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SearchMetrics Released SEO Ranking Factors For 2014: Content Now Really King? SearchMetrics  announced  their  2014 SEO ranking factors  study is now ready for download. Every year, SearchMetrics releases the study but this is the largest study they’ve done, with almost 100 pages and by adding dozens of new factors like time of site, bounce rate, fresh links and others. The key take away from here is that content may now be truly king. Marcus Tober from SearchMetrics said in the report that content is “no longer an addition to, but is the main focus of, SEO .” Here is a breakdown of the study with some charts showing parts of the analysis. But you can download the full report  over here . Content There is a measurable correlation between the quality of content and rankings. This is demonstrated by, among others, the analysis of two new features based primarily on word co-occurrence analysis: Proof and Relevant Terms. The length of content continues to increase. A goo

Did Google update Penguin or Panda algorithms? Your site is impacted by many algorithms says Google. I personally spend a lot of time within the SEO space investigating claims of Google algorithm updates; it is a fascinating topic because there are so many variables involved and a lot of secrecy on Google’s end around its search algorithms. Often, Google will not confirm updates or algorithm refreshes. Plus, with manual actions and link penalties happening all the time, it makes it hard to determine if Google updated its ranking algorithms or if a penalty was pushed out that impacted a large number of sites. Recently, there have been many rumors around Google  testing  a Penguin refresh. Note, it has been almost a year since the last official Penguin refresh, aka  Penguin 2.1 , so webmasters are eager to see their sites released from the algorithm. This past Friday, there  reports  from  some sources  of a Panda refresh. With Panda, we know Google  won’t confirm  futur