UnderstandingRankBrain

Agenda


“RankBrainisoneofthe‘hundreds’ofsignalsthatgointoanalgorithmthatdetermineswhatresultsappearonaGooglesearchpageandwheretheyareranked,Corradosaid.Inthefewmonthsithasbeendeployed,RankBrainhasbecomethethird-mostimportantsignalcontributingtotheresultofasearchquery,hesaid.”


ButHowGoodIsRankBrainatInterpretingSearches?


Explicit Targeting Implied Meanings

“mobilebestpractices” à

“toprankingfactors” à

“whymanualbidding” à

“pivottables” à

“improvecontentreachonfacebook”à

Explicit vs Implicit Targeting

“waystooptimizeformobile”

“howtoimproveorganicvisibility”

“automatedvsmanualbidding”

“howtocreatepivottables”

“whydoessomecontentgetmorereachthanothercontent”


“designbanneradsinphotoshop”vs“howtocreatebanneradsinphotoshop”

RankBrain on “Explicit vs Implicit Targeting”


“ismanualbiddingbetter”vs“whymanualbidding”



“howtochoosebestseocompany”vs“hiretherightseoagency”



“bingadscertificationstudyguide”vs“bingadscertificationtips”



•  AsRankBraingetsbetteratinterpretingsearches,thepooloftotalkeywordpermutationswillshrink(slowly…)

Why should you care how RankBrain is interpreting searches?



•  Becauseofthis,you’llalsohavetogetbetteratfiguringoutimpliedmeaningsofkeywordsearchesinordertotakeadvantageofRankBrain’sconflatingabilities





•  Eventhoughit’sthe“thirdmostimportantrankingfactor”,it’sunclearhowwecanoptimizetowardsit





•  Eventhoughit’sthe“thirdmostimportantrankingfactor”,it’sunclearhowwecanoptimizetowardsit•  Understandinghowitworksgetsusonestepclosertobeingabletouse

ittoouradvantage



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deconstructing the gospel of rankings by leslie to

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