Greetings, readers of my blog site. Today's post is of an informational nature and is dedicated to the promotion of Internet resources against the backdrop of an information war between link exchanges and Yandex. On various Seo forums, you can read a bunch of depressing messages that happened cancellation of link ranking Yandex. For many, this news was a real shock, because buying links becomes a waste of money. People who have successfully promoted their web projects with links for a long time simply do not know what to do next. Will the wave of link leveling affect them, what to do with previously purchased links? These questions haunt them. Let's try to figure out if the current situation is so bad, and how to promote resources for Yandex.
So, at the beginning of December 2013, Yandex experts announced that since 2014 the link factor will almost completely disappear from the search algorithms for generating the issuance. Naturally, this statement spread among webmasters at the speed of light and made a splash. How can you cancel link ranking if seo is mainly based on it only?! What to do next? Most site owners had a stupor. Some thought that this was the beginning of a cold war between Yandex and the largest link exchanges.
But here it is important to understand the nuances of this statement, because, as you know, the devil is hiding in the details. According to Sadovsky (Head of the Yandex Web Search Department), link factors will be phased out in different topics. The Moscow region will take the first blow. Thus, Yandex decided to test new algorithms in Moscow so as not to disturb the overall quality of the search results. At the same time, in fact, Sadovsky's statement pursued the only goal - to become a viral bomb that would make optimizers forget about links and remember Direct (which, by the way, brings Yandex the main income)! Many have done just that.
Six months have passed since the introduction of this algorithm, but practically nothing has changed in the construction of the issue! In general, four large groups of factors (behavioral, internal, social, and) influence the construction of the issue. Note that the link group has long lost its former importance, especially in competitive topics. Many optimizers, influencing only one group of factors, pull out their requests to the first positions in weakly competitive topics. Since it is easiest to influence the link group, they stopped at it. Other webmasters influenced internal factors and received the TOP again for little competitive requests. But highly competitive keys, even last year, could not be promoted without a combination of all four groups of formation factors. These facts make us all, first of all, think about maintaining. After all, who knows what's in Yandex's head.
Why does Yandex need to cancel link ranking? First of all, to create panic and attract (and without special material costs) more users of Yandex.Direct. This will also lead to a redistribution of the SEO market between link and behavioral promotion exchanges, with the latter becoming more numerous. However, high-quality Trust not spammed links will still work further! This concludes the publication and I suggest watching a video on this topic. As well as mine, which occupy the top positions in Yandex for various key queries.
Moz has published the results of its annual Google local search results. Significant events that influenced local ranking were the launch of Google My Business and the update of the Pigeon local search algorithm, which took place in the summer of 2014.
According to John Meem, author of the study, its format has been adjusted to reflect the results of past surveys. So, this year there is no division into desktop and mobile, carousels and maps, since according to the results of the previous year, there were no significant differences between them. Also, the number of evaluated factors in each category was limited to 50 positions.
The study is divided into 4 parts:
- general ranking factors;
- specific ranking factors;
- factors influenced by Pigeon's local search algorithm;
- negative ranking factors.
General Ranking Factors
The experts were asked to evaluate in percentage terms the influence of eight groups of factors on two main types of local results (organic issuance and carousel).
Ranking factors that may affect the position of the site in the local issuance (average values)
Factors that can affect local rankings (localized organic and carousel)
Specific ranking factors
Part A Respondents chose 20 factors (out of 106) that have the greatest impact on carousel rankings.
TOP-20
1. The presence of a physical address.
2. Compliance with the specified category.
3. The presence of structured mentions in directories.
5. Campaign name, address and phone number on the site match the information in Google My Business.
6. The name of the product / service in the title of the page in Google My Business.
8. The proximity of the address indicated on the site to the location of the user.
9. Having a verified page on Google My Business.
10. The proximity of the address indicated on the site to the place specified in the request.
11. The number of structured mentions in directories.
12. Indicate the city in the title of the landing page.
13. Number of reviews in Google Maps.
14. Quality of incoming links to the domain.
15. Mentioning the location in the title of a Google My Business page.
16. The quality of unstructured mentions (articles in newspapers, blogs).
17. Proximity to the location of other companies in the industry.
18. Quality of external links to the landing page.
19. Website CTR.
Part B From the same list (106 positions), the experts chose 20 factors that affect local search results.
