*
SEO is a fast changing discipline.
What worked 5 or 10 years ago might be completely unnecessary these days or even bad for your site’s ranking.
Thus leading search industry publications publish the most probable Google ranking factors each year. Nonetheless many webmasters prefer to stick to the past or follow wrong advice from bloggers who just repeat SEO myths.
In recent years, Google has not only included lots of new media types into Universal search results; it has also added numerous ranking factors while rethinking many old ones.
I made a list of new or current ranking factors that get underestimated by webmasters and neglected because of this. At the same time, I included those often old school ranking factors webmasters tend to overestimate the power of. These may not work anymore, or may even hurt your site in Google’s search results.
These ranking factors are gaining importance or haven’t been as popularly accepted as they deserve
Site Speed – site speed is an official ranking factor that Google has been pushing quite hard for a while. Despite this, I still see plenty of sites that don’t seem to care. They load huge images where you don’t need any or are cluttered with widgets and rich media that take too long to load. Especially on mobile phones, Google prefers sites that load quickly.
Social Signals – Twitter, Quora and even Friendfeed get used by Google Social search to populate your social search results, but these services also influence regular results. Hundreds of tweets by real accounts with some authority can push your site significantly. A few tweets by authority accounts or even one Google Buzz mention can get you indexed. Google just acquired social media analytics tool PostRank so they can measure this even better.
Usability – with the Google ”Panda” high quality update, user experience as chekecd by human quality raters and automatically measured by algorithms have been introduced as a direct ranking factor.
Outgoing Links – it has already been two years since Matt Cutts disclosed that outgoing links to authority sites are a positive ranking factor like bad neighborhoods are a negative one. These days some of the most renowned SEOs advise linking out not just for direct ranking benefit, and link out a lot themselves.
Google +1 – with the launch of Google +1 it has been announced that +1 votes will count as a ranking factor. There are still penalty of sites who don’t seem to care. Inserting a +1 button is easier than a Facebook-like widget.
Branding – over the years, branding has seemingly become one of the most important ranking factors for Google. Make sure that people know your name and link to you using it. This way you ensure that you will be created as a brand while generic sites get downranked. It’s even feasible that Google counts the number of mentions of your name or brand that do not link to you. The more you get talked about the better, of course.
SERP CTR – Google can measure how many people actually click your site in search results. You can even see the numbers in Google Webmaster Tools. The less people do click, the less valuable it must be is the logic I’m afraid. Make sure you sport an enticing meta description and title tag. Don’t just stuff keywords in there like 10 years ago.
Readability – Google is also measuring the readability level of a text. For instance, most of my blog posts don’t require a university degree to get understood. That might be an advantage in many cases, unless someone needs scientific advice of course.
Ads to content-ratio – too many ads on your site may mean bad karma as your site might get considered to be a thin content site with more ad than actual text. If you use Adsense, this might be even easier to determine.
Site topic – what is a page about? Increasingly, search engines try to understand the meaning of a query to return the best results. Google is still at a very early stage of this, but it already matters what the page linking to you deals with. So placing an SEO article on a gardening site may not work in the future.
Page age (not domain age) – Google is increasingly keen on displaying dates on your articles and posts. While it’s not yet clear whether it’s a direct ranking factor as well, it will surely impact your click-through rate. The older the date, the less likely people are to click.
Link velocity – by link velocity, we describe the actual number of links a site gets in a particular time frame. If you get links too fast, you may end up in a Google filter. On the other hand, a good viral campaign with a large number of links in a matter of hours or days can propel you to the top accordingly.
Link decay – as content gets older, many links in it end up being broken. Or even worse, some of them redirect to bad neighbourhoods. So link decay may hurt in two ways, by either showing that your content is now obsolete or by hurting it directly by linking to spammy or rogue sites.
Internal link anchor text – the actual anchor text your internal links have can be a major ranking factor. So don’t link ”services” in the menu but ”seo services”.
Alt text – in 2009 it seemed that alt text, the text you add in the alt attribute on images, may be one of the most important ranking factors on page. I admit that I still neglect this ranking factor, sometimes due to sheer haste and laziness. Blind users are only aware of the alt descriptions so you may want to think twice and add them.
On page link position – over the years, Google has been stepping up its efforts to identify where a particular link is on a webpage, in the footer, sidebar or the editorial part of the content. These days editorial links are best, of course.
Natural link profile – a natural link profile consists of all kinds of links: branded ones, deep links, nofollow links, even links from low quality scraper sites. By now it’s quite sure that Google has to look at the overall link profile of a site. If your site has only links from one geographical area, sites on one specific topic or specific links (e.g. blog comments), for example, this may mean that you will be ranked accordingly.
