Search Engine Land emphasizes that the factors of mobile, direct answers and site speed have gained more importance in the 2017 version. Another interesting detail in the 4th version of the table is the decrease in factors related to search history and the complete deactivation of factors related to the site's identity and social sharing.
For those who encounter this table for the first time, let us share some brief notes about the table:
Table 1 allows SEO beginners or experts to easily see the areas of great importance in SEO.
2. Since the table is renewed every 2 years, we can say that it remains up to date.
3. You can access the first table prepared in 2011 here . It was updated in 2013 and
the second version was shared. The third version was presented to users on June 1, 2015 .
In order to understand the table, the details about the content of the SEO table are as follows:
We see that the factors are divided into two as on-site business owner database and off-site SEO. On-site SEO is largely shown to be under the control of publishers. In other words, we can say that on-site SEO is included in the scope of all work that site owners can intervene in. The factors in off-site SEO are affected from the outside and there are no works that the publisher can directly control and regulate.
There are 7 subcategories presented under the two main categories of on-site and off-site SEO. These are:
There are 35 factors in total under these subcategories, ranging from using descriptive HTML title tags to a site’s success in user engagement.
Understanding the Table
Each factor in this table has a two-letter symbol. The first letter indicates the category the factor falls into. For example, “A” is used for the Architecture category. (We preferred to leave the formulas in the table with their original symbols.) The second letter represents the element itself, for example “c” for Crawl. This creates the symbol “Ac”. Each factor also has an importance value. The value +3 indicates the most important factors, while the values +2 and +1 indicate the less important factors.
Negative factors start with “V”. Factors starting with V can be perceived as spam activities and can harm your visibility. Such studies are also specifically stated in the table as factors that should never be approached. Here too, we can say that the factors given a value of -3 are more harmful than -2 and -1. However, we would like to state that all of them are studies that should be avoided.
What are the differences between the updated table in 2015 and the current table?
The Search Engine Land team made a revision by examining in detail the new elements that should be included in this table, the ones that should be removed, and all the factors that should be revised.
They conducted a survey with their readers and approached the above topics with 300 responses, as well as the perspectives of their followers.
They did not add any new elements for 2017. While the weight of three factors increased, the value of two factors decreased. Two factors were removed from the table. We share the details of all these changing factors with you below.
Mobile, Speed and Featured Snippets are the factors that increase in value:
Am: Mobile
It is not surprising that the value of this factor has increased today, when more than 50% of Google searches are made from mobile devices. We see that the value, which was +2 in 2015, has increased to +3. We can say that it is one of the most valuable factors with Google's announcement of the mobile priority index.
Ace: Speed
Google, which prioritizes user experience above all else, emphasizes the impact of site speed as a ranking factor at every opportunity. We see that the value determined as +1 in 2015 has been increased to +2 this year by the Search Engine Land team.
Ca: Direct Answers
Search engines, especially Google, now show users the answers related to the search in the form of direct answers at the top of the search results. This application, which we call featured snippets, is also used by Google Assistant or Google Home on mobile devices to provide a single answer.
We see that this factor, which was given a value of +1 in 2015, has increased to +2. Considering the increasing importance of featured snippets, we can say that it is a very appropriate arrangement.