TOP-20
1. City name in landing page title.
4. The quality of external links to the domain.
5. Quality of external links to the landing page.
6. The presence of a physical address.
7. The quality of structured mentions in directories.
8. Keywords with the names of goods / services in the site address.
9. Site CTR.
10. City name in h1/h2 headings on landing page.
11. Variety of external links to the domain.
12. The presence of structured mentions in directories.
13. The presence of the name of the city in most of the titles of the site pages.
14. The address, phone number and company name shown on the site correspond to the information in Google My Business.
15. The presence of a keyword indicating the location in the site address.
16. Number of external links.
17. The presence of location keywords in the anchors of external links to the landing page.
18. Variety of landing page links.
19. The proximity of the address indicated on the site to the location of the user.
20. The quality of unstructured mentions (posts in newspapers, blogs).
Part C Participants of the study from the proposed list selected 20 factors that have the greatest impact on the competitive market for both types of issue (organic and carousel).
TOP 20:
2. The presence of structured references.
4. The quality of structured mentions.
5. Compliance with the specified category.
6. Quality of external links to the landing page.
7. City name in landing page title.
8. The presence of a physical address.
9. Number of reviews in Google Maps.
10. The quality of unstructured mentions (posts in newspapers, blogs).
11. The number of mentions on locally significant sites.
12. Company name, address and phone number on the website match the information in Google My Business.
14. The name of the product / service in the title of the page in Google My Business.
15. The number of structured mentions in directories.
16. The number of mentions on sites of similar subjects.
17. Website CTR.
18. Number of traditional reviews.
19. The overall frequency of appearance of reviews (own and third-party resources).
20. Having a verified page on Google My Business.
Factors Influenced by the Pigeon Algorithm
The experts ranked the factors whose influence somehow changed after updating the local search algorithm.
TOP-5 factors, the influence of which has increased:
2. The proximity of the address indicated on the site to the location of the user.
3. The quality of external links to the domain.
4. Quality of external links to the landing page.
5. The presence of a physical address.
TOP-5 factors, the influence of which decreased:
1. The proximity of the address indicated on the site to the place specified in the request.
2. The presence of a physical address.
3. Having a verified Google My Business page.
4. The number of structured mentions in directories.
5. The proximity of the company address to other companies in the same industry.
Negative ranking factors
The experts chose site characteristics that could negatively affect positions in Local search, and arranged them in descending order of “harmfulness”.
TOP 10:
1. The data on the site does not correspond to the actual.
3. Inconsistency of the name, address and phone (the phone does not match the region).
4. Name, address and phone number mismatch in Google My Business.
5. Inconsistencies in the address listed in Google My Business.
6. Malicious content on the site.
7. The company name contains too many keywords.
8. Google My Business Page Violation Information.
9. Having multiple pages on Google My Business with the same phone number.
10. Absence of indexed data about the name, address and phone number of the company in Google Places.
Thus, the study shows that for local search, the importance of behavioral signals has increased, in particular the CTR of the site, as well as the proximity of the company's location to the user. The influence of domain authority (since the launch of the Pigeon algorithm in the US) and reviews has increased.
Why are commercial page ranking factors in search engines so relevant now and is it possible to understand how exactly they are taken into account by search engines?
What are commercial ranking factors
Since the end of 2011, the Yandex search engine, when ranking sites in search results, takes into account such characteristics of pages and sites as usability, prices, assortment, payment and delivery options, availability of guarantees and after-sales service, reviews, high-quality photos, etc.
All these criteria are somehow important for the website visitor to decide whether to place an order or call. In this regard, this group of criteria is conditionally called commercial ranking factors. Many of these factors concern not only one ranked page, but the site as a whole.
