Google Ranking Factors

With the recent Google Panda update, there is a lot of confusion over the current Google ranking factors and where you should concentrate your SEO investment. After doing much research from some of the most reputable SEO providers in the industry, I have come to the conclusion that there are five major Google ranking factors.

Now that does not mean that other forms of SEO optimization are not important, because I am a firm believer that good SEO ranking is the sum of doing a lot of little things right instead of doing just one or two things right. This article will provide details on the five SEO factors that we think are critical and summary information on other areas to also concentrate.

Here are the five Google ranking factors from our analysis:

domain age – This is a tough one to handle because it means that new websites have to bide their time to earn the high ranking search engine positions for the targeted keywords. But it is very obvious from our research that domains with a high domain age get the benefit of the doubt from the search engines when there is no clear cut ‘best’ choice. Our recommendations to owners of new websites is very simple. While your domain is aging, add as much content as possible and build as many backlinks as you can. This ensures that as your domain ages, it will be well established for the targeted keywords you are pursuing.
page rank – Another tough one for new websites because again, it takes time to build page rank in the search engines. And once again, the best advice is just as it is above, because that is the formula for earning a higher page rank. Get on a regular schedule to add content when possible and and take the steps to generate a solid back link building program. This is a self-fulfilling prophecy – doing these tasks on a routine basis will get you noticed by the search engines, which will have the spiders crawling your website on a regular basis, which will in turn allow your website to grow notoriety on the internet. As the combination of content, back links and domain aging naturally occur, your Google page rank will start to grow.
on page optimization – Yes, this is still very important to the search engines and the task should be simple to understand. For every page of content that is published on your website, every step to properly do on page optimization should be completed. The three areas that Matt Cutts from Google has recently stated are important are:

title tag – Make sure that the title tags for each targeted page has a keyword specific title tag. The title tag is the first content that the search engines see when they spider your page and it is important for them to immediately see the keyword you are targeteding for that page.
meta description tag – Matt Cutts specifically mentioned that the meta description tag has become more important because this tag is meant to be used to provide the search engine users (and the spiders) a summary of what this page is about. Too many people use the meta description tag to stuff a bunch of keywords. If this describes what you are doing, then you should concentrate more on providing a good concise summary of the page. Think about it like this. Google wants to provide the user with a good search experience. Since the meta description tag is returned during the search and is displayed right below the website link, Google wants to present websites that accurately describe the page contents.
keyword relevant content – The last piece of on page optimization is to make sure that the content is relevant to keyword you are targeting. So this means that you should focus on making sure that the page title, the meta description tag, and the page content are all focused on the targeted keyword.

internal linking structure = If you are using a blog platform as your website, this is automatically taken care of by the blogging platform. If you have a traditional website, then this is something you need to concentrate on a little more. But the goal of this step is to provide an easy to navigate website for both the users and the spiders. From a search engine optimization perspective, it is very important that the spiders can navigate through all pages of your site and that proper links with anchor text helps point the spiders to what you consider to be the important pages on your website.
backlinks from other websites – Although this is listed last, it is not the least important. In fact, it might be the most important because it tells the search engines that your site is important enough for other websites to provide a link back to your website. When done right by using good keyword relevant anchor text and finding large numbers of high value links, your search engine ranking can be dramatically improved.

These five items represent what we believe to be the top give Google ranking factors to rank your website in the search engines.

The following are items that have been important in the past, and all indications are that they are not as important as they once were. This article is not to imply that you should not do any of these because the sum of the parts really is important to achieve high search engine positioning.

exact match domains
content length
keyword density
meta keywords tag
Facebook likes or links

Again, we are not saying that these not important at all for Google ranking factors, but they are not as important as they were before the Panda update.

While the sole focus of your website is not just rankings, it sure is important to understand the rules of the game and the Google ranking factors you should pursue.

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