Search Engine Ranking Factors 2009

Table of Contents

Top 5 Ranking Factors

1. Keyword Focused Anchor Text from External Links

   73% very high importance
   73%

2. External Link Popularity (quantity/quality of external links)

   71% very high importance
   71%

3. Diversity of Link Sources (links from many unique root domains)

   67% very high importance
   67%

4. Keyword Use Anywhere in the Title Tag

   66% very high importance
   66%

5. Trustworthiness of the Domain Based on Link Distance from Trusted Domains (e.g. TrustRank, Domain mozTrust, etc.)

   66% very high importance
   66%

See all ranking factors

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Top 5 Negative Ranking Factors

1. Cloaking with Malicious/Manipulative Intent

   68% very high importance
   68%

2. Link Acquisition from Known Link Brokers/Sellers

   56% high importance
   56%

3. Links from the Page to Web Spam Sites/Pages

   51% moderate importance
   51%

4. Cloaking by User Agent

   51% moderate importance
   51%

5. Frequent Server Downtime & Site Inaccessibility

   51% moderate importance
   51%

See all negative ranking factors

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Top 5 Most Contentious Factors

1. Cloaking by Cookie Detection 16.3% strong contention
2. Cloaking by JavaScript/Rich Media Support Detection 15.4% moderate contention
3. Hiding Text with same/similar colored text/background 15.3% moderate contention
4. Cloaking by IP Address 15.3% moderate contention
5. Cloaking by User Agent 15.2% moderate contention

Note: Consensus and contention percentages are calculated based on the standard deviations of contributor answers.

Participants were asked to apply the ranking factors to Google’s search engine, and although we’ve found that it’s largely applicable to other major US engines (Bing, Yahoo! & Ask), some variance almost certainly exists.

Overall Ranking Algorithm

• 24% Trust/Authority of the Host Domain
• 22% Link Popularity of the Specific Page
• 20% Anchor Text of External Links
• 15% On-Page Keyword Usage
• 7% Traffic and Click-Through Data
• 6% Social Graph Metrics
• 5% Registration and Hosting Data

See more detailed SEO opinions

Good and brief SEO summary from SEOmoz, with the few things not to ever ignore if you want to optimize your search engine results. It is also a good view on the core of Google’s search algorithm.

SEO experts are the new alchimists, always looking for the philosophical stone (Google’s algorithm) to turn their websites into gold.