Introducing SEO Ranking Factors

SEO Ranking 

What will make me top? Or more precisely: “What are the factors that determine my position in the natural listings for a specific key-phrase and what is their relative importance?”

These are the key questions that everyone involved in SEO, from clients to agencies, wants and needs to know. So let’s work through some answers for you...

Unfortunately, the number of people who can definitively answer these questions by concisely explaining the hundreds of factors (and the way these factors work with one another) is strictly limited to a handful of senior engineers who work for the search engines.

However, through combining the experience of the authors, the review team and disclosure from the search engines and expert commentators, we have compiled a comprehensive list of the most important factors which determine position in the listings.

What determines ranking position in the natural listings?

The position or ranking in the natural listings for a particular key phrase is dependent on a search engine’s ranking algorithm.

For the search query entered into the search engine, the algorithm uses rules or heuristics to identify the most relevant pages, based on the page’s text content and its context (which can be indicated by links from other pages and sites).

Each search engine has a different set of algorithms created by engineers who strive to produce the best relevance for its users.

However, the ranking of natural listings has evolved as a science over the past ten years, based on an even longer history of document indexing and retrieval history. As with all sciences, there are fundamental principles which apply. So to deliver relevance search engines tend to use common search engine ranking factors.

Enough with the science: get with the ranking factors…

We will soon enough. But before we do here’s a word to the wise: understanding some of the most common ranking factors is straightforward. Keyword: „straightforward‟.

Over the past few years many bedroom cowboys and unethical agencies have raked in fees by pretending that SEO is about wearing a black hat, doing the search voodoo, etc. But there is no need for any smoke or mirrors. If your agency refuses to reveal its techniques to you then our advice would be to move on. Immediately!

Despite the mystique perpetuated about SEO it really isn’t terribly difficult to grasp the concepts.

The difficulty lies in managing your keywords and optimization over the long term. Not in understanding the ranking factors.

Who in my organization needs to know about this stuff?

It is essential for your technology team / agencies to understand these ranking factors. It is also imperative that all content owners / authors / stakeholders understand how good quality content can improve search rankings. Authors need to know which key-phrases to use, otherwise you won’t have a joined up strategy.

Applying simple ‘house style’ rules can help generate visits from qualified visitors. In fact let’s coin a phrase: ‘house strategy’. You need to develop a ‘house strategy guide’ for your authors and editors.

So I can ditch my SEO agency, right?

It depends, is the honest answer. You might be able to, but it is more likely that this guide will inform your search strategy, with you making the calls. But you will still need somebody to manage it (either in-house or outsourced). Ultimately this guide to search marketing is about increasing ROI and maximizing rankings, not about saving costs.

There remains a great need for solid, ethical SEO agencies. Management and optimization is an ongoing task. The bigger your company / market / website, the bigger that task is going to be.

High volume search-terms and intense competition means that applying specific optimization techniques is required to rank well. Ethical SEO agencies can help you with this.

The holy grail of SEO is to achieve a high, stable and long-term presence at the top of the SERPs for phrases which have both high volume and which convert well.

Agencies can also help by putting the brakes on your own enthusiasm, as over-optimization is a leading cause of search engine penalties. Equally, after reading this guide, you should be able to determine if your existing agency is over-egging the SEO cake, or feeding you unsound advice.

Remember that search engines also use ranking penalties for websites / pages. They employ filters within their algorithms that penalise websites for search engine spamming (such as over- optimization of a phrase or non-natural links from other sites8).

Now for the six key ranking factors…

1. Planning and strategy including setting performance targets.

2. Index inclusion and coverage.

3. On-page optimization.

4. Link-building (internal and external).

5. SEO process.

6. Conversion efficiency.

The content of each section are explained further in the section: Structure of this guide on SEO Best Practice.

Of these six areas, those at the heart of search engine ranking are success factors 2, 3 and 4. 

Why?

Well, if your pages are not included within the index then you cannot expect to gain any search engine referrals. Once included, results are dependent on the combination of on-page optimization and link-building.

When we talk about link-building we’re mainly considering third party links, but a solid internal linking structure should be adopted within your own website/s. There are proven benefits.

The hundreds of factors used by the search engines to determine relevance can be simplified into the two most important factors which are essential for good ranking positions:

1. On-page optimization. Matching between the copy on the page to the search terms entered    (the main factors include keyword and synonym matches and density, keyword formatting,    keywords in anchor text and page title tags).

– This is not about spamming or “keyword stuffing”, so be sure not to overdo it.

– Think of it as labeling content in the most appropriate way.

– Headline and link text should reflect the editorial content.

– Human readers should not be able to notice optimization.

2. Link-building. This creates links into a page (inbound or backlinks). The search engine   assesses each link to a page from another page or another site as a vote for this page. Pages    and sites with more inbound links will be ranked more highly.

– It is not just number of links which are important to determining the position, but the quality of links is vital.

– Quality is determined by context, relevancy, and popularity of the linking page, as well as   the link anchor text and adjacent text.

– Not all links are treated equally. One link from an ‘authority’ website may be more valuable   than 100 links from non-contextual websites.

As well as these positive ranking factors which help increase a sites position, there are also spam filters which could reduce a sites position or remove it from the index entirely.

Maximization for SEO

The concept of maximization is often applied to paid-search; indeed Google has ‘maximisers’ or advisors for its larger clients.

This concept can also be applied to SEO, if a balanced approach is used across each of the six success factors we review in this report.