SEO Has Changed Forever – Why User Signals and Content Relevance Became the Most Important Ranking Factors

Marcus Tober founded Searchmetrics, a Berlin software company, and has worked in search since 2001. In this talk he shows why old SEO rules of thumb are losing their power, such as the keyword in the title tag or piling up backlinks. Thanks to machine learning and RankBrain, he argues, Google now understands the meaning of a query and of the whole text on a page.

You'll learn what fresh Searchmetrics data on ranking factors split by industry revealed, why long texts win in health while shorter ones do better in e-commerce, and how time on site relates to ranking position. Tober explains how to measure content relevance without the keyword itself and why a page that doesn't match the searcher's intent won't climb, however much you optimize it.