Website Ranking Factors 2017 from SEMRush Cause A Stir

I applaud SEMRush for publishing their SEO Website Ranking Factors Study, even if it caused a bit of a kerfuffle in SEO land.

I think it’s great when big toolsets use their processing power to produce information which is insightful and useful.

Read more in this extract from TWIS SEO News & Updates 17th November 2017.

#SEO #SEONews #RankingFactors #SERP

Key Issues Summary:

• SEMRush has released its second ranking factor study for the year, listing what it believes to be the 17 most important ranking factors.
• The data was pulled from 600k keywords and analysed against a different statistical analysis from pure correlation.
• The starkest conclusion was that direct traffic was the most important ranking factor.
• This caused a bit of a stir in the SEO community!

How to use SEMRush Website Ranking Factors:

1. Head to SEMRush and download the full study. It is interesting reading.
2. Read it with a weather eye and understand its limitations.
3. The top 4 ranking factors are products of great content. Think about that.
4. And then build great content, which people want to engage with, read more of, which meets user needs.
5. Click here to contact me to discuss how to interpret the SEM Rush Ranking Factors report.

Website Ranking Factors Insights & Discussion:

I’ve got immense respect for people who put out these studies, even when they suspect they may get pilloried because of them.

As I’ve posted elsewhere, levels of Direct Traffic  are not a prerequisite for ranking well in organic search. To truly establish that you would have to consider all websites’ Direct Traffic levels and then consider how many of them perform well, and how many of them don’t. It’s likely as many sites with huge volumes of Direct Traffic perform poorly.

It is, however, an indicator that you are likely to perform well, because big, popular sites tend to build more links, tend to accrue more mentions and, generally, tend to be expected to appear in search results. Google has made it plainer over the years that users have certain expectations that certain websites will appear in SERPs and have engineered their algorithms to facilitate that.

As I say above, the top 4 factors of direct traffic, time on site, pages per session and bounce rate are factors of great sites with great content, so if you really want to take something away from the study, you should be looking at building a great site with great content which really focuses on the user first, middle and last. Everything else is secondary.

That said, if Google only focused on popular sites, then their rankings would become a popularity contest where only the biggest brands which can reach the most people could rank. And we really don’t want that. It’d be like DMOZ all over again.

More Information on Ranking Factors:

• SEM Rush Ranking Factors Late 2017
• TWIS SEO Update w/e 09 June 2017
• Google Reveals Search Uses Click Data to Update Rankings

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We recently released the super-exciting The State of SEO in mid-2017. Read it now.

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• Cor. You say that Direct Traffic is a factor in SEO rankings and the world explodes.
• It’s a decent study from SEMRush, I’m glad they published it.
• Think indirect factors, and think great content. That’s what you should be taking away from the study.
• Read The State of SEO in mid-2017.
• Read about how Google’s Mobile First Index is not Mobile Friendly.
• Finally, get your content ranking well on Google by starting to understand Find Crawl Index.

Thanks for reading. If you would like to discuss what these changes mean for your web property, or would like to know how to implement them, please feel free to contact me.

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