Search Ranking Factors - Weighted
SEOMoz solicited feedback on the top search ranking factors that determined where a site would be ranked on a Search Engine Results Page (SERP) in April of 2007. The graphically pleasing and feedback rich survey was very well done & deserves a lot of praise — probably one of the reasons for Rand Fishkin & SEOMoz’s quick elevation into the SEO Industry’s elite experts and websites. However, one thing you can’t do with the search ranking factors search results is sort the list. As a result, I took it upon myself to retype them all and sort it here:
| Weight | Search Ranking Factor |
| 4.9 | Keyword use in the Title Tag |
| 4.4 | Global link popularity of Site |
| 4.4 | Anchor text of Inbound link |
| 4.1 | Age of Site |
| 4.0 | Link popularity within the Site’s Internal Link Structure |
| 3.9 | Topical relevance of Inbound links to site |
| 3.9 | Link popularity of site in Topical Community |
| 3.8 | Server is Often Inaccessible to Bots |
| 3.7 | Keyword use in the Body Text |
| 3.6 | Global link Popularity of Linking Site |
| 3.6 | External Links to Low Quality/Spam Sites |
| 3.6 | Content Very Similar or Duplicate of Existing Content in the index |
| 3.5 | Topical Relationship of Linking Page |
| 3.5 | Rate of New Inbound Links to Site |
| 3.5 | Quality/Relevance of links to External Sites/Pages |
| 3.5 | Link popularity of site in Topical Community |
| 3.4 | Relationship of Body Text Content to Keywords (Topic Analysis) |
| 3.4 | Age of Document |
| 3.3 | Participation in Link Schemes or Actively Selling Links |
| 3.3 | Overuse of Targeted Keywords (Stuffing/Spamming) |
| 3.3 | Keyword use in the H1 Tag |
| 3.3 | Duplicate Title/Meta Tags on Many Pages |
| 3.2 | Amount of Indexable Text Content |
| 3.2 | Age of Link |
| 3.1 | Topical Relationship of Linking Site |
| 3.1 | Text Surrounding the Link |
| 3.1 | Relevance of Site’s Primary Subject Matter to Query |
| 3.0 | Quality of the Document Content (measured algorithmically) |
| 3.0 | Keyword use in the Domain name |
| 2.8 | Very slow server response times |
| 2.8 | Organization/Hierarchy of Document Flow (i.e., broad > narrow) |
| 2.8 | Keyword use in the page url |
| 2.8 | Keyword use in the H2, H3, H(x)Tags |
| 2.8 | Internal Link Popularity of Linking Page within Host Site/Domain |
| 2.8 | Historical Performance of Site as Measured by Time Spent on Page, Clickthroughs from SERPs, Direct Visits, Bookmarks, etc. |
| 2.6 | TLD Extension of site (edu vs. gov vs. us, etc.) |
| 2.6 | Manual Authority/Weight Given to site by google |
| 2.6 | Keyword use in Alt Tags and Image Titles |
| 2.5 | Temporal Link Attributes (when in time the link was created/updated) |
| 2.5 | Rate of New Pages Added to Site |
| 2.5 | Domain extension of Linking Site (edu, gov, com, etc.) |
| 2.4 | PageRank (as measured by the google toolbar)of linking page |
| 2.4 | Frequency of Updates to Page |
| 2.3 | Keyword use n Bold/Strong Tags |
| 2.1 | Low levels of visitors to the site (measured by toolbar, clicks, SERPs, etc) |
| 2.1 | Inbound links from spam sites |
| 2.0 | Number of queries for site/domain over time |
| 2.0 | Keyword use in the Meta Description Tag |
| 1.9 | Number of trailing Slashes (/) in URL |
| 1.8 | Accuracy of Spelling & Grammar |
| 1.4 | HTML Validation of Document (to W3C Standards) |
| 1.3 | Verification of site with google webmaster central |
| 1.2 | Keyword use in the Meta Keywords Tag |
