Search Ranking Factors - an excellent analysis

Rand Fishkin has updated an article on what seo factors search engines value, which is being widely read (over 10,000 people).

Later this week it will be updated to reflect perspectives from regular commentators such as Danny Sullivan, Jill Whalen, Ammon Johns and Bill Slawski.

It's an excellent summary of what current thinking is from expert commentators on what matters and what doesn't in SEO.

The factors are grouped as:
* Introduction to Ranking Factors
1. In-Document Factors Affecting Ranking (26)
2. Site Factors Affecting the Value of Hosted Documents (21)
3. Factors Affecting the Value of a Link (25)
4. URL, Technical, Hosting & Server Side Factors (11)
5. Detrimental Ranking Factors (10)

Then comparatively weighted for their importance.

What stuck out for me in 3. was 'Popularity of Site in Topical Community' I really need to do more work in this area.

Anything jump out at you - or prompt you to do more work on an aspect of your seo efforts?

 

Ammm wow it's great stuff! You worked for very tiny particles. Great Job.

 

ya great reading...
ty for posting the link

 

I need to work on number 2. I'm lagging in that area a bit. I appreciate the info, though.

 

Woah, there's a lot to read there. I thinks I need to bookmark that one.

 

It's been updated with info from these contributors:
Danny Sullivan http://www.searchenginewatch.com
Dan Thies http://www.seoresearchlabs.com
EGOL Profile @ SEOmoz
Graywolf http://www.wolf-howl.com
Jill Whalen http://www.highrankings.com
Donna Fontenot http://www.seo-scoop.com
Michael Martinez http://www.michael-martinez.com/
Bill Slawski http://www.cre8asiteforums.com
Ammon Johns http://www.webmarketingplus.co.uk/
Scottie Claiborne http://www.successful-sites.com/
2K http://www.2kmediat.com/kkmediat/eng/
Todd Malicoat http://www.stuntdubl.com
Rand Fishkin My votes are also included in the avgs

Here are their top 10:
The following are the top 10 ranked factors across the 5 categories:

Title Tag - 4.57
Anchor Text of Links - 4.46
Keyword Use in Document Text - 4.38
Accessibility of Document - 4.31
Links to Document from Site-Internal Pages - 4.15
Primary Subject Matter of Site - 4.00
External Links to Linking Pages - 3.92
Link Popularity of Site in Topical Community - 3.77
Global Link Popularity of Site - 3.69
Keyword Spamming - 3.69

 

Excelent resource. I enjoyed reading it.

Thanks again.

 

Great Dominic! I also ctrl-D.

 

Cheers, I'm going to go through it again.

 

Very useful read thanks , 'age of document' stood out for me , on checking an my old travelogue written in 2000 still is very authoritive and stands at positon 1, for Yangon Myanmar as it has for 5 years or thereabouts ( on a 2 million serp)

 

'age of doc' got me thinking too.

Can I use some old pages for new purposes?

 

What I will be doing Dominic is re working old well ranked pages, adding more content, related to site links, and perhaps put a small ad network as well , since they dont "pay me a cracker", at present

 

What about taking an old page and using it for a new purpose? Any point in that you think?

 

Great article, printing it now.. So much to do, so little time..

Thanks Dominic!

 

Can someone tell me what this means? What does
IP mean in this context?

Although difficult to detect, search engines finding evidence of IP-based content delivery on a website are likely to penalize or devalue that site in the results.

 

My understanding of that would be, where a page has an URL such as
http://206.345.56.78/~smithy/ or similar which could be suspect because the site is not currently associated with a domain name, perhaps devaluing its importance since it would have a domain name if it had any real merit ?

 

Oops - sorry for the confusion there. What I mean is when sites use cloaking via IP content delivery to show search engines one page, but non SE spiders another...

However, sleuth1 - you make a great point that I had not considered. I'll make sure to add that to an updated list that I'll launch in a year or so.

 

Got no idea randfish if that we be considered by Google or not , just my incorrect interpretation of what you listed , so don't quote me on it, but does sound some what reasonable !

 

Very helpful. I'll take a look at my site and will try to improve where possible and necessary

 

cheers ninefingers and downloads be, glad you got something out of it. It's certainly a key document. Hats off to randfish