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.
