Just for the sake of it did I create a simplified version of the much more detailed search engine ranking factors 2007 document, which was compiled and published by Rand Fishkin from SEOMoz.org. The SEO ranking factors document contains the opinions of 37 contributers, who are considered leaders in the world of organic search engine optimization.
This document is something like a quick reference and I hope you will find it useful. The factors in this document are sorted by absolute rating of importance and not by category/type first as the original document.
| Contributors Aaron Wall, Andy Hagans, Ani Kortikar, Barry Schwartz, Barry Welford, Ben Pfeiffer, Bill Slawski, Caveman, Chris Boggs, Christine Churchill, Danny Sullivan, DazzlinDonna, Debra Mastaler, EGOL, Elisabeth Osmeloski, Eric Enge, Eric Ward, Guillaume, Jeremy Schoemaker, Jill Whalen, Jonah Stein, Joost de Valk, Laura Lippay, Lucas Ng (aka shor), Marcus Tandler, Michael Gray, Mike McDonald, Natasha Robinson, Neil Patel, Rae Hoffman, Rand Fishkin, Russ Jones, Ruud Hein, Scottie Claiborne, Thomas Bindl, Todd Malicoat, Wil Reynolds, Will Critchlow |
| # | Type | Factor | Importance | Consensus |
| 1 | Keyword | Keyword Use in Title Tag | High | Yes |
| 2 | Site | Global Link Popularity of Site | High | Yes |
| 3 | In-Link | Anchor Text of Inbound Link | High | Yes |
| 4 | Page | Link Popularity within the Site’s Internal Link Structure | High | Yes |
| 5 | Site | Age of Site | High | Somewhat |
| 6 | Site | Topical Relevance of Inbound Links to Site | High | Somewhat |
| 7 | Site | Link Popularity of Site in Topical Community | High | Somewhat |
| 8 | Negative | Server is Often Inaccessible to Bots | High | No |
| 9 | Keyword | Keyword Use in Body Text | High | Somewhat |
| 10 | In-Link | Global Link Popularity of Linking Site | High | No |
| 11 | Negative | Content Very Similar or Duplicate of Existing Content in the Index | High | Somewhat |
| 12 | Page | Quality/Relevance of Links to External Sites/Pages | High | Somewhat |
| 13 | Site | Rate of New Inbound Links to Site | High | Somewhat |
| 14 | In-Link | Topical Relationship of Linking Page | High | Somewhat |
| 15 | In-Link | Link Popularity of Site in Topical Community | High | Somewhat |
| 16 | Negative | External Links to Low Quality/Spam Sites | High | Somewhat |
| 17 | Keyword | Relationship of Body Text Content to Keywords (Topic Analysis) | High | Somewhat |
| 18 | Keyword | Keyword Use in H1 Tag | High | Somewhat |
| 19 | Page | Age of Document | High | Somewhat |
| 20 | Negative | Duplicate Title/Meta Tags on Many Pages | High | No |
| 21 | Negative | Participation in Link Schemes or Actively Selling Links | High | No |
| 22 | Negative | Overuse of Targeted Keywords (Stuffing/Spamming) | High | Somewhat |
| 23 | Page | Amount of Indexable Text Content | High | Somewhat |
| 24 | Site | Relevance of Site’s Primary Subject Matter to Query | High | No |
| 25 | In-Link | Topical Relationship of Linking Site | High | Somewhat |
| 26 | In-Link | Age of Link | High | Somewhat |
| 27 | In-Link | Text Surrounding the Link | High | Yes |
| 28 | Keyword | Keyword Use in Domain Name | Medium | Somewhat |
| 29 | Page | Quality of the Document Content (as measured algorithmically) | Medium | No |
| 30 | In-Link | Internal Link Popularity of Linking Page within Host Site/Domain | Medium | Somewhat |
| 31 | Keyword | Keyword Use in Page URL | Medium | Somewhat |
| 32 | Keyword | Keyword Use in H2, H3, H(x) Tags | Medium | Somewhat |
| 33 | Page | Organization/Hierarchy of Document Flow (i.e. broad > narrow) | Medium | Somewhat |
| 34 | Negative | Very Slow Server Response Times | Medium | Somewhat |
| 35 | Site | Historical Performance of Site as Measured by Time Spent on Page, Clickthroughs from SERPs, Direct Visits, Bookmarks, etc. | Medium | Somewhat |
| 36 | Site | Manual Authority/Weight Given to Site by Google | Medium | No |
| 37 | Keyword | Keyword Use in Alt Tags and Image Titles | Medium | Yes |
| 38 | Site | TLD Extension of Site (edu, gov, us, ca, com, etc) | Medium | Somewhat |
| 39 | Site | Rate of New Pages Added to Site | Medium | Somewhat |
