Search Engine Rankings & Algorithms

October 9, 2006

Search Ranking Factors

Let’s have a quick look at a report by SeoMoz who have grouped together some of SEO’s finest brains to break down various on-page and off-page ranking factors.

The top ten ranking factors are as follows (rankings out of 5):

Title Tag - 4.57
Anchor Text of Links - 4.46
Keyword Use in Document Text - 4.38
Accessibility of Document - 4.3
Links to Document from Site-Internal Pages - 4.15
Primary Subject Matter of Site - 4.00
External Links to Linking Pages - 3.92
Link Popularity of Site in Topical Community - 3.77
Global Link Popularity of Site - 3.69
Keyword Spamming - 3.69

A thoroughly informative read and I really like the stats and evaluation. There are no surprises for the top 10 – although I am somewhat surprised that H1 tags were not considered of higher value.

Google’s Ranking Algoritm Explained

Secondly, courtesy of SeoMoz (again…) - Google’s ranking algorithm explained nice and simple in easy to grasp maths!

GoogScore = (KW Usage Score * 0.3) + (Domain Strength * 0.25) + (Inbound Link Score * 0.25) + (User Data * 0.1) + (Content Quality Score * 0.1) + (Manual Boosts) - (Automated & Manual Penalties)

Yes, this is a simple maths formula in comparison to traditional page rank algorithms articles.

Again I really like the stats and its simplicity. It ties in nicely with SeoMoz’s ranking factors and although not an exact science, if you understand all that and have found a place for it to sit in your brain, you won’t go far wrong !