SEO Ranking Factors for 2013 and beyond …

There are several points that are interesting that comes out of all of this…Google’s recent algorithm updates :

( What was most striking about the announcement was not the fact that there is a new algorithm, but that it has been live for at least 30 days, with no prior announcement.)

* Links are still believed to be the most important part of the algorithm (approximately 40%).

* Keyword usage on the page is still fundamental, and—other than links—is thought to be the most important type of factor.

* Social factors aren’t seen to be hugely important in the 2013 algorithm (only 7%), in contrast to the high correlations.

* Freshness of content and load speed are important.

* Like it or not, having the exact match keyword in the domain still helps, though is decreasing.

* Trust factor of the domains linking is very important (can be measured by algorithms like MozTrust, TrustRank, etc)

* Good on page optimization is still important (title tags etc, lets Google know what your pages are about).

Basic brochure sites will be a thing of the past as audience engagement and feedback is rewarded. The lesson is clear; be the best, provide the best answers by knowing and serving your customers and Google will reward you.

What this means is your content can’t just be interesting and educational, it has to also have audience engagement (comments) and feedback (social shares). And, with Hummingbird GOOGLE’S most  recent algo update you also have to think in questions and answers format.

What Does All Of This Mean For You?

Content creation and optimization continues to be as important as ever and the focus on quality is more important than ever.  In addition to that, here are some other important tips:

Build authority links naturally (create a strong Social strategy to spread your content)

Offer solutions to your site visitors and make sure your content clearly and concisely conveys the information

Optimize for mobile

Be active in Social

Focus on semantic analysis when doing keyword research

Understand that “context” is now a part of the equation, meaning Google will do the best they can to determine the full meaning of the query and the intent behind it. In addition to analyzing the words, they will use any other data they can – typically local info, personalization info and device and platform info.  User intent is going to matter more than pure keyword matching.

Authorship and Structured Data are going to be more important going forward.  Authorship because it connects you to your content and Structured Data because it’s a good way to feed specific details to the crawler.

This has been the most volatile couple years in the history of the engines, The best thing you can do is actively create and work a content strategy !!

Google’s Amit Singhal said, “With more complex queries, the algorithm can better understand concepts vs. words as well as relationships between concepts.”

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