Using machine learning to predict ranking of webpages in the gift industry: Factors for search-engine optimization

Joni Salminen, Roope Marttila, Bernard J. Jansen, Juan Corporan, Tommi Salenius

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

6 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

We use machine learning to predict the search engine rank of webpages. We use a list of keywords for 30 content blogs of an e-commerce company in the gift industry to retrieve 733 content pages occupying the first-page Google rankings and predict their rank using 30 ranking factors. We test two models, Light Gradient Boosting Machine (LightGBM) and Extreme Gradient Boosted Decision Trees (XGBoost), finding that XGBoost performs better for predicting actual search rankings, with an average accuracy of 0.86. The feature analysis shows the most impactful features are (a) internal and external links, (b) security of the web domain, and (c) length of H3 headings, and the least impactful features are (a) keyword mentioned in domain address, (b) keyword mentioned in the H1 headings, and (c) overall number of keyword mentions in the text. The results highlight the persistent importance of links in search-engine optimization. We provide actionable insights for online marketers and content creators.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings of the 9th International Conference on Information Systems and Technologies, ICIST 2019
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery
ISBN (Electronic)9781450362924
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 24 Mar 2019
Externally publishedYes
Event9th International Conference on Information Systems and Technologies, ICIST 2019 - Cairo, Egypt
Duration: 24 Mar 201926 Mar 2019

Publication series

NameACM International Conference Proceeding Series

Conference

Conference9th International Conference on Information Systems and Technologies, ICIST 2019
Country/TerritoryEgypt
CityCairo
Period24/03/1926/03/19

Keywords

  • Content Marketing
  • E-Commerce
  • Machine Learning
  • Online Marketing
  • Rank Prediction
  • Search-Engine Optimization

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