Why is it important to study commercial ranking factors?
The emergence of this group of ranking factors has made significant changes in the principles of website promotion by agencies. Now site owners are vitally interested in the fact that specialists do not just buy links, but work to increase the commercial potential of the site. However, for this, agencies need close interaction with clients, especially in cases where a change in the company's business processes is necessary to improve the site.
At the same time, the exact influence of certain commercial factors on the position of a page in search results is still not known to agencies. The Yandex company does not disclose such data in order to minimize the possibility of manipulation by optimizers. In addition, the algorithms of Yandex (and other search engines) are constantly being improved, and the influence of individual factors may significantly depend on the subject and / or frequency of the request, as well as on the intended intentions of the user who made the request by Yandex.
This situation has created a demand for a more detailed, albeit incomplete, understanding of the general principles that guide the search engine when evaluating the commercial characteristics of sites.
Analytical data collected on a sufficiently large sample of requests and sites is unlikely to allow us to accurately establish causal relationships - due to the large number of ranking factors in general (more than 800 in the case of Yandex). However, we can see a connection (correlation) between the availability of certain commercial features on the sites (for example, the 8-800 phone, discounts, etc.) and the position of the page in the top search results.
This is enough to not act blindly when promoting the site. In addition, understanding the degree of correlation between certain ranking factors and the position of the pages helps to prioritize correctly and focus primarily on those actions that are most likely to give the maximum effect.
Understanding commercial factors also allows you to better understand how all other ranking factors work - for example, text and links.
Ranking Factors Lab
In the summer of 2014, Ashmanov & Partners launched a new project - the Laboratory for the Study of Ranking Factors. Laboratory specialists study commercial and link factors in the top 30 search results in Yandex, Google and Mail.ru on a number of popular topics, mostly highly competitive ones.
Currently, data is collected from tens of thousands of requests, affects several thousand sites, and is evaluated on more than 200 parameters. Data for about two-thirds of the parameters are collected automatically, but the remaining third (including many of the commercial parameters) is assessed by specially trained specialists - assessors (not to be confused with Yandex assessors!).
The number of queries and parameters studied is gradually increasing, as is the arsenal of statistical methods that we use. Now we can draw conclusions about the “strength” of ranking factors much more confidently than in the fall, when we first talked about the project at the conference “Internet and Business. Russia” (IBC Russia).
Previously, we have already given several examples of the correlation between certain commercial factors and the position of site pages in search results; Now we want to tell you more about a few more.
General Considerations
To understand what will be discussed below, it is necessary to take into account two general conclusions that we made from the analysis of the data obtained.
We already mentioned the first of them above: the ranking of a site page is influenced not only by its own characteristics, but also by parameters related to the site as a whole. Now we can say with confidence that this also applies to many commercial factors: Yandex actively takes into account commercial parameters in page ranking, the values of which are calculated by it for the entire site.
For example, having reviews on the site as a whole correlated with the position occupied by the page from the site in the SERP, stronger than the presence of reviews on this particular page.
The second conclusion is that for each parameter it is useful to evaluate not one correlation, but two. The parameter may be related to the site (page) getting into the “wide top” of Yandex (now we are evaluating getting into the top 30), but not affecting getting into the top ten and generally on the position inside the top. Conversely, there may be a strong correlation with position within the top, with no correlation at all with being in the top 30. Of course, there are parameters that are correlated both with getting into the top and with the position inside it - just as there are parameters for which no significant correlations were found at all.
By the way, the same is true for Google, although the sets of parameters for which correlations are observed, and the type of correlation (with a hit in the top or with a position in it), and its strength for different search engines can be very different - this seems to us indirect. confirmation of the relevance of our research.
Since for any site there are queries for which it does not even get into the “thirty”, it is important for search engine optimization to take into account both types of correlations - although parameters that are directly correlated with position seem to be more important.
The presence of two types of correlation can be explained by the “two-stage” ranking used by modern search engines: first, a limited number (for example, a thousand) of the most promising documents are selected very quickly using a simplified algorithm, and then these documents are arranged in the order in which we see them in search results.