Deep link ratio – with the new Panda algorithm, sites with many pages that have no external incoming links have suffered. Until now it was enough to have enough authority from the homepage to push thousands of pages down in the hierarchy. From now, deep links get even more important for so called long tail content.
Link geography – as noted above, UK-based links are good for UK sites that want to rank in the UK. If you want to also rank well in the US, you want to make sure you publish and promote your posts while most US citizens are awake (not in the morning UK time). This also works for tweets, as some tests have already shown.
Backlink diversity – links from a lot of different sites are important not only for the natural link profile. Backlink diversity is similar to domain popularity and ultimately part of a natural link profile. This ranking factor has been around for ages, and some people have seemingly forgotten about it.
Just consider this: a new site is buying links from a few high PageRank sites and has barely any other links from domains with no Google authority. Doesn’t it look suspicious?
These ranking factors are losing ground or are even negative ranking factors
Facebook likes – in recent days there’s been a lot of news coming in that Facebook likes do not count as much or at all for Google rankings. Until now, after a disclosure a few months ago, it was assumed that Google counts public likes from profiles that are visible to everyone (like mine is for example).
Exact match domains – for years, so-called exact match domains e.g. seo.com for the query [seo] have been the best bet to rank quickly and stay on top. The good times seem to be over, however; branding gets more important, and even an exact match generic keyword domain is no guarantee of ranking these days.
Backlink anchor text – when every link to your site from the Web has the same anchor text, such as “seo agency”, this will be easily detected by Google. The anchor text of incoming links gets monitored more closely, so using it in an over-optimised way might even hurt you.
h1 headlines – some already old studies suggest that the h1 tag has lost much of the impact it once might have had on Google results. h2 and even smaller headlines most probably counted for more until now. Other specialists tend to dismiss h-tag altogether these days. I’m not sure here, but headlines are not a place to stuff keywords in anymore.
Top level domain – the TLD, that is the .com .co.uk or .fr ending of your domain, doesn’t count that much these days. Sites with .ly, .me, .is and other similarly exotic top level domains can rank well now without major disadvantages. Just look at Good.is – it even outranks Good.com.
Server location – my own SEO blog over at SEO 2.0 has been ranking for years in the US, despite being hosted in Germany. So while hosting locally is a good thing, it won’t stop you from ranking when you get your SEO strategy right and earn links from your target market. I considered moving it, but I decided that the change would not be significant enough to justify the risks of moving.
Content length - I remember when one of the most common pieces of SEO advice was to write content that is at least 200 words long. Also, over the years, pages with very long on-site copy have traditionally ranked better than short ones. Now that Google has cracked down on content farms that focused on size not quality, it would seem that content length is not a signal of utmost importance anymore.
Backlink number – I also remember a time when you looked at the sheer number of links a site had. Soon the number turned completely useless because of thousands of footer links from ”partners” many websites got. With the appearance of widely used CMS systems like WordPress and Drupal, Google has taken measures to curb the footer link game.
Keyword density – the higher the keyword density, the more likely you get penalised by Google for keyword stuffing. Keyword density is not a metric most serious SEO practicioners use in 2011. While it’s good to mention your actual keywords on page, any suggested density of several per cent is nonsense and barely readable.
Meta keywords tag – no major search engine uses the meta keywords tag as a ranking factor these days, yet some blogs still advise you to use it for SEO. Some SEO experts assume that it’s even a negative ranking factor. Google might be checking whether the keywords mentioned in it are also found on page, and if they aren’t, you might get downranked.
Of course, ranking by itself is not the only thing important in SEO, but if your SEO strategy is based on outdated ranking signals that do not matter anymore, while you ignore the most important current ones, you may be heading in the wrong direction.
Make sure you stay on top of developments. On the other hand, you may have to focus on the actions that work in search due to the fact that they are popular. This way, you are ahead of Google in many cases.
Read more about ranking factors:
- 2011 Search Engine Ranking Factors | SEOmoz
- Introducing: The Periodic Table Of SEO Ranking Factors
- High Quality Web Sites – The New Google Ranking Factor – SEOgadget.co.uk
- BruceClay – SEO Factors and Trends Report: Developments in Search
- The Way We Search Is Changing … and So Must SEO
- Case Study: Impact of Code Cleanup on Site Traffic – Search Engine Watch (#SEW)
- A Natural Link Profile and Nofollow as a Ranking Factor or Signal | SEOptimise
- The Tweet Effect: How Twitter Affects Rankings | SEOmoz
- Will Older Article Post Dates Hurt Your Rankings in Google?
