On March 7th, the entrepreneurial-focused site BusinessBolts.com released a fascinating Google algorithms study dispelling a few myths about actual SEO trends. Focusing solely on Google’s algorithms, the study has uncovered critical data for business owners looking to maximize their placement on Google search engine results pages (SERPs).
To drill down into the current landscape, the study randomly selected 100 key phrases ranging from two to six words. Next, they analyzed only the first five results in each Google search, creating a test pool of 500 different web pages from which to gather data. Google Adwords ads, images, shopping sets and news site sets were eliminated from the analyzed test cases, ensuring actual web pages alone were studied.
Keywords, Title Tags and Content Length
The study analyzed factors such as the full URL, title tags, headlines, subheadings, word count for body text, images, videos and, of course, backlinks. Only 50% of the top five pages featured the key phrase in their title tag, and only 43% had it in their header. It turns out that, despite the advice of many top SEO firms, less is actually more. Key phrases are obviously critical to set the tone and inform search engines of your content’s theme, but overuse of key phrases does not gain sites any additional ranking mojo. The study states, “If you’re going to include exact key phrases, you really only need to include them one time.” The first main takeaway is therefore a straightforward one: don’t over-optimize.
There’s also a heavy emphasis on the importance of including your key phrase in either your title or headline (or both, but that’s not absolutely necessary). Knowing that overuse of key words doesn’t garner higher rankings, remember that using the same words repeatedly makes for awkward reading, and is a surefire way to turn off visitors. The message here is simple: highlight your key words, but write your content in a way that sounds natural. While a search engine might not appreciate copy that flows well, your visitors will.
How much you write also seems to play a role. Web pages ranking in the #1 spot often had a much higher word count than those in the #5 spot, by about 120 words. The study shows that an excellent word count for your body text is about 900. Bear in mind that this particular statistic showed a vast amount of variety. Overall, however, a higher word count does seem to positively impact your SERP rankings.
Images and Video
Does a picture say a thousand words to Google? The answer: not really. Of the 500 ranking pages, the average number of images was seven – but many featured none at all. Videos fared even worse, with a less than one per page average. The findings showed almost no connection to images or rich media in the Google algorithm. Whether examining the #1 or #5 ranked page, the findings were consistent.
Backlinks and Home Pages vs. Internal Pages
Many business owners struggle with obtaining dozens and dozens of qualified backlinks, but is all this networking still super crucial to Google rankings? At first glance, the study seems to indicate the answer is no. Many of the top pages had zero backlinks. But before you abandon all outreach efforts, know that further inspection showed that high ranking pages without backlinks actually had significant links to the domain’s homepage. Overall, this is great news for business owners. It means that you don’t need to have significant links across the web for all the major pages on your site. As long as you have a nice flow of backlinks to even one core page, your entire site will reap the benefits. But you can’t be lazy in this aspect of site building – backlinks are still king.
Although the stats were all over the map, it’s clear a significant number of backlinks are needed for a stellar ranking. On average, the #1 ranking site for each key phrase had 662 backlinks, whereas the #5 page for each had just 142. That means the Google’s top pages have five times more backlinks than those just a few results down. When it comes to backlinks, as with actual word count, more is still more.
Another surprising reveal from the study is that only 12% of all top ranking pages were homepages. This tells us there is truly an equal playing field for internal pages to rank well too – another burst of good news if perhaps your homepage isn’t your strongest landing page. Google doesn’t seem to mind.
The Importance of the Social Scene
As expected, one should never underestimate the power of the social stratosphere. Of the pages studied, the highest ranking performers were tweeted on average 371 times. Facebook stats for the top dogs showed an average of 1512 Facebook likes and 988 shares. These are fairly epic numbers. As with backlinks, the difference between the #1 and #5 ranking pages showed a vast gap in the level of sharing. While it’s unclear if Google truly tracks social signals in their algorithms, it is abundantly clear that more social sharing means a higher likelihood of an awesome ranking.
While the BusinessBolts study is not enough to bank your business on, they did put significant time and thought into the process, and produced some actual data revealing valuable trends and information. It’s critical to analyze cold hard data over the speculation of SEO firms, no matter how brilliant or instinctive their executives may be. Google’s algorithms are dynamic and mysterious, but seeing raw facts helps to better shape your successful ranking strategy. The takeaways here are pretty easy to ascertain: write valuable and keyword rich copy without going overboard, use images as appropriate but without pressure to meet any quota, and continue your efforts to gain credible links en masse. Lastly, it’s obvious social networking is completely integral to a respectable ranking, so don’t skimp on your social strategy. Most of all, remember that SEO is an ever-changing landscape, so keep your eye out for more factual studies, and never get too comfortable that you know all there is to know.
