User It or Loser It

Well, maybe not “loser it” exactly, but certainly lose an opportunity for improvement.  I’m referring to the opportunity to improve your SEO rankings and the emergence of user signals as search engine algorithm factors per my recent POV for DBE.

User signals like click-throughs from search engine results pages, pages viewed, time on site, etc. are starting to appear in industry analyses of common attributes among high-ranking websites.  SearchMetrics, Moz and Search Engine Land all now see some correlation between these types of user signals and successful SEO best practices.  Note: none of these are positing that user signals are more important or influential than relevant content and/or quality links.

The truth is nobody knows the secret sauce of the reportedly 200+ factors in Google’s indexing recipe/algorithm, though the list of suspected ingredients has expanded over the years with the addition of social signals and now user signals.  In the end, Google’s goal is to deliver the most relevant and meaningful results to its users’ queries and it will extract all the data it can to evaluate where each website ranks in fulfilling that purpose.  Marketers’ SEO initiatives need to integrate and align as many of these signals as we can to highlight and elevate our websites above the competition.

To download this POV please e-mail us an inquiry at: info@digitalbrandexpressions.com.