Social Engagement Signals In Search

Who Am I?

Co-author of The Art of SEOPresident of Stone Temple Consulting

20+ person SEO and PPC firmTrainer for Instant E-TrainingFounder of Web Site Publishing Companies

Publish web sites, grow them, then sell them2 significant exits so far

On Twitter: @stonetemple

Uh Oh …

Source:SocialSignal

How Ranking Used to Work24% Trust/Authority of Domain22% Link Popularity of Page20% InBound Anchor Text15% Keyword Usage7% Traffic / Click-Through Data6% Social Graph Metrics5% Registration / Hosting Data

Source SEOmoz RankingFactors Survey

What it Might Look Like Now

21%

19%

11%18%

7%

20%

4%21% Trust/Authority of Domain19% Link Popularity of Page18% InBound Anchor Text11% Keyword Usage7% Traffic / Click-Through Data20% Engagement Metrics4% Registration / Hosting Data

Source: ME

Social Behavior

Facebook Authority & Links

Friend Likes in Bing Results

Sharing of Content

Article Likes / Tweets

Subscribers/Followers/Fans

• NoFollowed, but still act like links• Author authority matters

Twitter Authority• Number of relevant followers• CTR of links you share by relevant follower• Ratio of followers to followed• Retweets by relevant followers• Your “type” according to Klout (celebrity

thought leader, explorer, etc)• And possibly the age of your account

Source: johnfdoherty.com

Follower/Following

Klout Score

The New Kid on the Block!

Will Provide a Huge Volume of Data

Tools for Measuring Engagement

66 to 67% market sharein the US

Search Results Interaction

Bounce Rate

• Google Analytics– Did the user view only one page?

• Google Toolbar– One page? How long on page?

• Search Results Interaction– Time between click through to back to results

Time on Site

• Hard to measure with Analytics– Measures time from 1st page view to start of last

page view

• Easier to measure with Google Toolbar– Can see when they go to another site

Pages Per Visit

• Easy to measure in analytics• Easy to measure with the Google Toolbar

Toolbar Sees All!

• Everywhere you surf!• Bounce rate• Time on site• Page views per visitor• Repeat visitors• Where users go when they leave your site

Chrome Blocklist Extension

A Direct Thumbs Down!

Site Previews

Use of Site Preview

• Users sees a snapshot of your site• What if they get a preview but don’t click?

Google Reader (56%)

Walled Garden – No Problem!

Android

Source: comScore via Gigaom

AdSense

• CTR on AdSense ads is another signal• Low CTRs is an indicator of a spammy page• Another indicator: As Bounce rates

– http://www.bayardo.org/ps/kdd2009.pdf

Thank You!

Eric Engeeenge@stonetemple.com@stonetemple(508) 485-7751www.stonetemple.com For a One Sheet SEO Checklist, email me, or

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