Top 10 Google SEO Ranking Factors.

People don’t really understand that there are many different factors that fall into place when determining where a website ranks in the Google search engine results. Some things to keep in mind when you are wondering why your site doesn’t rank well. It is not always just the obvious reasons that are holding it back. 

Over the past years by reading Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, Google SEO Starter Guide, many other industry blogs and by actually doing professional SEO and internet marketing since the late 1990’s, I have gathered data and come to a boiled down short list of the most important Google search engine ranking factors.

Here is the list of my top 10 of important Google SEO ranking factors to consider:

1. Age of Domain: Age of URL is very important. If you just bought your domain a few weeks or even months ago you have a long road ahead of you. The reality is the age of your website helps build trust. If your website has been online for several years, chances are you have an established business.

2. Domain Hosting: Where is your site hosted? Find out through your hosting company what continent or country your site is hosted in. This can often times play a large role in search rankings. Always use a reputable hosting company. If your company is US based then use a hosting company in the United States. Also, I always recommend a dedicated IP when you can. There are virtual dedicated and cloud hosting solutions that are more affordable. Never use the cheapest hosting. The reality is, if you cannot afford hosting you should re-consider the business…I know this is harsh but very true.

3. Your Neighbors: If you have a virtual server, which sites like Godaddy usually are have been known to house hundreds of websites on one server. Make sure that your neighbors on your server are not classified as spam.

4. URL Structure: Make sure your URL structures are very clean. There should not be any random strings of characters at the end of your URL’s. This is part of the onsite search engine optimization process as well.

5. Content: Content is very important. To start make sure you have text on all your important pages, then make sure it is good text consisting of your targeted keywords spread throughout naturally. Simply put, ALWAYS write your content for humans, your website visitors first and NEVER write content for the solo purpose to achieve Google search engine rankings. Chances are the content will not be user focused or provide value to your visitors.

6. Internal Link Structure: Make sure your inner pages are linked correctly. Visitors should have easy made pathways connecting to your other pages from every page of your website. Make sure the code of your website is verified and keep flash and JavaScript to a minimum, if you can. Essentially make sure the site is clean, easy to use and interlinked to help the user experience.

7. Trust: Do you at least have a mailing address listed on your website? You should if you don’t. Google likes to see trust factors on websites so anything you can add that could help build trust for your audience will benefit your rankings. I always recommend having a phone number on each page of your website. Make it easy for people to do business with you, it all starts with establishing trust and that starts with contact information on your website.

8. Keywords: Make sure your website is optimized using your keywords. This means any alt tags for images, meta page information and existing content at the very least of things. Remember to naturally optimize your website based on the content of each page of your website.

9. Bounce Rate: Although bounce rate might not seem important if Google sees that nobody hangs out on your website for more than a few seconds before they leave this could be a ranking problem over time. Make changes to get visitors engaged with your website. Simple things, like video, newsletter sign up, call to actions, etc will help improve your bounce rate over time. Make sure you have proper tracking on your website, such as Google analytics.

10. Outbound links: Make sure the websites that you link to are 100% relevant to your business and industry. If you sell animals toys but you are linking to a site that sells shoes that is not very relevant and over time could really impact your rankings. Bottom line is if it makes sense to link to another site, then do so, but remember you could be sending your visitors away from your site.

11. Inbound Links: I know this was a list of my top 10, but I felt I had to mention inbound links. The key here (speaking as a white hat SEO person), don’t buy or exchange links. Market and promote your business online to build visitors to your website over time. If you do, then the relevant links will follow!

**Note: As the Google (and yes there are 2 other major search engines!) algorithm changes there are always new ranking factors that come into play, such as the page load time and many others. I am sure when I re-do this list a year from now, there may be another one or two additional factors.

There are many extensive factors that Google uses when determining website rankings. Very important to get these factors correct otherwise you could find yourself just spinning your wheels. The bottom line is it is all about relevancy and earning your visitors (and yes Google’s) search engine trust over time.

25 Most Important SEO Factors & Tips for SEO.

Getting visitors to a website through the search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN is on the priority list of every website owner. Yet, many still do not understand how to position their website high in search engine result pages.

Chances are your competition is well aware of the factors that play a crucial role in the SEO world.

To help every small business owner build a successful presence on the search engine result pages, I’ve compiled the 25 most influential SEO tactics. Employ them into your website and you should see dramatic improvement in your Google rankings.

25 Most Important SEO Factors

1. Keyword use anywhere in title tag – Always start with a thorough keyword research. Each page should always have a unique title tag that is descriptive of what the page is all about. The title tag of your website should not only be easy to read, but should also be written to bring in traffic. While you need your title to be optimized for your main keyword for that specific page, it should not be stuffed with keywords. If you are a business catering to local customers, be sure to include locality in the title tag.

