Quantitative SEO Analysis

Once you start really getting into quantitative analysis, you start to realize that there is virtually no limit to the types of data you can analyze. Social media sites, like Facebook, Twitter and Digg, offer the curious mind a plethora of information that could be studied for SEO purposes. And data aggregators and mashups just add to the fun.

One such data mashup is called Archaelogist. Archaeologist is a third party Web application that catalogs the most popular Digg articles over the course of a year’s time.

We utilized the data from Archaeologist in conjunction with our quantitative data analysis tools to see if there were any patterns in the past year’s most “dugg” stories.

Most of what we found was more of the obvious. Stories about Barack Obama, George Bush and Sarah Palin were prevalent in the top Diggs. But some of what we discovered is not so obvious.

Most of us who frequent social media sites know that the day’s top political news is always going to be popular. And the more sensational, surreal or salacious, the more popular the story will be on these types of sites.

But what isn’t obvious, which the data show, is that the most predominant, significant word in the past year’s Diggs is the word pic. (By significant I mean, words other than “digg,” “post,” “read” and the like.)  More than the terms “Obama,” “Bush,” and “Palin” is the word “pic.” Assuming that the word “pic” is obviously the euphemism for “picture,” what does this tell us, if anything, about the nature of social media? And an even more important question for me personally is: What does this tell us about social media marketing strategy, since this is my whole purpose, as a professional SEO, for gathering the data in the first place?

Keep in mind, I’m mainly focusing on the terms in the “center slice” of the Bell Curve. That is, terms, in this case, having a density score of .21% or greater. Of these terms, I noticed that the terms “video,” “news,” and “best” were really the only other significant words with high density ratios.

Well, none of this is too enlightening, is it? Using some basic quantitative analysis I’ve merely confirmed the obvious. It seems almost inescapable that stories that will make it into the “most popular” category on a social media site will be those consisting of video-based and picture-based news covering the most “important” news of the day, according to the public.

SEO Tip: When thinking about a social media marketing campaign, on-page content about popular news will have a much better chance of bringing visibility to your site. Consider utilizing alternative news media tools such as video blogs, video podcasts, and photo galleries on your website and submit these to social media sites. Also think about how to tie in your products and services with the popular news stories of the day.