Searchmetrics Ranking factors study 2015

What's the purpose of this and how do I make use of it?

Thanks
 
I can't believe you are even asking this.

Step 1: General information
Look at these factors and see which ones are important.
You can either look at the correlation figures or at the "Importance" number they provide at the end.

Use this to guide your actions.
Don't waste time on shit that has no bearing.

Step 2: Use to improve
You can use this to improve a n existing site.
Focus on the important parts.

Step 3: Use to focus your efforts.
I do this with SEO clients. (Using an improved list, though)

Look at each factor on their site.
Give each factor a "difficulty rating" where EASY = 5 and HARD = 1

Multiply difficulty with importance and you have a nice and handy priority list.
Low hanging fruit come first.

::emp::
 
Eight years old, but still should be included in everyone of these ranking factor studies.

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emp said:
I can't believe you are even asking this.
Click to expand...

Really? It seemed like a valid question to me. Especially in the ORIENTATION room.

I'll just come out and say what I'm thinking. I think this data is meaningless and a distraction at best. A harmful waste of time and energy at worst.

That's what I was getting at but I decided to ask first in case I was missing something I wanted to give the benefit of the doubt. This isn't an attack on you @emp but I think these infographics are essentially useless.

I don't just eat up any nice SEO report with pictures and numbers. Most of us have used infographics to promote our businesses before haven't we? We aren't just getting fooled by pretty pictures are we? We know when we're being marketed to don't we?

I don't have any clients to speak of but I rank my own website for plenty of competitive keywords on a regular basis but I don't have a lot of experience in "Theoretical SEO". I looked at the most common factors in this report and compared them to my best pages in terms of rankings and traffic and revenue and I decided to give back to this community with my own report. No email opt-in necessary. You can see the full sha-bang right here:

Panda's Most Important Ranking Factors Report 2015
1) Amazing backlinks
2) Everything else

(Obviously. I'm not dropping any new knowledge here. But it plays to my next point...)

This report doesn't really factor in the quality of backlinks (It talks about age, if it's from a news site, the quantity, and the no-follow ratio... Maybe the moz folks are salivating at that but those factors don't mean a heck of a lot to the Pandaman.)

That's why the whole point seems moot to me. It shows a bunch of factors that matter a lot less than the one main factor.

Why do I care about the word count or the number of images? All this report shows me is that "Some sites with amazing backlinks have X amount of images, some sites with slightly less amazing backlinks that still manage to rank have Y amount of images..." (It doesn't literally show this in particular but I pray to Odin that you get my point.)

If your instinct is to debate me on this (I'd love to hear how I'm wrong and use that to improve my abilities. I'm inquisitive by nature and it's gotten me this far. I try to be humble and ask a lot of questions because I have learned that gets me a lot further ahead than puffing out my chest and knowing everything. Playing dumb has helped learn a lot more than playing smart. One thing I haven't studied is statistics so maybe I'm just WOOSHING hard here. I'm open to that. But I digress) please just try to look at the points I'm making and not try to play the semantics because I believe my points are valid but I don't know if I'm explaining them in a way that will click for everyone.

So someone might see this data and think "Here's a checklist of things I need to focus on..." and I understand why that's the gut response but that's NOT WHAT THIS DATA MEANS. This data means you need amazing backlinks, and anyone who says differently is probably charging their clients by the hour.

I'm not saying there aren't other ranking factors besides links but I'm saying that this data and the way that it is presented is essentially pointless. Not because wordcount doesn't have some impact, not because the amount of images don't have some impact, but simply because just pooling all that info together and seeing which ones show up the most in the serps IS pointless if you're just looking at the pages that are ranking the highest because 99 times out of 100 they're ranking the highest BECAUSE OF THEIR BACKLINKS.

To me all this data says is "More sites at the top of the serps do THIS or THAT..." but that doesn't mean that doing THIS or THAT is what got them there. It's just a big muddy pile of stats that look good on paper.

emp said:
Don't waste time on shit that has no bearing.
Click to expand...

TLDR: Exactly.


Panda's Face Slap Study 2015
There is a lineup of people. I slap each of them in the face a different amount of times, and then they are lined up in the order of how much their face hurts.

I hit everyone wearing a blue shirt in the face 10 times. I hit everyone wearing a red shirt in the face 9 times. I hit every other shirt color in the face 5 times. I hit every man in the face 7 times. I hit every woman in the face 0 times.

Men with blue shirts are at the front of the line and woman with non-red nor blue shirts are at the back of the line.

It's not the shirt or the gender that made their faces hurt, it's how many times I arbitrarily decided to slap them.

Pretend my slaps are backlinks and their genders and shirt colors are all these other ranking factors in the report. I could have just as easily decided that people in purple shirts get slapped 20 times and anyone over the age of 31 gets slapped 3 times.

(Yes I realize this is a terrible example and it doesn't match up 1:1 with the analogy I'm trying to make but I'm going to keep it because the thought of having a lineup of people letting me slap them in the face makes me lol. )

Aaaand I'm going to go get some more backlinks now.

