In the technology overview page Google declares more than 200 signals, including PageRank, determines a site's Google ranking. Extensive discussions have already been done about this around the internet. But I did not get any updated list with 200 distinct factors except an attempt at vaughns-1-pagers. Though this attempt also listed the same point in different way in more than one case. Hence I have given a fresh look at this old topic with some new angles in mind, those we have witnessed in last few Google algorithm changes. This google ranking factors list will be updated regularly as I get new points following the discussion over here. The points that I have broadly covered are... PageRank BackLink Keyword Anchor Tags Visitor's Behavior Domain Name URL Page Design
It is all about on page & off page SEO. On page SEO Domain Name - To have keyword rich domain Keyword - density, keyword highlighted in bold, italic, underline. So that Google knows what you are focusing on. Anchor Tags - Same deal, Put your keyword in H2, H3...H6 tag. Visitor's Behavior - Bounce rate, CTR from SERPs will greatly move the ranking. So, make sure the Title, Description Meta tag are well crafted. URL - Again, keyword rich url with proper permalink, instead of "abc.com/?123" Page Design - About the structure of your page. Internal linking plays an important part. Off Page SEO PageRank - Derived from linkjuice and backlinks BackLink - The most critical factor, which acts as a voting system to the site. The more trusted and high PR sites link back to your site iwth specific anchor text, your ranking will be higher. Cheers, MingJong
I don't think pagerank is as valuable for serp results anymore. Domain name and url are pretty much the same thing I think. And, page design how can that determine ranking? What does google say man that is a pretty site I'm going to rank this site better. I don't think so. Maybe certain website software scripts can be attributed to design in a manner of speaking which you interpret as design. Such as wordpress google seems to like a little more than other scripts, but it is not a design thing.
I don't think anyone will ever know all of the 200 signals, Google is probably trying to keep them a secret. I really think good rankings is mostly about link building and SEO optimization. If there are other factors, they are probably minor in comparison.
Although you can't measure it exactly, you can get a feel for it - authority and trust. If you get links with authority and trust, it doesn't matter if your site is 1 day old, you can get lots of them.
Internal linking is another important element of on page optimization which enables faster indexing and crawling.It also includes keyword mapping for eg which keywords are targeting to which particular page,the anchor text used to link to particular pages and how the content is segmented or themed.
PageRank - Derived from linkjuice and backlinks BackLink - The most critical factor, which acts as a voting system to the site. The more trusted and high PR sites link back to your site iwth specific anchor text, your ranking will be higher.
Quality backlinks and quality backlinks. Page three or higher is what you should shoot for. Forums are great because not only are you improving your pagerank but you are also driving traffic from those who are reading your posts. PageRank gives you authority when it comes to ranking positions for keywords, so yes, page rank will always be important.
Ofcourse many of the search engines never let us privy to exactly all the factors, as this would just open up the gates for folks to rank well if they knew all they needed to do