Phones
The presence of a phone on the site has almost no effect on getting into the top 30 and only slightly on the position inside the top. This, apparently, is due to the fact that the phone is already indicated almost all commercial sites (99% in the Yandex top, 98% in Google), and those sites where it does not exist at all rarely get into the top.
But pages where there is no phone are more common. Perhaps that is why it is easier to draw conclusions about the relationship with the ranking for the presence of a phone number on the page. It turned out that the presence of a phone on the page for Yandex weakly correlates with the position inside the top and confidently correlates with getting into the top.
Interestingly, for Google, the picture is significantly different: here, too, there is a weak relationship between the presence of the phone on the page and the position, but the phone does not affect getting into the top. (For this parameter, the data was obtained in two ways - assessor evaluation and automatic page analysis - and the results matched.)
Let's dwell on the phones in more detail and look at their quantity and quality.
The presence (on the site) of several phones is weakly correlated with the position in the Yandex top, and the presence of a large number of phone numbers demonstrates a strong correlation with the position. At the same time, we do not see a correlation with getting into the top 30 in both cases - unlike Google, where the correlation with getting into the top, on the contrary, is strong.
As for the "quality" of phones, we have studied three parameters related to this.
3. For free phones with the number 8-800-… (their presence was checked manually on the site and automatically on the page), both correlations are observed - both with the position and with getting into the top; the latter correlation is stronger.
Dependence of the average value of the attribute (1 — the site has a phone number 8-800...; 0 — no) on the position in the top 30 of Yandex. Values decrease as you move away from the first position. For sites not found by Yandex (NY), the average value of the attribute is lower than for sites in the top 30 (Y).
Distribution of average positions for sites found in Yandex for various queries with a phone number 8-800... (green bars) and without it (blue bars). The column height is the number of requests for which this position is average. For sites that have a feature, the distribution in our sample is noticeably shifted to the left, to higher positions.
2. The presence of a multi-channel phone or a call center (the presence of the corresponding verbal markers was automatically checked) - no correlations were found.
3. The presence of only a mobile phone (or phones) on the site is obviously not the best evidence of the commercial power of the business behind it. And for sure - an inverse correlation was revealed for this parameter: the higher the position, the less often there are sites on it that do not have any phone numbers other than mobile numbers. There may also be a correlation with getting into the top, but it is weak - more precisely, there is simply not enough data to ascertain it.
Callback and online consultant
Now let's look at additional ways to communicate with the client - ordering a callback and having an online consultant on the site. Both means of communication make it possible not to lose a possible contact in the case when the client does not have a telephone at hand or it is expensive for him to call. Both are considered by the SEO community as likely significant commercial drivers, and logically, they should be expected to have roughly the same impact. However, in reality this is absolutely not the case.
For a callback, there is a strong correlation with position within the top 30 and an even stronger correlation with getting into the top. Note that for Google there is also a correlation with the position, but the average level of the attribute for most positions is lower than for Yandex, and there is no correlation with getting into the top.
The dependence of the average value of the attribute (1 - there is a callback order on the site; 0 - no) from positions in the top 30 of Yandex (above) and Google (below). For Google, the correlation is more pronounced than for Yandex, but at the same time, both for the top 30 in general and for most positions, the average values of the attribute for Yandex are higher than for Google.
Interestingly, at least for position, the correlation with the presence of a callback on the site more pronounced than for a position with its presence on a specific found page. As in a number of other cases, the data for the page was obtained in two ways - peer review and automatic analysis - and showed almost the same picture.
But for all the types of online consultant we have considered - the chat form, Skype, ICQ - if there are correlations, then they are much weaker and less stable.
For the chat form, they are observed in some topics (for example, for requests about machine tools there is a correlation with hitting the top) and are not observed in others. For Skype and ICQ, there are no correlations with rankings in Yandex.
