I had put up a post earlier on the Top 10 SEO Ranking Factors based on the Search Engine Ranking Factors guide Version Two by SEOmoz. Now Carsten of Search Engine Journal has brought out a simplified version of the much more extensive version based on the opinions of the 37 experts, who are considered leaders in the world of organic search engine optimization.

The simplified version will hopefully catch the eyes of the not so tech savvy people as it is very simple to understand and alongwith a little bit of research on SEO, they would be much better off than what they were before reading Carsten’s version.

# Type Factor Importance Consensus
1 Keyword Keyword Use in Title Tag High Yes
2 Site Global Link Popularity of Site High Yes
3 In-Link Anchor Text of Inbound Link High Yes
4 Page Link Popularity within the Site’s Internal Link Structure High Yes
5 Site Age of Site High Somewhat
6 Site Topical Relevance of Inbound Links to Site High Somewhat
7 Site Link Popularity of Site in Topical Community High Somewhat
8 Negative Server is Often Inaccessible to Bots High No
9 Keyword Keyword Use in Body Text High Somewhat
10 In-Link Global Link Popularity of Linking Site High No
11 Negative Content Very Similar or Duplicate of Existing Content in the Index High Somewhat
12 Page Quality/Relevance of Links to External Sites/Pages High Somewhat
13 Site Rate of New Inbound Links to Site High Somewhat
14 In-Link Topical Relationship of Linking Page High Somewhat
15 In-Link Link Popularity of Site in Topical Community High Somewhat
16 Negative External Links to Low Quality/Spam Sites High Somewhat
17 Keyword Relationship of Body Text Content to Keywords (Topic Analysis) High Somewhat
18 Keyword Keyword Use in H1 Tag High Somewhat
19 Page Age of Document High Somewhat
20 Negative Duplicate Title/Meta Tags on Many Pages High No
21 Negative Participation in Link Schemes or Actively Selling Links High No
22 Negative Overuse of Targeted Keywords (Stuffing/Spamming) High Somewhat
23 Page Amount of Indexable Text Content High Somewhat
24 Site Relevance of Site’s Primary Subject Matter to Query High No
25 In-Link Topical Relationship of Linking Site High Somewhat
26 In-Link Age of Link High Somewhat
27 In-Link Text Surrounding the Link High Yes
28 Keyword Keyword Use in Domain Name Medium Somewhat
29 Page Quality of the Document Content (as measured algorithmically) Medium No
30 In-Link Internal Link Popularity of Linking Page within Host Site/Domain Medium Somewhat
31 Keyword Keyword Use in Page URL Medium Somewhat
32 Keyword Keyword Use in H2, H3, H(x) Tags Medium Somewhat
33 Page Organization/Hierarchy of Document Flow (i.e. broad > narrow) Medium Somewhat
34 Negative Very Slow Server Response Times Medium Somewhat
35 Site Historical Performance of Site as Measured by Time Spent on Page, Clickthroughs from SERPs, Direct Visits, Bookmarks, etc. Medium Somewhat
36 Site Manual Authority/Weight Given to Site by Google Medium No
37 Keyword Keyword Use in Alt Tags and Image Titles Medium Yes
38 Site TLD Extension of Site (edu, gov, us, ca, com, etc) Medium Somewhat
39 Site Rate of New Pages Added to Site Medium Somewhat
40 In-Link Domain Extension of Linking Site (edu, gov, com, ca, co.uk, etc) Medium Somewhat
41 In-Link PageRank (as measured by the GG Toolbar) of Linking Page Medium Somewhat
42 In-Link Temporal Link Attributes (when in time the link was created/updated) Medium Somewhat
43 Keyword Keyword Use in Bold/Strong Tags Medium Somewhat
44 Page Frequency of Updates to Page Medium Somewhat
45 Negative Inbound Links from Spam Sites Medium Somewhat
46 Keyword Keyword Use in Meta Description Tag Medium Somewhat
47 Negative Low Levels of Visitors to the Site (Measured via Toolbar, Clicks in SERPs, etc.) Medium Somewhat
48 Site Number of Queries for Site/Domain over Time Low Somewhat
49 Page Number of Trailing Slashes (/) in URL Low Somewhat
50 Page Accuracy of Spelling & Grammar Low Somewhat
51 Page HTML Validation of Document (to W3C Standards) Low Yes
52 Site Verification of Site with Google Webmaster Central Low Yes
53 Keyword Keyword Use in Meta Keywords Tag Low Yes

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