Producer, game designer and freelance writer, Tina Courtney-Brown has been a bona fide web fiend since she discovered Poetry.com in 1994. Tina’s fortés include all aspects of online business, social media, marketing trends, alternative health, digital production and many more. She’s a passionate truth-teller, a sincere advocate for the environment, and an obsessive dessert creator. Learn more at her personal website, or find her on Facebook.
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Well, that certainly seems to dispel an awful lot of what has now become accepted practice. Interesting.
Chris
CMYKreative Co., Ltd.
This shows that Google is really just attacking spammers and giving credit where it is due! Stick to the basic’s people and you will shine! Play games with the master and you will get played!
Spammers still get away with spam no matter what. The search results remain full of spam.
Very good read! The graphics on the source lend itself well to the data. Thanks again for your summary.
Is there any information about the kind of keywords used in the research. What was the keyword competition for those keywords?
The study says the keywords were selected at random, and there’s not much more information outside of that. It’s a great question, however, and might be worth asking the report creator for clarification, she is very friendly and available
Nice content and info. Than you.
Your study is interesting. I would have thought having the keyphrase in your title tag would by almost mandatory for getting great ranking. It seems that’s not quite true.
terima kasih untuk infonya…:)
I still think Google goes by traffic first, then search results will follow. It is best to work on direct traffic. Nice Article. Thank you.
“Well this is certainly an eye opener, all the effort that goes into SEO is probably wasted time.”
Not true. As the article says, SEO is what helps the spiders know how and where to rank your site. What the article also says is “…overuse of key phrases does not gain sites any additional ranking mojo.” It’s talking about keyword stuffing. Sprinkle a keyword around a few times and use alternatives as well. I checked a site the other day that had a keyword density of over 12% for one keyword and the site still didn’t rank well. It was a classic example of overuse.
Abandon SEO and a site will be on the back pages of the search results.
Well this is certainly an eye opener, all the effort that goes into SEO is probably wasted time.
It is a pity that Google doesn’t tell us exactly what is required instead of hinting and leaving us to solve their game.
It would be interesting to know if any of the titles contained the words (or most of them)from the keyword phrase but not necessarily in an exact match order. The use of a synonym might have been employed instead of an exact match phrase with equally good results for example.
There is obviously lots to know about this. The point Keywords, Title Tags and Content Length explains a lot. Thanks for the share.
No great surprises there. Interesting, nonetheless.
The BusinessBolts study helps to dispel some myths once again. I have been following the developments ever since Penguin ditched some of my sites and have come across contradictory “facts”.
I remember that Mr. Cutts himself said in a video that a keyword appearing once on your pages may do you good. This may be a confirmation of that.
Further, he also stated that “No SEO at all”. Again that is it. One would never know.
The only thing is to keep testing and testing but that takes an awful lot of time and I don’t believe some webmasters have that time.
Let’s keep our fingers crossed in hope that one day Mr. Google will perhaps shed some ray of light on their rankig algorithms but I doubt that.
Wonderful piece of writing Tina and thanks for taking your time to make this available.
Thanks for this information. It is indeed very useful. However, I still think that the best way to go about your online business is forget about the algorithm and create quality content for your site along with a healthy link building strategy.
If google goes on traffic first, its a chicken and egg, because good rankings will get you that traffic. Hopefully its not a closed loop like that.
its not only good ranking that’s matter, relavant content(most relavant)
Credible, unique and user friendly content is king as far as I can see. Get that right and it seems all the other stuff will naturally follow providing it’s been put in place, such as social media links and likes etc. Almost every search I do seems to bring up a Wiki article first unless it’s a product search. An most of the time it has all of the information I need. I would be interested in the views of others regarding getting product listings up the ranking list naturally.
Over the past month or so I’ve noticed our placement on results pages has taken a serious nosedive. We’ve been around for 6 years working on content and back links. So we have crazy unique relevant content with near 11,000 (mostly quality) backlinks (mostly organic).
A couple of new competitor sites have taken over number 1-5 spots while we were moved to the 2nd or 3rd page (some worse). One of them has been around for less than a year, has less than 80 BLs and most of their content is either gibberish or was lifted from another site…
It sounds like businessbolts did a great job — it certainty confirms what Penguin and Panda strongly suggests website owners should do if they want to rank well.
