A List Of More Than 100 SEO Ranking Factors

Jess Hall

We’ve talked a lot about search engine optimization and what it takes to get a site ranking for important search terms (otherwise known as keywords). We’ve even mentioned the “thousands of ranking factors” that determine how a search engine like Google will rank your site as compared to your competitors. Now, we’re sharing our top 100+ so you can see just how complicated SEO really is!

Remember, these aren’t all the ranking factors Google uses. In fact, Google doesn’t share most of them, so we spend a lot of time researching and speculating about what works and what might be changing soon so we can keep our sites on top.

Without further ado, and in no particular order, here are more than 100 of the things we consider when optimizing a site for search:

1. Page titles that incorporate keywords
   
2. Placement of the keywords in page titles
   
3. Meta description length and search term usage
   
4. H1 tags that include keywords
   
5. Search terms used often but not excessively throughout content
   
6. Domain rank
   
7. Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) terms used in content
   
8. Content length
   
9. Page load speed
   
10. Domain name
    
11. Domain age
    
12. Whois information
    
13. Image tags, including alt-text and file names
    
14. Keyword prominence; whether it appears within the first 100 words of text
    
15. Page rank
    
16. Exact match versus synonyms and phrase match for search terms
    
17. Outbound link quality
    
18. Number of outbound links
    
19. Number of internal links
    
20. Quality of internal links
    
21. Broken links within the site
    
22. URL path (better to be closer to the homepage)
    
23. Keywords in the URL
    
24. Bullets and lists
    
25. Age of the page (and the whole site)
    
26. Site architecture
    
27. User-friendly design
    
28. Frequency of site updates
    
29. Sitemap layout
    
30. Server location
    
31. Breadcrumb navigation
    
32. Mobile optimization and responsive web design
    
33. Use of Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools
    
34. User reviews on sites top and industry niched review sites
    
35. Quality of in-bound links
    
36. Number of in-bound links
    
37. Authority of referring pages
    
38. Quality of guest posts and links in guest posts
    
39. No-follow links
    
40. Contextual links versus directory links
    
41. Backlink anchor text
    
42. Link location in content
    
43. Link location on page
    
44. Relevancy of backlinks
    
45. Negative link velocity
    
46. Social signals
    
47. Schema markup and microformats
    
48. DMOZ listings
    
49. Number of outbound links on a page linking back to your site
    
50. Word count of linking content
    
51. Sitewide links
    
52. Quality of linking content
    
53. Organic click through rate for a given search term
    
54. Repeat traffic
    
55. Direct traffic
    
56. Bounce rate
    
57. Exit rate
    
58. Bookmarks in Google Chrome
    
59. Number of comments
    
60. Number of social shares
    
61. How many pages users visit on your site
    
62. How long users spend on your site
    
63. Local search rankings and performance
    
64. Google+ links
    
65. Google maps listings
    
66. Authority of social accounts
    
67. “Votes” on social sharing sites like Reddit and Stumbleupon
    
68. Pinterest pins
    
69. Authorship connected to your page or blog articles
    
70. Site level social signals
    
71. Branded anchor text in backlinks
    
72. Official LinkedIn company page for the site
    
73. Official Facebook and Twitter profiles
    
74. Mentions on news sites
    
75. Citation listings in relevant directories
    
76. Over-optimization on-site
    
77. Over-optimization off-site
    
78. Ads above the fold
    
79. Pop-ups and other things that violate best practices for user experience
    
80. Cloaked links
    
81. Keyword stuffing in content
    
82. Keyword stuffing in meta tags
    
83. Affiliate links on your site
    
84. An unnatural influx of backlinks
    
85. Links from the same C-class IP
    
86. “Poison” anchor text (phrases that have to do with drugs, gambling, or similar)
    
87. Selling backlinks
    
88. Penalties and site health in Webmaster Tools
    
89. Keywords in the domain
    
90. Country code in a top-level domain
    
91. Keywords used in H2, H3, H4, etc.
    
92. Related terms used on site
    
93. Long-tail keywords in use
    
94. Duplicate content
    
95. Canonical tags
    
96. Frequency of page updates over time
    
97. Grammar and spelling
    
98. Multimedia content, including images and videos
    
99. Content syndication
    
100. HTML errors and messy code
     
101. Matching name, address, and phone data across many citations
     
102. Accessible contact information

Are you struggling to do your own SEO and getting nowhere? Even Google says that search engine optimization is best left to the experts. Give us a call and we’ll give your rankings a boost!

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