As part of the study, in addition to commercial, many other factors were analyzed, including link factors: TIC, PageRank, the number of external links to a domain, the number of purchased links to a domain, the number of purchased links to a URL. In general, these factors (including paid links) not only continue to “work”, but also remain one of the strongest, and they are correlated with both the position in Yandex and getting into the top (including after the launch of the new algorithm). "Minusinsk")
For example, here are graphs for the average number of links per domain (according to Linkpad.ru) depending on the position for Yandex and Google:
It can be seen that the drop in the average number of links with an increase in the position in the search results for Yandex is no less strong than for Google (despite the fact that the average number of links for Yandex is lower).
Yandex has decided to change the ranking system of sites in the search results, excluding links to resources. This affected commercial queries, as representatives of the search engine reported, links in this segment have not played an important role for a long time.
It was planned to launch a new mechanism in early 2014, but so far they have not noticed its full-fledged work. How will sites be ranked in Yandex 2014 without links, how will this affect promotion?
Are all link factors no longer effective?
There are two types of reference factors - dependent on queries and independent. , the influence of 50 factors that depend on the request will be turned off. There are 130 of them in total. Most likely, “relevance by query” will be disabled.
In addition, we still have factors independent of queries - TIC, VIC, the quality and quantity of links, the history of their formation, and others. Therefore, link factors will still affect the issue.
What to consider in promotion?
Nothing much will change. And so, for a long time, it is necessary to work, namely, on the resource in order to increase its position.
Therefore, we need:
Pull up the technical side - fix errors, work with robots.txt, use semantic markup, etc.
Improve content quality.
Make the site more convenient and comfortable for the visitor.
Constantly analyze the commercial sector (prices of competitors, delivery, etc.).
But what about buying links, registering in directories? Is it irrelevant now?
Registration in directories cannot be discarded, it is cheaper than buying links, it is considered more legal, it gives us natural links. Nothing is yet clear about buying links on exchanges, so you should not immediately remove them. You need to wait and see the result, and then make a decision.
Content is not an addition to SEO, but its main tool. It was technically difficult to achieve such a status from Google, but SEOs have long and successfully profited from the imperfection of search engines. Up to this day. Along with texts and multimedia, user signals are playing an increasingly important role - this is a strong link between user experience (UX), the popularity of content on social networks and user behavior patterns on the site.
Read about this and much more in our review of the report by Searchmetrics, which prepared a white paper on the current laws of survival on Google.com.
Most importantly: "good" activity of marketers is always work for the long term. Whereas the methods of rapid growth are “bad”, dangerous and generally useless. This is nothing new, but repetition is the mother of learning, and even the best of us make stupid mistakes while chasing traffic.
Content and semantics
An interesting fact: the average number of internal links on the most successful pages in the search is 130 pcs.
SEO commandments of a content marketer: adequate work with keywords, natural expansion of the semantic core and the integrity of each page involved in the ranking.
As a rule, Searchmetrics analysts evaluated 30 links for a specific query (three search pages) - this is more than enough to get objective results. Successful sites are distinguished by monolithic and useful content, which is evenly saturated with keys from different semantic groups. The site is more of an interactive conversation with the reader than an encyclopedic article. As in any conversation, there is a place for digressions and additional meanings (keywords). Marketers should use them to influence search results based on advertising objectives.
Over the past year - at least on the English Internet - large texts (over 950 words or 8000+ characters) are popular. These figures may vary depending on the language, but the trend clearly points to the superiority of "research" content (in-depth articles). If you remember my previous article, then such materials have another important advantage - they are taken into account by the cryptic.
Media files - images, audio and video - increase the attractiveness of content and are one of the main factors that stimulate social signals. When analyzing search leaders, the focus on the ease of reading and perception of information is obvious: in addition to layout, formatting and simple text presentation, the absence of advertising (including AdSense) plays an important role. As for the content of the text, Spelling and similar services are becoming indispensable tools for the Runet, which allow editors and writers to clear the text of unnecessary elements and evaluate its readability according to Flesh and Gunning.
- There is a clear correlation between content quality and search rankings. The main factors: and relevance.
