Historical Data: Unlocking SEO Success Through Quality User Engagement

What is Historical Data in the Context of SEO?

Historical Data in the context of SEO refers to the amount and quality of user engagement on a website over time, including interactions such as clicks, time spent, and other user behaviors. It is crucial for influencing search engine rankings, as consistent, high-quality engagement signals the value and reliability of a site to search engines.

Why is it Important to Care About Historical Data?

It is important to care about historical data for several reasons:

1. User Engagement: The quality of user engagement, such as clicks, scrolling, time spent on the site, and interactions with content, affects how search engines perceive the value of the site. Better user engagement means that the site provides valuable content, which translates to higher rankings.
2. Continuity of Results: Sites that maintain good performance over an extended period build their credibility and authority in the eyes of search engines. Historical data show that a site is stable and trustworthy, which is crucial for search engine algorithms.
3. Data Cleanliness: Poor historical data, such as low-quality user engagement, can negatively impact a site's ranking. It is essential to regularly monitor and improve the quality of user engagement to prevent ranking drops.
4. Quality Signals: Good historical data provide strong quality signals that support the site's ranking. High-quality historical data can help a site recover its ranking more quickly after potential drops due to search engine algorithm updates.
5. Competitiveness: In terms of competitiveness, smaller sites can compete with larger ones by building better quality historical data. By continuously improving content and user engagement, smaller sites can effectively compete with larger, more established websites.

"Historical Data is not about "time", it is about "user engagement" and the quality of this "engagement".

In the Semantic SEO (Fundamentals) Course Koray Tu?berk GüBüR summarize the term Historical Data:

When considering historical data in SEO, it's essential to understand that it's not just about the length of time a website has been around. Instead, historical data focuses on the quality and amount of user engagement over that time. For instance, which website has higher historical data: a site with 2 years of ranking history or a site with 10 years? The answer depends on user engagement. A website with 10 years of history but only one session is less valuable than a website with 2 years of history and over 10,000,000 sessions.

Historical data encompasses various types of user interactions, including mouse-overs, impressions, and rankings, even those as low as the 94th position. Poor quality user engagement or negative query session logs can harm your website's ranking over time. If you experience a drop in rankings today, it often results from poor historical data from six months ago, indicating that the current state of your site is influenced by past user interactions.

Improving or "cleaning" bad historical data requires generating good historical data with stronger positive signals. This means enhancing user engagement and providing high-quality content to build a robust historical data profile that supports long-term SEO success.

* All this knowledge comes from the deep well of semantic wisdom presented by the living legend of Semantic SEO, Koray Tu?berk GüBüR