BWMagic’s Internet Marketing Newsletter


Google Ranking Factors According To 132 SEO Experts

Just about every year or so, SEOmoz.com comes out with a
list of Google ranking factors (Google calls these things
signals) compiled by a list of SEO experts. This year they
used 132 SEO experts examining data from over 10,000 Google
search results.

I always find this an interesting read and usually come away
with a feeling of how these SEO experts believe Google ranks
pages and sites. If you’re trying to get those top Google rankings,
you should look closely at their findings here:

http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors

According to these experts here’s a brief overall summary of
these ranking factors or signals.

2011 Ranking Factors:

Page Level Link Metrics – 21.45%

Domain-Level Link Authority Features – 21.13%

Page Level Keyword Usage – 14.93%

Domain Level Keyword Usage – 10.73%

Page Level Social Metrics – 7.22%

Domain Level Brand Metrics – 6.78%

Page-Level Keyword Agnostic Features – 6.74%

Page Level Traffic/Query Data – 6.26

Domain-Level Keyword Agnostic Features – 4.92

Now Compare these to the…

2009 Ranking Factors:


Trust/Authority of The Host Domain – 23.87%

Link Popularity of The Specific Page – 22.33%

Anchor Text of External Links to the Page – 20.26%

On-Page Keyword Usage – 15.04%

Registration + Hosting Data – 6.91%

Traffic + CTR Data – 6.29%

Social Graph Metrics – 5.30%

Could be just me, but I kinda believe SEOmoz in the
latest rankings is guilty of stating these factors in
a more complicated manner than they should be or how
Seomoz has explained these in the past. For heaven’s sake,
“Agnostic Features”??? Do they mean independent features?

Some companies that charge for SEO services have a way of
making all this SEO sound complex and complicated. I just wish
they would “dumb it down” instead of “complicating it up”.

For me, achieving and maintaining top rankings in Google has
always come down to producing a steady flow of content (articles,
blog posts, press releases, videos…) with my targeted keywords
in the anchor text of the links pointing back to my ranked pages
in Google.

Quite frankly, without quality backlinks, I don’t see someone
getting to those top spots in Google for extremely competitive
keywords. Now, if you have the exact .com domain phrase, more
then likely you will rank high for that keyword if it is not
too competitive.

I try to get “do follow” links, but “no follow” links are also
very good, especially if they come from authority sites. Many of
the above experts also believe “no follow” links do pass along
some PR.

Now these latest 2011 ranking factors seem to be pointing to more
“on-page” factors… page and domain linking structure, keyword
structure, site quality, right optimization, social media usage
and so on.

In other words, SEOmoz and their SEO experts are saying the way
you have your site and pages designed has become more important
to how Google ranks your content. Social media indicators are much
stronger and links are still important but rather than raw quantity,
try to diversify your links because those .edu and .gov are more
important than ever. These experts also think Facebook nods are
better than Twitter.


Keywords are Still King


You should pay special attention to your keyword or keywords when
creating your webpage. Keep it at the beginning of your title, place
it in your Meta Tags, place it in the H1 tags, first 100 words or
even the first word in your content, last 100 words, place it in
bold or italics, in internal anchor text links to this page, alt
image attributes, place it in the URL…

After Google’s Panda Update there seems to be a general shift
away from “off-page” factors to “on-page” factors. More emphasis
is being placed on the quality of your site and the layout of your
content. On-page and social media metrics have moved up in importance.
Backlinks have moved down…


Unique Content is More Important


Having unique content has always been important, but I believe it
has taken a jump up – after Panda. These experts also agree unique
content is important. In the survey, the importance of having unique
content across your whole site came in at 89.4% and with freshness of
content at 74.9%. Other factors include bounce rate, click thru data,
number of error pages, age of site, page speed load times, other sites
on IP address, number of hyphens and characters in domain name, length
of time before domain expires… one final note, may have missed it,
but I didn’t see the “country” or “where” your IP address is located
makes a difference in how you rank in Google.

Helping People Succeed Online Since 2002!

Kind Regards,
Titus

http://www.bizwaremagic.com

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