- Content length continues to grow. Volumetric - and, of course, high-quality - materials significantly increase the chances of success.
- The internal structure of the site and linking are extremely important for creating an optimal user experience. (But, alas, they remain not the highest priority SEO technique.) More on this in the next chapter.
Site page optimization
An interesting fact: URLs of pages from the top ten search results consist of an average of 36 characters.
In general, a well-thought-out site structure is both the beginning and the end of modern SEO. Among the main vectors: modern engines and technologies on the basis of which the site was created; a structure that is equally convenient for indexing the site and for navigation; page meta stuffing.
Special attention should be paid to the site loading speed (it has also grown significantly over the past year: the current standard is one second against three seconds, which were acceptable before). On the other hand, one of Google's latest innovations - secure connection (SSL) as a ranking factor - won't ruin your rankings just yet. But the lack of meta tags and H1-6 headings can significantly worsen the status of the site.
- Site speed will decide the fate of your site before you even show the ace up your sleeve.
- Keywords in texts are still important, no matter what content marketers tell you, but the requirements for their use have become much tougher.
- Meta descriptions, article structure, and site architecture as a whole are the main paraffia of search marketers.
Backlinks and Social Signals
An interesting fact: on average, 1718 domains link to the start page of each site in the TOP-10; 6% of such links are closed by the nofollow attribute.
Backlinks remain an important ranking factor (with an increasing focus on quality over quantity). Popular sites with a well-developed link mass in anchors have less and less keywords. Last year, Google decided on the proportions of nofollow links, stop words in anchors, and the number of words in link texts - and the requirements have not changed much since then.
Things in social media are moving sluggishly: they, as before, play an important (sometimes decisive) role for users, but they have an extremely weak effect on ranking.
In the top 10 search results, each page has an average of 143 +1s, 36 pins, 1690 Facebook signals (likes, comments and shares) and 162 tweets.
- The quality of your backlinks remains an extremely important factor, but it’s no longer possible to overwhelm Google with a bunch of low-quality backlinks.
- The number of keywords in link anchors continues to decline.
- The role of social signals has decreased compared to last year. Google+ is the absolute leader in search.
Pros and cons of a strong brand
Google's policy towards local businesses and small brands deserves respect. It is small and medium-sized businesses that often capture top places in search results. Large brands have more domains, links, mentions in the media - so what. They are increasingly inferior to TOP-1 to their more modest competitors, and TOP-2 to articles from Wikipedia.
This is partly due to Google's desire to capitalize on its services, which are geared towards small and medium businesses, and partly because brands are inherently less nimble. New features are much easier to test and faster to implement if you have a small and efficient team.
- It looks like the Google monopoly has embarked on a crusade this year against other monopolists.
- This, in turn, means prospects for small businesses. And the need to create a more flexible SEO policy is for the heavyweights.
User Factor
An interesting fact: users spend an average of 101 seconds on pages from the TOP 10 search results. The bounce rate of such pages is 37%.
User behavior plays a decisive role in ranking. The main (but far from exhaustive) evaluation factors are CTR, bounce rate, and time spent on the site. We all talk about how user experience optimization is good and right, but how many of us go all out to provide the reader with everything they need?
Now - finally - sites made for users will no longer be a bonus or a competitive advantage. This is a necessity. And this is exactly the field in which different advertising channels live in a healthy and productive symbiosis. Where does content marketing end and SEO begin, and where is purely the work of UX specialists? It is hard to say. Yes, and there is no need to understand.
After all, this is internet marketing.
All significant ranking factors in one infographic (click on the image to view the original in a new window):
- This year, no one should have any doubts that the key principle of search engine optimization is the organic use of all available tools.
- Great backlinks and a fast site, while essential, will keep you from ranking in the top positions if the content isn't user-friendly.
- We will no longer be able to snatch the most effective methods, pour the entire budget into it - and block the weaknesses of the business.
- Whether we like it or not, Google stands its ground: either you help the user right here and now - or you simply don't rank.
