There are hundreds of factors that influence a website’s ranking in search engines. And the importance of each of these factors will fluctuate depending on the competitiveness of each keyword in a particular search engine.
Google Enterprise general manager – Dave Girouard – says PageRank relies on more than 100 variables, and these factors are carefully guarded secrets to prevent abuse from spammers.
Factors for a website ranking for a given keyword phrase may depend on:
Domain Strength
The age of domain, age of registration, page loading time, duration of current registration, unique IP address, number of pages in index, etc.
Keyword Usage
The keywords used in title tags, header tags, meta description, keywords used in site’s anchor text, keywords in domain URL, keywords and synonyms used in content, keyword proximity on page, etc.
Link Data
The age of incoming links, quality of incoming links, topical relevancy of incoming links, anchor text of incoming links, surrounding copy around anchor text, outbound links to authority websites, etc.
User Data & Content Quality
The number of clicks on your SERP link, time on site, search requests for domain name, number of bookmarks in social media sites, viral content, grade level of content, readability, etc.
Now that you know which factors affect your position in the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages), let’s move on to our On Page SEO Checklist and Off Page SEO Checklist.
