The Secret Formula to Online Success

SEO Experts Survey
Every two years a survey is taken from top SEO experts in the field worldwide on their opinions of the algorithmic elements that comprise search engine rankings. This year features contributors from the US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Iceland, the Ukraine, the Dominican Republic and many more.
Each participant was asked to rate more than 100 search ranking factors along with specific questions about hot issues in the SEO field. This document, representing the collective wisdom of expert practitioners, is, in opinion, one of the most useful resources for SEO practitioners of all varieties, helping to provide transparency into what matters (and doesn’t) for best practices in search engine optimization.
Top 5 Ranking Factors
-
Keyword Focused Anchor Text from External Links
-
External Link Popularity (quantity/quality of external links)
-
Diversity of Link Sources (links from many unique root domains)
-
Keyword Use Anywhere in the Title Tag
-
Trustworthiness of the Domain Based on Link Distance from Trusted Domains (e.g. TrustRank, Domain mozTrust, etc.)
Top 5 Negative Ranking Factors
-
Cloaking with Malicious/Manipulative Intent
-
Link Acquisition from Known Link Brokers/Sellers
-
Links from the Page to Web Spam Sites/Pages
-
Cloaking by User Agent
-
Frequent Server Downtime & Site Inaccessibility
See all negative ranking factors
Top 5 Most Contentious Factors
- Cloaking by Cookie Detection 16.3% strong contention
- Cloaking by JavaScript/Rich Media Support Detection 15.4% moderate contention
- Hiding Text with same/similar colored text/background 15.3% moderate contention
- Cloaking by IP Address 15.3% moderate contention
- Cloaking by User Agent 15.2% moderate contention
Google's Patent - Information Retrieval Based on Historical Data
These are the 5 Most Critical Concepts from 63 Components of Googles Patent.
1. Google's Concept of "Document Inception"
The date of "document inception", which can refer to either a website as a whole or a single page is used in many different areas by Google. This data can come from the registration info, the date Google first found a link to the site/page or the site/page itself. Google will be using this data to rank documents and establish credibility and relevance.
2. How Changing Content can Affect Rankings
Changing content over time has a huge impact in Google's measures according to this patent. They use changes to determine "freshness" or "staleness" of websites and pages and how that data impacts the value of the links on the page as well its rankings. They'll also measure large, "real", content changes vs. superfluous changes and rank based on that data. Google also says that for some types of queries, particular results are more valuable - stale results may be desirable for information that doesn't need updating, fresh content is good for results that require it, seasonal results may pop up or down in the rankings based on the time of month/year, etc.
3. Spam Detection & Punishment
Google is employing many new systems of spam detection and prevention according to the patent. These include:
Watching for sites that rise in the rankings too quickly
Watching for registration information, IP addresses, name servers, hosts, etc that are on their "bad list"
Growth of off-topic links
Speed of link gain
Percentage of similar anchor text
Topic/Subject shifts or additions
4. What Google is Attempting to Measure
Google wants to measure or is attempting to actively measure each of the following:
- Domain information
- Registration date
- Length of renewal (10 years, 5 years, 1 year, etc)
- Addresses and Names of admin & technical contacts
- DNS Records
- Address of Name Servers
- Hosting Location & Company
- Stability of this data
- Information on User Behavior Online
- CTR (Click-Through Rate) of individual results in the SERPs
- Length of time spent on a given site/page
- Data contained on your computer
- Favorites/Bookmarks List
- Cache & Temp Files
- Frequency of visits to particular sites/pages (history)
My Cart