SEO Ranking Factors

What factors help you succeed with SEO? Experts helped compile this list.

This session included some great insights on key SEO ranking factors. We also managed to interview Rand after the session.

Rand Fishkin shared details based on the recent survey SEOMoz conducted where they matched expert opinion with real data. Survey is based on 70 + SEO experts worldwide and from data correlation.

Here is the bullet point suggestion list based on the survey and data compilation.

1. Most important is the quality and relevance of the content and its ability to answer questions.
2. User experience and page speed are a growing component. All things being equal the faster pages will win.
3. The main title or H1 and the subtitles make a difference.
4. Rich media, video, and original images and graphics get credit.
5. If you base it solely on SEO, keyword should be used at the beginning of the title tag.
6. Having title tag starting with keyword phase and images with alt tag utilizing keyword tag have high correlation. Correlation is not causation. Just because you have great alt tag does not mean that you will rank high. It only means that sites which has both i.e. title tag and alt tag with keyword phrase seems to rank high.
7. Root domain is more important than subdomain. Most people feel that content on subdomains inherent some, but not all, of the query-independent ranking metrics of the root domain and is judged partially as a separate entity. Subdomain are not inheriting all the ranking benefits from root domains. (In case of wordpress and blogspot subdomain is treated as separate entity)
8. Keyword tags is not used at all. Meta tags is used but not that much.
9. Importance of keyword usage in different part of url – Utilizing keyword any where in the url either domain, url or any where helps in ranking.
10. URL with keyword has more impact on ranking than content on the page
11. H1 Tags – Should be done utilizing keyword phrase but has very little effect.
12. Freshness of the content, recency of the page creation has huge impact.
13. HI validation has weak impact. Static URL performs better than dynamic URLs.
14. Number of linking domains has impact on ranking.
15. Important SEO matrix in Google algorithim of percentage breakdown . High level view of Google’s algorithm* Trust authority of host domain – 25 percent* Link population of specific page – 22 percent* Anchor text of external links – 20 percent

    * On page keyword use – 15 percent

    * Traffic and CTR data – 7 percent

    * Social graph metrics – 6 percent

    * Hosting and registration – 5 percent

16. Future of AlgorithmLinks will remain most important part of ranking algorithm

Laura Lippay from Yahoo stated that key factors are not only meta tag optimization, affiliate networks, inlinks, keyword density, but also include sites being viral, having buzz, getting links, and being your own linkbait. She discussed how great product is the fundamental for high ranking.

She gave example of knitting world and knitting life and how knitting life will do so much better because its viral nature and it has capability to upload video, share photos and having site which is viral in nature.