Last month I made some classic mistakes when I reported the 10 day panda update and learned how important it is to our community that we always back up our assertions with claims and not forget the difference between causality and correlation. Today, Moz released a study of their own that shows the correlation between high rankings and Google +1’s.
Allow me to take a moment and explain the difference between correlation and causality. Causality is saying that something directly caused something else to happen. Correlation simply means that there is a relationship between two events and that they are both independent of each other.
Let’s get back to the study.
As pictured above, page authority is the number one correlated factor to high search engine rankings. Immediately after that is Google +1’s. The reason this study is so significant is that Searchmetrics also reached a similar conclusion.
What else did this study done by Moz show us? First, Google+ posts are crawled and indexed almost immediately. Second, Google + posts pass ‘Trust Flow’. Third, we need take advantage of long posts that are valuable and unique. (Just like how there’s a strong relationship between longer blog posts, 2000+ words, and high search rankings.)
Hopefully this second study will convince the late adopters of the importance of using Google +. Make sure you’re using Google Authorship, building relationships with other marketers/people on G+, treating G+ like blog posts, using social share buttons on your blog, marking your posts as public rather than private, and filling out your profile.
What do you think about the new Moz study?
