With Moz doing study for search ranking factor in every 2 years, many SEO webmasters anticipate the result for creating a better strategy to get the best result as possible. The study’s result also a chance for SEO webmasters to know what strategies, best practices and techniques that other webmasters used so they can apply what they think is the best for their plan in near future. With Google’s algorithms are always updated in unpredictable times, the search engine itself is not interested to giving information how SEO practice could works.
So the best way to keep updated on what’s the latest change in search algorithm is to discuss with others about what SEO practice that works for them. This Moz study is great foundation for knowing what you should do in your SEO practice. The result usually gives SEO webmasters an idea to improve their site and strategy. Even if someone is not a SEO webmaster, this information would be useful for them, especially if they want to promote their website.
Moz said that in this year study, it analyzes more data points than in any previous year, collecting more that 15,000 data points and measuring 170 attributes like anchor text, keyword usage, links, load time and many more. From this year study, it found out that one of the key point of search ranking factor in 2015 is links continue to be more closely associated with higher rankings than most of the attributes that it studied.
Below there more key point that they found from the study that it did:
- There’s a lower correlation between onpage keyword use and rankings
- Using HTTPS has a very low positive correlation
- The correlation with exact-match domain with rankings is more likely because of keyword rich anchor text and not because there is an algorithm favoring these kinds of domains
- There’s only little correlation between domain extensions with rankings in Google
- Anchor text was closely associates with high-ranking results, and the number of unique referring domains
- Number of social shares tends to show a positive correlation with rank
- Time until domain registration expiration was moderately correlated with higher rank
- Factors for high rankings are pages have lower bounce rates, higher page views and better time-on-site metrics
From key point above, some conclusions that can we know are:
- Links are meant to have the highest positive correlation, above keyword usage and content
- Keyword in the page title and content are thought to be strongly related to higher rank
- Image use and HTTPs are not considered to have a strong relation to higher rank
- The freshness of content and length are factors that though to only have a moderate correlation to higher rank
- Having keywords in root domain, more specifically an exact-match domain names, have a strong correlation to higher rank
- Total number of unnatural links has the strongest negative ranking signal, above duplicate or thin content
