1.Backlinks.This is by far the biggest factor, you need plenty of them, its fine having a lot of pr0, but you do need some nice pr and quality links,.edu links are very nice. 2.Having your keyword in your domain.This is a really good one not mentioned enough.If you want to rank number one for say flash games, then the domain flashgames.com would be easy to rank up there without much seo, however the name familyroom.com would be so so much ahrder to get up there. 3.domain age.This is a touch and go area.If there are two sites competiting at the top, and one is a month older, thats not really going to make a difference at all, however, if theres a site at the top, which is 10 years old, and 500 backlinks, it will be unlikely a site which is half a year old, and has 2000 backlinsk will out rank it. page rank also works like this, sites around pr1,2,3 or 4 dont have much authority, but if you get pr6+ it can make a very good difference in serps (i meant 90% in the title) thanks, hope you found it an intersting read, tried to keep it short
Thanks for the informative post. I don't necessarily agree with your theory that a 10 year old site with 500 backlinks would probably outrank a 6 month old site with 2000 links. It wouldn't make sense for the search engines to put that much weight in the age of the domain. In my experience, quality and quantity of backlinks trumps any other factor.
in all everything will lead to this 3. 1. age of link... 2. quality of link... 3. topical relation of link.. to your site this makes up 75% of the algo in my opinion
I've heard about the age of a website affecting serps, but does the age of an individual link matter much?
Your opinions are right and straight to the point. That are majors factors that you need to consider for SEO. Domain with keywords is help but not all the time. Other factors are more important.
In my experience content is very underated. I got very good rankings for my site in google [and yahoo and msn] with like PRO, a handful of backlinks and a few month old domain. My SEO was crap, but the content was, even if I say myself, excellent.
I think the keyword issue is not only important in your domain... how it is spread around your whole website and blog content is also another consideration. Nevertheless, this is also one of the factors.
content is key, but if your domain is brand new or the title does not match the keyword or if there is no backlinks . Than content wont matter!
Your points are good but I think you should also include "Content" in the list as a major factor for ranking in SEs.
Thanks for this informative post, in my opinion: 1.links quantity or quality it doesn't matter (with keywords you want to rank on), 2.contents relevant to the links (include these keywords in the title and the url)
good post. agree with you on all accounts. i have two mature domains one 8 and one 9 year old domains. i totally let one go without hosting for 2 years and the other went 2 months without hosting. finally brought it back a few months ago. both popped right up near the top of the listings within a few weeks and it's competitive key words in the millions. doubt it could be done with a brand new domain.
Good content is important but nothing counts as much as links. As long as you have links, you can afford to have poor content and still do well in SERPs.
I doubt very much (against common believe) that backlinks are the most important factor for ranking! All my experience shows that proper onpage optimization is still the most important factor. Lots of my sites and client sites are ranking #1 or first page with very few links while the competition needs 10th of thousands to appear on first page. I prefer to optimize well on page which costs a couple of hours instead of building links for weeks or months
you also need keywords in all aspects of your site such as title, description and content in your site. That helps with SERPs