* Image by Peter Gerdes
Great list. You pretty much covered everything. I would say that exact domains are still dominating SERPS though, other than that you pretty much nailed it! Keep them coming.
Excellent round up – I am pleased to say this mirrors my thoughts too :) I love the fast pace but it does mean its crucial to keep up! I have only been in the industry for 4 years and it has been exciting and interesting to see the evolution so far!
Good list Tad…but why do you say that EMD and backlinks are negative ranking factors? Did tou tested it? I think these factors are still relevant. In my experience i use them and I find them still useful.
Thanx Luca
Tad,
These comments are great and all of the slave mills that are churning thousands of pages that are polluting servers and the net all need to stop. I am so happy these changes are taking place. Hopefully only highly relevant sites will show up. Sick of seeing affiliate site owners score PR with a thousand sites with no real brand or physical address.
Thanks,
Chris
Since Facebook and Google are at war, I doubt Facebook will give Google access to their web services/api to access the number of likes for a particular post.
The same vice-versa. That is why I doubt that Facebook Likes are counted.
From a SEO point of view, metakeywords are useless.
But metakeywords are used by Google in order to display better targeted ads on webpages using Adwords.
This is a fantastic list of ranking factors. Personally I like the one about branding. Too many business owners just want pages ranking and that really does not do the trick anymore.
Nice summary…
Good list but i have one doubt. I think EMD and backlink anchor text are still relevant. I use them and they work very well. Why do you think they are negative ranking factors? Do you test?
Thank you
Luca
What about purchasing another domain with a better keyword structure and forwarding it to your main site. Good idea?
Nice list. Good job…
Thanks for putting this together. Good reminder of a few things that I had placed on the backburner and need to pursue more actively.
Very good blog for SEO latest trends. I was not aware of “Google +1″ and “outgoing links” impact on SEO.
Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for the list. The latest updates did get rid of spammy sites but I still see examples of sites that are ranking no 1 that offer no value.
There are many incorrect statements here. So many in fact it’s not worth my time pointing them out, other than this peach right here:
“Exact match domains – for years, so-called exact match domains e.g. seo.com for the query [seo] have been the best bet to rank quickly and stay on top. The good times seem to be over, however; branding gets more important, and even an exact match generic keyword domain is no guarantee of ranking these days.”
Absolutely 100% incorrect.
Fantastic write up. I’m just glad that I have a few sources to turn to to get the lowdown. I’m certain that Google + will quickly be climbing the charts as Twitter and FB begin to lose relevance (or at least I think they will in Google’s eyes).
Very nice list. One of the best I’ve seen in some time. I’ve been clicking the Google +1 on other sites but didn’t even think about putting it on my sites :(
Excellent advice. Thanks.
I think the back link anchor text is something that isn’t deteriorating in value – as well as the number of links pointing towards your site. Though it is true that your site can rank high with just a few links from very strong and authoritative sites – it still doesn’t diminish the fact that the number of links pointing to the site are still valuable.
Excellent summary of the changing ranking factors. I believe the strongest are social signals, unique meta data, SERP CTR, and Link Velocity.
I was searching for some information on the value of the H1 tag and this post came up. I think you have compiled some good information here on the different ranking factors. Regarding the value of h1 tags and other heading tags, I believe like most on-page factors they can be abused and can cause problems ranking. Header tags should be used for what they were intended for, page headings and sub-headings. Should keywords be included in them? Yes.
About exact match domains… They still have weight, not because the keywords are in the domain but because of the natural tendency to link to the domain using the name of the domain. With the example of SEO.com, the domain plays a part in their strong rankings but it is also the branding power you get with the domain and having a keyword targeted brand can be very valuable for ranking.
These are the new ranking factors that Google has been added in its algorithm. We should also count them in our SEO Campaign. We should strict tight with Google updates if we want to stay at first page.
Really good points, but under the head- Factors loosing ground i don’t like one point that is exact match URL, because it’s working very fine for around my 20 sites..
Rest all very very good and helping points ….
Helpful post. Google is changing its SEO techniques very often. These tips will definitely help us in getting good rank in search engines.
yup yup and yup.
Im agree in that this busuness of SEO (and of course to be succssesfull) u have to stay creative and keep an open mind, because things are not getting easier and competition rate is really high. Off course everyone wants to be #1, but you have to work really hard to make it, and we can not ignore any of these factors
Thanks for the article
Never really realised that all this is taken into consideration when ranking. Especially social signals. That’s it, Facebook here we come.
