The biennial search ranking factors report from SEOmoz was released today, which surveyed 134 SEO professionals on what has the most effect on search rankings, and their views on the future of search.
Here's a few highlights from the report...
2011 ranking factors
For comparison, here's the 2009 ranking factors:
Social signals
One of the things that SEOs have been predicting over the past couple of years is the influence of social media on search engine rankings.
In the 2011 chart above, page level social metrics is shown to be significant, and the questions SEOs have been asking is what social signals the search engines are looking for, and how influential they are.
The report does find a correlation between sites with strong social metrics and those with higher rankings. The most significant factors here were Facebook shares, comments, likes, followed by tweets.
The future of search
The 134 SEOs were also asked about the future of search, and how ranking factors would change over the next few years.
Most predicted that the analysis of a page or website' perceived value to users would become more important, followed by social signals at both page and domain level.
For more detail, check out the 2011 search ranking factors on SEOmoz.
Graham Charlton is Editor at Econsultancy. Follow him on Twitter or connect via Linkedin or Google+.
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9:01AM on 7th June 2011
I love this time of bi-annual-year :D
12:43PM on 7th June 2011
So, it all points to the same thing: good content, well structured site architecture, and no sneaky tricks. Bazinga!
1:28PM on 7th June 2011
Nice article with clean stats. Not surprised of the increasing impact of Social on SERP.
9:25AM on 8th June 2011
Hmmm, interesting. Its funny to see that anchor text for external links is deemed not to be a priority factor, even though theres still so much noise in the industry that this is major focus.... The rest is good. It shows that I'm focusing on the right things!
Consulting Managing Director at Thematix
4:56PM on 8th June 2011
Sheldon Cooper sums this up perfectly -- it's common sense (though I've never typed the work 'bazinga').