(Newswire.net — September 23, 2014) — SearchMetrics shares information about search engine optimization to those who are interested in increasing organic rankings, and now the company has released an informative 83-page whitepaper entitled SEO Ranking Factors and Rank Correlations 2014. There is a great deal of useful information in this whitepaper that is free to anyone who wants to order a free copy.
This whitepaper is very useful to anyone who writes press releases, web pages or any other type of content that would benefit from search engine optimization. While only Google has access to the true algorithms that drive search engine results, the study contains many correlations of factors that influence organic rankings.
SearchMetrics claims that click-through rate is an extremely component in generating high rankings with search engines. Click-through rate refers to the number of times a user clicks on a particular web page in the SERP or search engine results page for a given search term. With only 50 characters for a headline and 140 characters for an abstract, these small components are twice as important as any other ranking factor, so content writers should be sure to pay close attention to them.
According to the whitepaper, another very important ranking factor is page length. At least 975 words is now needed to holistically represent the keyword and surrounding content. Without a high word count, Google will not give the page as much value as longer pages full of quality content. It is better to have one large article than many smaller articles. With titles, H2 headings and meta descriptions properly written, a large page can encompass a great deal of content successfully. Therefore, combining small, related pages into one larger page can be a good strategy for refreshing website content.
The primary off-page factor, according to this report, is the raw number of backlinks. Higher-ranking pages have more links that competitors, so building quality backlinks is still an important factor for any page. While quality is important, quantity seems to be important as well, so it is no longer enough to have a “few good links.” While Google+ is ranked higher than backlinks in correlation, social signals are still a questionable factor in page rank. Google has specifically stated that social signals do not influence page rank, so for the time being social linkage can be seen as a valuable addition for users but not a necessity in link strategy. Nofollow links, on the other hand, are very valuable in building linking strategies. Press releases, which offer backlinks from news domains, are also a very valuable positive factor as well in ranking a page highly in search results.
A summary of the whitepaper, with a link to the full version is available for free download – click here.