13 Apr 07: Thirty seven SEO professionals from around the world participated in a poll to vote on what they consider to be the most important factors the Google algorithm considers when ranking a site. The poll set up by SEOmoz asked these professionals to grade various factors according to the perceived importance. This article discusses the Top 10 positive factors.
The title tag is probably the single most important HTML tag, not only because Google considers it to be a very important ranking factor, but also because Google uses the title tag text to create the listing's heading (the blue link) on the search results. It is therefore equivalent to the headline of an ad inciting searchers to visit the site.
Last year this would have been considered the single most important factor. However, recent changes in the Google algorithm have slightly reduced the importance of the overall number of inbound links pointing to the site. The factor is still extremely important and weight, authority and relevance of the links are also factored into considerations.
The text contained within the link (between the <a> and </a> tags in the HTML) is called the anchor text. This text serves as a description of the link's target, and is hence a very clear indication to users and the search engine of what the target page will be about. As a result, this continues to be a very important factor in ranking a site.
Unlike external links from third-party websites, internal links are fully within the control of the webmaster. How these internal links are structured gives Google a very clear indication of which pages are more important for the site owners. Accordingly, Google perceives this as an internal vote for the importance of individual pages.
Authority of a site, according to the Google algorithm is determined by two main factors: The number and quality of links pointing to it and the age of the site, in terms of the period of time that the site has contained indexable content seen by the search engines. Webmasters have no control over this factor. The only way to affect this is by buying old websites.
Relevance has always been the mantra of Google ranking, and this factor is a mere extension of that fact. Not only is it important to have lots of links pointing to a site, but it is also important that a good number of these links are from sites related to the topic of the target page and the target keyword.
Increased use of social networking sites and user generated content has turned the Internet and SEO around in the past year. Accordingly, a new factor now considered of importance is the link weight and authority of the target website amongst its topical peers in the online world.
Link bombs and spam linking enabled websites to be ranked, in the past, for keywords that were not even present on the site. This has changed. Google will almost never rank a site now based solely on links pointing to it, no matter how many they may be. Use of the targeted search term in the visible, HTML text of the page is a must.
This is all about PageRank of the site that is providing a link. Number and quality of links matter. The quality of the link is determined by its relevance and by its own link popularity. Hence, a single link from an extremely popular (high PR) website will be worth much much more than many more links from a relatively unknown site.
Sudden spikes in the number of inbound links pointing to a site are unnatural. Google constantly monitors the frequency and timing of external sites linking to given domain, even though this may not be reflected in the link counts they show on their search results. A steady upward growth rate is always best.
The full article with all other ranking factors can be read at:
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