2. Keyword use at the beginning of the title tag – Concentrate on a keyword for which you want to rank well in Google and use it at the very beginning of the title tag. Regardless of what you may think, your company name does not belong there and sometimes should not be used in the title at all. You have a limited number of characters that will be indexed by the search engines so use those well.

3. Keyword focused anchor text from external links – Inbound links from other domains are crucial. Inbound links with your keyword as the anchor text are much, much better. They are highly important for SEO.

4. External link popularity/relevancy – Quantity and quality of external links matter greatly. While every link is like a vote and the more links your page gets the more popular Google considers your site to be, quality trumps quantity. It’s much better to have three highly relevant links to you from other popular related websites than 30 links from unrelated low ranked sites.

5. Diversity of link sources – It is better to have inbound links from many unique root domains. Don’t get all your links from one type of source; make sure you have a healthy blend. 

6. Unique content – Duplicate content is frown upon by the search engines.

7. Fresh content – Adding a dynamic component to your website that will add or change content regularly is a good way to freshen your page. Search engines are like children ever hungry for new information so fresh and relevant content can be very appealing. Add viral aspect and plenty of quality incoming links and you got yourself an authoritative page and will rank well.

8. Authority of the domain – New content on a domain that already has a strong online presence is valued more by the search engines.

9. Keyword in domain name – Having a keyword in the domain name can give you a great SEO edge over your competition.

10. Keyword use in body text – Repeating your keyword(s) throughout the content of the page tells Google what the page is about and how relevant it is to a particular search term. Don’t overdo it; make sure to write for humans first. Bolding important keywords make a difference as well. 

11. Keyword in H1 header tag - Google knows that the most important information on the page is in the header tag. Make sure there is only one H1 tag and optimize it well.

12. Keyword in anchor text for internal links – Having links to a particular page from other pages on its own domain is important. Those links show the search engines that this page is highly valued. Take that further and link with a keyword as the anchor text to give yourself a nice SEO boost.

13. Keyword in anchor text of outbound links – Linking out should be a part of your SEO strategy. If you are not linking out at all you are sending a signal that you are not part of the Internet as a whole. Make sure to only link out to relevant and quality pages and use keyword-rich anchor text. Be smart about your internal & outbound linking strategy.

14. Keyword at the beginning of the page (50-100 words) – Search engines assume that the top of your page contains the most important and relevant information so make sure that you use important and relevant keywords in the first 50-100 words on your page.

15. Keyword in page URL - Google pays attention to sites with keywords in their permalinks. Make sure that your blog is not setup to use session IDs in the URL. It is always better to use descriptive, easier to read and keyword-rich URLs.

16. Keyword use in other headline tags (H2 – H6) – Although less important than H1, other header tags still carry some SEO weight and should not be overlooked.

17. Keyword in alt text for images – Every relevant image should have an alt tag with your keywords mentioned in the tag.

18. Domain age – This one goes along the authority of the domain (#8). Older domains enjoy more credibility then their younger counterparts simply because they are viewed as more trustworthy. Also, spammers often register domains for very short periods of time so it is always a good idea to register a domain for more than just a couple of years.

19. Existence of Meta description tag – Even though having keywords in the Meta description doesn’t impact rankings they can play a significant role in the sites click through rate from the SERPs. The description tag is the paragraph that people will see when your page comes up in the search results, so it should be captivating and designed to attract business. 

20. HTML to text ratio – Bloated code and poor load time are a really bad thing for the search engines. Be sure to use include files to call your scripts wherever possible, and just clean up or take out all of your unnecessary code. You’d be surprised by what you can live without or how much can be called from an external file.

21. Page that is HTML valid to W3C Standards – HTML Validation is not necessary, but running validation is an easy way to catch broken code that can trap spiders.

22. Use of XML Sitemap – The XML site map has become the de facto standard for ensuring all that of your pages get crawled.

23. Permanent 301 Redirects – If you have to change the filename of an existing page or delete it entirely, you have to make sure to redirect both search engine spiders and humans to another page on your site. There are two main reasons for using a 301 redirect: one is to avoid the 404 (page not found) error (search engines do not like sites with broken links and they may see them as not credible), the other is to retain the value of any inbound links you may have obtained for that page.

24. Canonical Issues: the www.vs non www – Google sees subdomains as separate domain names, and the www prefix is just another subdomain. It is important to decide which version to use. You then need to implement the proper rules on your host server (via .htaccess on Apache and its own method for Windows servers) plus set the record straight in Google Webmaster Tools.

25. Neighboring Domains – Having spammers as your IP neighbors can be potentially bad so make sure to buy hosting services from a reputable company.

What have I missed? What else do you employ in your overall SEO strategy?