See you on Page 1,

q5SvG.jpg
 
No it wasn't and you know deep down within your soul it wasn't; a true winner wouldn't have to announce victory, we just bask in the glory as you self destruct in the back ground...

I like my defeated enemies just like I like my fish filet, lightly fried...

UoBVv4n.gif
 
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Well that was fun.

I agree that correlative data is only that, correlation. It might be causative, it might not be. But we do know is causative are backlinks. We know those at the top of the SERPs have the best and the most and that's why they are there.

If we wanted this correlative data to be useable and sensible, we'd take this Top 30 data and compare it to what #'s 31-60 have. Then we can start gaining some confidence.

Otherwise what we're really pointing out is that if one lemming jumps off a cliff the rest do too. It explains how lemmings copy cat each other at the top of the cliff. It doesn't explain why some lemmings are able to climb to that height while others poop out and can't make it past mile marker 30.

EDIT: oh yeah... must include...
 
Since you didn't post an intro thread @Panda allow me to make some introductions.

@CCarter posts good moving pictures and has a monopoly on the "tough love" talks.
@Ryuzaki is the voice that you hear when you're lost in the woods and you eat the wrong fungus.
@Calamari is the voice of reason.
@emp posts links to things and seems to rub people the wrong way sometimes. We've chalked it up as a cultural thing.

The good news is that we (mostly) all have the same goals here... We just accomplish them differently.

Good to have you on board. You'll fit right in.
 
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Wow... this thread derailed fast.

Panda said:
Thank you I like this place so far I'm honestly not trying to stir shit.
Click to expand...

Could have fooled me...

What I took away from your long winded post was
  • You don't know what this is good for as you have not read the study, cursorily glanced at the infographic
  • You don't know what a correlation is or why someone does studies like this
  • Backlinks are all important, fuck all this, see ya on page 1
  • Really, I am so humble and keep an open mind, always learning
So let's take that beginner's mind and get some science up in that bitch.

Alright?
tumblr_n3w8xgr0F01r0b4wzo1_250.gif

Alright!

Or you can leave now.

The shape of things to come:
  • What is a correlation?
  • What correlation isn't
  • So why do we do this?
  • So what is in this for us?

What is a correlation?
A correlation shows the grade of interconnectedness of 2 variables.
A value of 1 would mean they are directly connected.
If X increases, Y increases
(X= CCarter posts, Y= number of gifs on this forum)

A value of -1 is a negative correlation, still directly connected.
If X increases, Y decreases
(X= emp posts, Y= number of unrustled jimmies)

A correlation makes it possible to do this for values where this does not immediately become apparent, for example this:
NZ.Electricity.Correlation.2007.TeApitiTararua.png


shows an r=0.94 which is almost linear. The outliers then, are exactly that. (or measurement error)

We'll leave this short explanation with this nice visualisation of different values for r
correlation.png


What correlation isn't
Simple:
Correlation != causation

In other words, just because 2 variables have a high correlation does not mean they are casually connected to another.
For example, they could both be connected to a third variable.

One example I found
As ice cream sales increase, the rate of drowning deaths increases sharply.
Therefore, ice cream consumption causes drowning.

Whereas ice cream sales AND swimming is conencted to otuside temperature, which causes people to buy ice cream and to go swimming (so the rate of swimming accidents increases, too)

You can also find nearly perfect correlations just by random chance as well:
h2JCluxl.jpg


So why do we do this?
Gathering numbers and making sense of them via descriptive and analytical statistics is the only way to research muddy, multifaceted environments.

In cases where there are many variables and we don't know if and how they are interconnected, this is our only chance.
(Social sciences, Medicine, Biology, even computer science reserach makes use of these. I've been extensively trained in stats studying psychology.)

So unless you KNOW all the factors google collects and exactly how they are weighed into a SERP ranking... well... this is the way to do it.

By observing the numbers we have at our disposal we get an inkling of what is going on behind the scenes.

So what is in this for us?
We can see what deosn't work at all or has a bad impact.

Also, we can kinda, sorta see what does work.

This seems to be "relevant content" and "backlinks".

However, even backlinks harldy raise above r=.3 So some thing like this:
1471-2474-12-139-8-l.jpg


Still a lot of variance.

What to do with all this?

As I said, I used numbers like this to revive big sites (to the tune of doubling the traffic, pure SEO wise)
With a task like this, it is very good if you can pinpoint what is easy AND has a big impact.

I used this excel in 2007 (yeah, not sharing the current one.. simply cause I don't have it in this machine)
http://www.filedropper.com/rankingfactors2007

So to use it with an existing site for SEO audit.
Simply go down the list, update the weights (first column) to the best of your knowledge, fill out the rest and presto .. prioritized list of changes to be made.

But yeah, this might not be what you are interested in, but I think there are better uses than "I don't know, I don't care."

Best,
::emp::
 
Thanks for taking the time to put that together I learned some things I didn't know before.
 
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