There's a very interesting article over at SEOmoz on the ranking factors for SERPs. It's probably some of the most enlightening information I've read about SEO in a long time. http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors Here's the things they discuss. Top 10 Positive Factors 1. Keyword Use in Title Tag 2. Anchor Text of Inbound Link 3. Global Link Popularity of Site 4. Age of Site 5. Link Popularity within the Site'... 6. Topical Relevance of Inbound Lin... 7. Link Popularity of Site in Topic... 8. Keyword Use in Body Text 9. Global Link Popularity of Linkin... 10. Topical Relationship of Linking ... Top 5 Negative Factors 1. Server is Often Inaccessible to ... 2. Content Very Similar or Duplicat... 3. External Links to Low Quality/Sp... 4. Participation in Link Schemes or... 5. Duplicate Title/Meta Tags on Man... Most Controversial Factors 1. Manual Authority/Weight Given to... 2. Relevance of Site's Primary Subj... 3. Participation in Link Schemes or... 4. Duplicate Title/Meta Tags on Man... 5. Global Link Popularity of Linkin... 6. Quality of the Document Content ... 7. Domain Extension of Linking Site... 8. Server is Often Inaccessible to ... 9. External Links to Low Quality/Sp... 10. TLD Extension of Site (edu, gov,...
hmm, interesting. you see so many articles/posts/sites telling you what TO DO to improve SEO, but not many things that describe negative impact (though many are pretty obvious).
Very true. It's a great article. I like how they display it by importance, based upon the responses of the recognized experts in the field. They did a great job!