| 40 | In-Link | Domain Extension of Linking Site (edu, gov, com, ca, co.uk, etc) | Medium | Somewhat |
| 41 | In-Link | PageRank (as measured by the GG Toolbar) of Linking Page | Medium | Somewhat |
| 42 | In-Link | Temporal Link Attributes (when in time the link was created/updated) | Medium | Somewhat |
| 43 | Keyword | Keyword Use in Bold/Strong Tags | Medium | Somewhat |
| 44 | Page | Frequency of Updates to Page | Medium | Somewhat |
| 45 | Negative | Inbound Links from Spam Sites | Medium | Somewhat |
| 46 | Keyword | Keyword Use in Meta Description Tag | Medium | Somewhat |
| 47 | Negative | Low Levels of Visitors to the Site (Measured via Toolbar, Clicks in SERPs, etc.) | Medium | Somewhat |
| 48 | Site | Number of Queries for Site/Domain over Time | Low | Somewhat |
| 49 | Page | Number of Trailing Slashes (/) in URL | Low | Somewhat |
| 50 | Page | Accuracy of Spelling & Grammar | Low | Somewhat |
| 51 | Page | HTML Validation of Document (to W3C Standards) | Low | Yes |
| 52 | Site | Verification of Site with Google Webmaster Central | Low | Yes |
| 53 | Keyword | Keyword Use in Meta Keywords Tag | Low | Yes |
For a more detailed view of the ranking factors see the original ranking factors 2007 document at SEOmoz.org.
Translation tables where you can see my values versus the values from the original report.
Type to Category
Keyword = Keyword Use Factors
Page = Page Attributes
Site = Site/Domain Attributes
In-Link = Inbound Link Attribute
Negative = Negative Crawling/Ranking Attributes
Importance to Rating
High = High Importance(3-4) and Exceptional Importance (4+)
Medium = Moderate Importance (2-3)
Low = Slight Importance (1-2)
Consensus
Yes = High Consensus
Somewhat = Average Agreement
No = Highly Disputed
WordPress did not allow me to use any special formating. If you prefer a nicer version with colors and all, check out the ranking factors quick reference at cumbrowski.com instead.
Cheers!
Carsten Cumbrowski
Cumbrowski.com Internet Marketing Resources Portal. Not sure, if your site was banned? What is the Google Sandbox Effect? How to make a reinclusion request? Find the answers here.
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Hi Carsten,
Just in case there is any confusion on these ranking factors, and the possibility exists that there might be, I wanted to leave a quick comment here.
Rand came up with the ranking factors that are listed, and the contributors voted upon the value of those ranking factors.
What might be more interesting would have been if you had these contributors instead collaborate on the creation of a list of ranking factors.
Hi Bill,
That would be great, but I don’t have that data :)
I only thought that simplifying the huge document would be helpful for a lot of people to get a grip on the subject and to keep focused.
Like “HTML Validation?” Let’s see.
Item 53, low importance, high consensus among the 37 SEO…. okay, not important, next. :)
“Keyword in Title?” .. No. 1, High importance and consensus. “Don’t forget the title tags and make sure you get them right”….
I suggest to then get the details, e.g. from the comments by the contributors, especially for the items with no consensus.
It is what it is, no more, no less. Thanks for the comment though and if you have any idea how I would get the 37 contributors to create each a list of their own for me to compile, let me know :)
Text Surrounding the Link refers to in-content links because search engines now has the capabilities of reading the text around the anchor text.
You might want to go into details for those of higher importance. Not much people here are skilled in SEO. Great job.
I would like to ask a significant question: Is there any sophisticate tools instead of complicated ones that even the beginner of every webmaker may have an assistance to meet such a requirement without being a professional to do that stuff?
Content relevancy is the key
Yeah, I agree with the person above. It does seem like links that are in content are a lot more effective.
Yeah, I agree with the person above. It does seem like links that are in content are a lot more effective.