Very nice article. Just want to move the hosting from U.S. to europe and many said that is better to stay close to Google because it ranks better,,,which is absurd. However the example here (U.S. -germany hosting) shed some light
Excellent post. Thanks for pointing out all the major factors that are responsible for ranking. Specially :
“Backlink anchor text ” under “These ranking factors are losing ground or are even negative ranking factors”.
This is one major factor cause of which i feel i had lost my rankings. You can also check out this post i found while i was searching the causes that can affect the rankings, its really a good one.
http://www.searchenginepeople.com/blog/howto-add-schema-wordpress.html
Regards
Richard Pham
Great article! I would definitely point out that the age of links appears to have some weight as well.
In addition, I agree page age is a factor for sure along with domain age.
There’s also some weird ranking happening recently. Google appears to use the IP mapped to a local area and rank pages similarly in certain areas but differently in other areas.
For example, search for seo and set your location to another state. Even in protected browsing mode with cookies cleared it appears google is tracking you somehow by location and/or IP address….
Excellent Post…. I find it hard these days to find good solid info on ranking factors, its seems to me the the author has put alot of effort into his post. Thumbs up, please keep up the good work.
These factors are not only impressive but influential also. I have implemented them logically and still my blog is in better position after Penguin update, so I am happily plan to focus on other parameters like social networking.
“There are still penalty of sites who don’t seem to care. Inserting a +1 button is easier than a Facebook-like widget.”
I think you meant “plenty”
Good Post…. I find These tips will help us in getting good rank.
Thank http://www.seoptimise.com for this great post.. I have just read and found it very useful. One vote for you at Google plus.
Great list….thanks a lot!
What a cool list. You covered all list on one post. Google + and facebook are must these days. I must say social life is a part of SEO.
Thanks for your advices. I will try it, and I hope I can get a better Page Rank as soon as possible. One of the most important things is, I must be consistent. Have a nice days… ^_^
I did not realize the differences between Google+1 and Facebook likes. Thanks for the in depth article.
Well, I am interest about the impact of social media to google page rank. Perhaps this maybe my stupid question :
“does google treat same between google + and facebook like ?”
My site have some facebook like, but google + almost none.
Should I focus on Google+ instead of facebook like?
I notice that my blog with PPC on it sometime the pagerank down as well as its index on search engine.
Thanks for the useful information.
Length, being concise and ANSWERING your visitors objections of your product offerings are the main takeaways from this. The real work is not just rambaling on to make something long. It’s taking the time to understand your visitors problems and objections. plasticsurgerymiami is so new I don’t get enough traffic to test directly as I could with my other websites. I could buy media perhaps, but there are so many place where the right people for that website hangout it’s really just a matter of listening and pivoting.
Really a very helpul tips from you,Searching for this only
and also you have nice name :P
Thanks for a good read, and your really absolutely right about everything I read so far. A good example is Google+
I left a comment for someone on their Google+ page. In the comment I mentioned a friend in the SEO business and a new product he was working on.
The next day I Googled up the product I had been talking about in my comment, and what do you suppose was on page #1 of Google? You got it, the page I commented on was listed on Page#1 just because I mentioned it on Google+
Google wields a very broad and powerful sword my friend.
Thanks again,
David
I am still amazed the stuffs you wrote in 2011, I am still reading it now 2013, isnt that great your article is still ranking on the top of the Searches. As far i have experienced H1, H2, H3 Tag still work that much for the keywords to rank.
I think generally H1 tags still hold some merit, but H2, H3, and H4 probably aren’t worth the paper there printed on these days.
I’m agree with Luca, exact match domain and anchor links are still relevant, i have many SEO projects who confirm this. For sure it is very easy to get a penalty if the anchor text are too similar, but doing link building with the right rithim is still a great method to rank in serp. Great list! :-)
Like Max said, I’m also still amazed by this article you wrote of nearly two years ago.
I’m pretty new to SEO but this is exactly what i all got learned, put your viewers on the first place, then google.
Content = king!
Cheers from the Netherlands and thanks for your great tips and refreshment!
What I forgot to mention is that interaction and reactions are nowadays also very important since it ads more content to your page and shows google interaction, wich they like!
“What worked 5 or 10 years ago might be completely unnecessary these days or even bad for your site’s ranking.”
This is the most important statement in this article. Anyone dabbling in SEO should definitely be aware of what is working at that time, not something that was posted years ago.
This is a good list of things to consider.
My developer is trying to persuade me to move to .net from PHP.
I have always disliked the idea because of the costs.
But he’s tryiong none the less. I’ve been using Movable-type on
numerous websites for about a year and am concerned about switching
to another platform. I have heard good things about blogengine.
net. Is there a way I can import all my wordpress posts into it?
Any kind of help would be greatly appreciated!