25 Factors You Need To Know Effect Your Site Ranking

The following is a list of the top 25 factors, rated in a scale of 1 to 5 (1 being least important and 5 being very important) in helping your in determining what is important in your ongoing SEO efforts that we found from one of our partners that you needed to see.

Keyword Use Factors
The following components relate to the use of the user’s search query terms in determining the rank of a particular page.

  • Keyword Use in Title Tag 4.9 – Placing the targeted search term or phrase in the title tag of the web page’s HTML header
  • Keyword Use in Body Text 3.7 – Using the targeted search term in the visible, HTML text of the page
  • Relationship of Body Text Content to Keywords 3.4- Topical relevance of text on the page compared to targeted keywords
  • Keyword Use in H1 Tag 3.1 – Creating an H1 tag with the targeted search term/phrase
  • Keyword Use in Domain Name 3 – Including the targeted term/phrase in the registered domain name, i.e. keyword.com
  • Keyword Use in Page URL 2.8 – Including target terms in the webpage URL, i.e. seomoz.org/keyword-phrase
  • Keyword Use in H2, H3, H(x) Tags 2.8 – Placing targeted terms in the H2, H3 headline HTML tags
  • Keyword Use in Alt Tags and Image Titles 2.6 – Using target keywords inside alt HTML tags and img title tags
  • Keyword Use in Bold/Strong Tags 2.3 – Positioning keyword in HTML text with strong/bold attributes
  • Keyword Use in Meta Description Tag 2 – Utilizing keywords in the meta description tag in a webpage’s HTML header
  • Keyword Use in Meta Keywords Tag 1.2 – Utilizing keywords in the meta keywords tag in a webpage’s HTML header

Page Attributes
The following elements comprise how the Google interprets specific data about a webpage independent of keywords

  • Link Popularity within the Site’s Internal Link Structure 4 – Refers to the number and importance of internal links pointing to the target page
  • Quality/Relevance of Links to External Sites/Pages 3.5 – Do links on the page point to high quality, topically-related pages?
  • Age of Document 3.4 – Older pages may be perceived as more authoritative while newer pages may be more temporally relevant
  • Amount of Indexable Text Content 3.2 – Refers to the literal quantity of visible HTML text on a page
  • Quality of the Document Content 3 – Assuming search engines can use text, visual or other analysis methods to determine the validity and value of content, this metric would provide some level of rating
  • Organization/Hierarchy of Document Flow 2.8 – The construction of document text flow – i.e. journalistic style generally dictates a detail-oriented introduction, a broad level overview of the issue and increasing specificity and detail as the article continues.
  • Frequency of Updates to Page 2.4 – The number and time frame of changes made to the document over time
  • Number of Trailing Slashes (/) in URL 1.9
  • Accuracy of Spelling & Grammar 1.8 – The literal correctness of spelling and grammar as related to the language of the document
  • HTML Validation of Document (to W3C Standards) 1.4 – Validation of HTML page code as per the W3C consortium, an authoritative body on the standards of web-compatible code

Site/Domain Attributes

  • Global Link Popularity of Site 4.4 – The overall link weight/authority as measured by links from any and all sites across the web (both link quality and quantity)
  • Age of Site 4.1 – Not the date of original registration of the domain, but rather the launch of indexable content seen by the search engines (note that this can change if a domain switches ownership)
  • Topical Relevance of Inbound Links to Site 3.9 – The subject-specific relationship between the sites/pages linking to the target page and the target keyword
  • Link Popularity of Site in Topical Community 3.9 – The link weight/authority of the target website amongst its topical peers in the online world
  • Rate of New Inbound Links to Site 3.5 -The frequency and timing of external sites linking in to the given domain
  • Relevance of Site’s Primary Subject Matter to Query 3.1 – The topical relationships between the full content of a website and a user’s given query
  • Historical Performance of Site as Measured by Time Spent on Page, Clickthroughs from SERPs, Direct Visits, Bookmarks, 2.8 – Metric of click-through-rate, time spent on a page/site, direct navigation via bookmarks, etc. that Google may be measuring through use of their toolbar, free wifi, Google analytics, etc. (note that this is purely speculation as Google has never publicly admitted to monitoring or recording this data)
  • Manual Authority/Weight Given to Site by Google 2.6 – Google is occassionally suspected or accused of applying manual manipulation to a domain or page (note that this factor refers specifically to positive ranking manipulation)
  • TLD Extension of Site (edu, gov, us, ca, com, etc) 2.6 – The top-level domain extension of the site. Note that some domains, such as .edu, .gov, .mil and others have restrictions on who may purchase them
  • Rate of New Pages Added to Site 2.5 – The amount & frequency of new, spiderable documents added to the domain over time
  • Number of Queries for Site/Domain over Time 2 – The frequency of searches for the domain name or the company/organization’s brand as measured through Google’s search query logs
  • Verification of Site with Google Webmaster Central 1.3

Inbound Link Attribute
These pieces affect Google’s weighting of links from external websites pointing to a page.

  • Anchor Text of Inbound Link 4.4
  • Global Link Popularity of Linking Site 3.6
  • Topical Relationship of Linking Page 3.5
  • Link Popularity of Site in Topical Community 3.5- The link weight/authority of the target website amongst its topical peers in the online world
  • Age of Link 3.2
  • Topical Relationship of Linking Site 3.1
  • Text Surrounding the Link 3.1
  • Internal Link Popularity of Linking Page within Host Site/Domain 2.8
  • Temporal Link Attributes (when in time the link was created/updated) 2.5
  • Domain Extension of Linking Site (edu, gov, com, ca, co.uk) 2.5
  • PageRank (as measured by the GG Toolbar) of Linking Page 2.4

Negative Crawling/Ranking Attributes

These components may negatively affect a spider’s ability to crawl a page or its rankings at Google.

  • Server is Often Inaccessible to Bots 3.8
  • Content Very Similar or Duplicate of Existing Content in the Index 3.6
  • External Links to Low Quality/Spam Sites 3.6
  • Duplicate Title/Meta Tags on Many Pages 3.3
  • Overuse of Targeted Keywords (Stuffing/Spamming) 3.3
  • Participation in Link Schemes or Actively Selling Links 3.3
  • Very Slow Server Response Times 2.8
  • Inbound Links from Spam Sites 2.1
  • Low Levels of Visitors to the Site (Measured via Toolbar, Clicks in SERPs, etc.) 2.1

Is your website currently maximizing it’s potential?  Ready to get started? So are we. There’s nothing we love more than sitting down with our clients and collaborating on innovative strategies that produce the results you’re looking for. Contact us by email or call us at 770.717.0837 about your site and any specific needs you may have.

To View the full list and more comments about it go to opur partnes website http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors

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