Design features as a ranking factor?
-
i created a new design of my website, very clean and highly orientated towards conversion. its a far better looking site than the old one but the navigation is almost the same. a few days after i uploaded the new site we were ranked number 1 on the biggest keyphrase in my industry.
Does google crawl design feature, maybe with something like conversion heat mapping software and include that as a ranking factor?
love your thoughts on this one.
-
Uhhh, Corey,
You said you have always paid in the past for SEO, I know SuperlativeB and I sent invoices, did you not get invoices from Alan or Simon??? Odd, they usually send first.
-
thanks guys, really helpful. i am new to all of this as i have always paid for my SEO work but as a budding entrepreneur i can only see understanding it myself as a advantage for future ventures. i dont believe i have increased rankings just to be a fresh result because i have been hovering around the top 5 for months.
i asked this question because as the web advances, i can only see it as a good thing that SE's start to use new technologies to see what users see. the bit about conversion rate optimisation that confuses me a bit is my site converts more people quicker, with less distractions. this means a lower bounce rate but also means less time on site and less pages visited. this is why i think over time as CRO grows more poplular. SE"s may need to look at other ways to crawl design aspects of websites.
thanks again guys
-
The pointer that I saw as the key information in that post was that quality raters use Firefox web browser. So make sure your site is looking proper in firefox.
"I said no secrets, but I guess this is a little bit of inside information. Google raters are instructed to use Firefox, along with the web developer add-on. Do with that as you will."
-
Three good answers including yours Robert, lots of great help and pointers here for Corey
-
Thanks Alan. A good addition to the answer by yourself there.
-
Simon and Alan are correct here, but there was a recent post by Dr. Pete that also sheds a bit of light on this. Quality Raters.
This is an interesting post and I have looked back at it several times. That said, when you redesigned the site, if you took off ads, got rid of superfluous information, etc. You likely improved the way the algorithm looks at it, too. As Simon said, if you improved the ability of the spiders to crawl it, that helped. As Alan said, if it is just a freshness factor it could drop again soon. So, keep it fresh and keep it simple.
By the way, this was a great question and followed by two good answers.
-
Simon is correct, there is no such factor I have heard of. What i do suspect is that you had somthing in your old design holding you back. some unknown factor that was not liked by the SE's, putting up your new design has rid you of it.
Plus there is also the QDF factor, Query deserves freshness. where search results like to inclued a few sites that have new content along with the normal high ranking sites. in this case you can exspect to drop again, sorry
Between these points nad what Simon has suggested i think it can be eplained
-
Hi Corey
Kind of. Search Engines don't crawl design features as such, however the ability to easily crawl pages within a website is believed to be a factor, as are other factors such as page speed.
Regarding 'conversion heat mapping', I doubt it. The closest factor that I'm aware of is Engagement, as in how visitors interact with a website; do they spend time reading pages or bounce straight off, do visitors visit many pages on a website such as going through a research and purchase cycle, or do they not stick around for long.
So there are ranking factors here to take into account such as those mentioned above. Check out 'The Periodic Table of SEO Ranking Factors' which is also included in a blog post here on SEOmoz.
Regards
Simon
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Website Ranks and gets de indexed ??
Hi My website is almost 3-4 months old . Whats strange is that as soon as it get Crawled it ranks for few terms for 1-2 days and all of a sudden gets de Indexed for these same terms or Rank drops like drops from page 5 to page 10 . Nothing shows up in Webmater tools under Manual Action . Assuming its a Algorithmic penalty, How to deal with this kind of stuff. Should I stop working on this site all together ? Or assuming its a New website, google does not want it to rank for medium or high volume keywords ? What keywords I am after have 300 -2k searches per month .
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | aus00070 -
2 pages ranking for the same term
Hi everyone, I have had two pages ranking on page two of Google for a while now for the same term. I have tried dedicating a page to it but as the other has a url with the search term in Google is ranking both it seems. How can I without deindexing one of the pages help better tell Google which one to rank? I imagine if it only ranked one page I would get a higher result rather than 2 weaker ones? On-site has been done and so has links to the homepage, but the innerpage still ranks also as it has the search term in its url. Would a canonical tag be worth it here? the page is however getting some traffic itself for other terms so I am reluctant to do that. Any help much appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tdigital0 -
Moving low ranking domain
I have a website, that I rewrote great content for, but I recently found that there are many, many links going to the subdomain that may be pulling it down. Has anyone had experience taking down a site and then moving the content to a new site? Will it be considered duplicate content if you completely take the old site down and use rel="canonical" on new site pages? I don't want to lose the good content, but I cannot have it on the current URL with all the bad backlinking (it's a complicated situation, as I need to keep those backlinks which are affiliates). Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RoxBrock0 -
Low PA but still ranking no.1??
Can anybody shed some light on this. A competitor is ranking no.1 for the keyword "storage" which is a very competitive keyword in our industry. There url is www.publicselfstorage.com.au When using Site Explorer, l can see that they have a very low PA, low external following links etc compared to the companies ranking 2 and 3. http://www.storageking.com.au/melbourne.html http://www.kss.com.au/ How are they still managing to rank no.1?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RobSchofield0 -
Improvement in rankings then site dissapears from SERPS?
Yesterday I saw significant improvements in rankings and the first page resulapp for several keywords appeared to have changed and included my site. Today the results appear to have reverted back and my site is nowhere to be seen. At least before I was in the top 100 but now I'm nowhere?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SamCUK0 -
SEOMoz Keyword Ranking Accuracy
Getting some mixed message on this. Is the keyword ranking informational available in SEOMoz based on the data in Mozscape or based on live Google data? Reason I ask is that my ranking for "crown moulding" for www.worldofmoulding differs: Based on the today's scan my www.worldofmoulding.com ranks in position 40 in Google. Based on a manual check with cleared out cache no local setting ... the site is 4th spot Running a third party check using "Advanced Web Ranking" tool it comes up in 9th spot, but they count the local business SERPs in which case it matches my manual search. It seems that SEOMoz is not in line with actual ranking. Any suggestion for what can be used to accurately asses SERP placement for terms?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | VanadiumInteractive0 -
Featured citations vs. regular citations
Do regular citations have the same impact as featured citations for Google Local? or is it the higher a company is isted the more impact it will have on a google local page?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEODinosaur0 -
Lots of optimized content but crappy rankings
Hi, I write content for the site http://www.healthchoices.ca. We were hit by Panda (a different issue that is resolved now) but even before that, I'd write an entire library of good content. An example: the plant sterols library. Here's an article as an example: http://www.healthchoices.ca/article/where-are-plant-sterols-phytosterols-found There are about eight on average in each medical library, and we cover topics from acne to sexual health. The other half of the business is a directory. We have thousands of local health are providers, a basic version with just an address, and a longer version where we optimize the text. Here's an example: http://www.healthchoices.ca/profile/ct-mri-scans/canada-diagnostic-centres We come up buried on the third page, far after directories with zero content or crappy content. What am I missing? I am getting very frustrated as I've been writing this stuff for a long time and nothing seems to come of it. Thanks so much, Erin
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | erinhealthchoices0