One qualification about this however:
“How much you write also seems to play a role. Web pages ranking in the #1 spot often had a much higher word count than those in the #5 spot, by about 120 words”
Matt Cutts is on record that googlebot DOES NOT counts words. Short content can rank very well IF it is truly valuable. However, it is harder, on average, to make short content truly valuable. Longer content ranks better not because it’s physically longer. It’s ranking better because, on average, it is probably better content.
Christopher, that’s an excellent point. It’s not quantity, but quality, and more words gives more opportunity to impart quality content. That’s an important distinction, so thanks for setting the record straight.
While I mostly work for commercial retail sites, I can add, more pages doesn’t always mean more traffic either.
I have customers with 200 items that get 5 times the traffic of other customers that have 2,000 items.
The one thing that wasn’t clear in the control set was the competition of the keywords they researched and whether these were exact, broad, or general matches. All keywords are not created equal. Competition level is a game changer, I can rank for uncompetitive keywords all day long, doesn’t make it worth anything.
And one of the key SEO factors that doesn’t seem to have been measured (or at least not reported on) is keyword density.
Backlinks: quality of the sites linking and anchor text are both factors in the value of backlinks, or so Google tells us.
Interesting story. Time to go read the original study.
Really useful tips and even’s tips are useful.. Thanks…
Write quality content at least weekly, add a few backlinks (high quality of course) a day, don’t keyword stuff and make sure to utilize social media and you will be fine. Domain age is also a huge factor.
this is very interesting.. and it gives better ranking to websites with good quality which is good overall..
Interesting, but I am sure some other study will come out next week with different results.
Good read though, I am always keen to hear other peoples thoughts on SEO/2013
Hi Tina,
Well I think social media has become a very important part of SEO.
I’ve noticed that my blog articles that get lots of share always rank better in the serps. But this is where the value of the content we produce comes into play.
High value content will always get shared and will always be referenced on other websites.
I don’t stress on creating a lot of content instead I try to create very detailed posts that have at least 1.5k words.
I’ve heard Neil Patel also saying that longer articles tend to rank higher and so far I’ve also noticed this on my own blog.
Thanks for this valuable information Tina. I’m huge fan of SEO and I’m always looking to learn more about this topic.
Have a great day.
~Philip
Thank you for the awesome comment, Philip – I truly appreciate the knowledge share. I think longer articles do better because we give ourselves a better chance of imparting quality information if we share as much as we can. There’s a limit, of course, but I have noticed the same trend you have, and this report confirms the same. Beste of luck to you in all you do
These findings seem to fit with the theory about Google Panda and over optimisation, the weight of the “on site” seo seems less and less important these days.
As someone who recently launched a new site, SEO is at the forefront of my mind.
The movement of my competitors is something that I pay very close attention to and have identified a couple which are using Black Hat tactics to advance their placement.
Regardless of what others are doing, this article reinforces the need for pure, unadulterated hard work. Doing things the right way, the first time and focusing on the long term and not the short!
Still.. The Backlink is the king.
Don’t be lazy building link to your website.
Nice Study, Seems motivating to create same one
Interesting study on Google’s algorithms it is dynamic and mysterious no doubt. SEO is an ever-changing landscape and so and never get too comfortable that you know all there is to know. Very good contents and advice Thanks,
Fascinating stuff – thanks for the good read. It’s these kind of solid statistics that really provide useful insight into how SERPS rankings work. It would have been interesting to have seen how these results changed over time as I believe one of the big things that affect ranking now are the ‘freshness’ of the site. It’s all very well putting in the work to get to number one, but you can be fairly confident that if you don’t keep providing quality content on an ongoing basis you won’t keep that ranking. And let’s face it, that’s how it should be…
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Were any retail sites studied for this? 900 words seems like a lot for a retail site to have on a page? Thanks!
…”On average, the #1 ranking site for each key phrase had 662 backlinks, whereas the #5 page for each had just 142.”
How many of these links were from unique domains? That would be the real number to look at in my opinion!
Of course, it”s important to try to keep up eith Google SEO trends and research. But the key takeaway is approach SEO in a natural way that meshes with your overall marcomm strategy. In other words, link your SEO to your messaging and link your backlink strategy to your online networking strategy.
In conclusion, make your sites for visitors and not the search engines (Google), which is what many people have been saying for a long time. Good article.