SEO Ranking Factors – What Really Helps Web Pages Rank In Search Engines

I first discovered Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) about ten years ago completely by accident. Looking at the stats for a music website, I was surprised to see that monthly visitor numbers had rocketed thanks to just one page.

It was a page that featured an interview with punk rock legends, The Vibrators. It probably won’t surprise you to know that most of those visitors weren’t looking to buy their new album. In fact, they weren’t looking for a music website at all. Nudge nudge, wink wink. But find my site via the search engines they did.

Since making that chance discovery, I’ve been using SEO techniques to promote my websites via search engines.

As anyone involved in SEO will tell you, it’s a never ending game. You can never rest of your laurels. The search industry is always evolving and you need to evolve with it if you are to prosper long-term.

I came across an interesting graphic the other day called The Periodic Table Of SEO Ranking Factors which is on one of my favourite SEO related websites, SearchEngineLand. The graphic illustrates the major factors that contribute to search engine ranking success, and since some of those factors are more important than others, it also ranks them from 1 (weakest or least important) to 3 (strongest or most important).

Like it says in the blurb, SEO is a science, but it is far from an exact science. That’s because the algorithms used by search engines to rank websites are a closely guarded secret. That said, there are key SEO elements that are known to work and The Periodic Table Of SEO Ranking Factors sums them up very nicely indeed.

One of my first thoughts was that scoring each element from 1 to 3 doesn’t really underline the difference in importance between some elements. A score from 1 to 10 might be more appropriate, but, thinking about it, a score from 1 to 10 would send the wrong signal. It would imply that much more was publicly known about search algorithms than is the case whereas a score from 1 to 3 is a more honest approach to take. So kudos to the creators for not falling into the trap I would have slipped into.

For example, under offline SEO, there are three elements relating to links. For me, the importance of Link Quality (LQ) outweighs Link Numbers (LN) by a factor far greater than 3 to 1. That’s because the latter is easily manipulated (a whole cottage industry has grown up offering “link-building” services to do just that). But the score on the Periodic Table aren’t really telling you any different. A +3 for quality just means it is the strongest of signals, while a +1 for number of links is a +1 (the weakest of signals).

A few areas that I would beg to differ on are as follows:

Under HTML, I would only give Description Meta Tags (HD) a +1, but would definitely agree that Title Tags are a +3 and one of the strongest +3s too.

Under Architecture, I would add an AD for exact match domain name. This could come under AU (urls), but I think it is important enough to stand on its own two feet. Although positive, I would struggle to give it more than a +1 today (a few years ago I would have said +2). The impact of exact match domain names has definitely been exaggerated, but in truth, most exact match domains that rank well do so as part of a bigger picture. Those who use them for SEO tend to employ other SEO techniques too (intentionally or otherwise) and yet some are far too quick to pin their success on the domain name alone.

The reason I believe a domain name’s importance to SEO has drifted from a +2 to a +1 is simply because it has become so overused in certain circles, including by many of the “thin” affiliate sites hit by the recent Google Panda updates.

Social networks have become increasingly important to our online lives over the last few years and so it is little wonder that search engines have turned to them for signals as to what content deserves to be ranked highly. I personally believe that social shares (SS) will become of almost no importance though because of the scope for manipulation. Again, as with links, it is so open to abuse that the number of shares very quickly becomes meaningless. That means though that social reputation (SR) can only gain in importance.

In terms of trust, it was surprising to see Trust History (TH) scoring just +1. The length of time a website has been online can be very important, particularly when coupled with other SEO techniques. To me, it’s a +3 element all day long.

I also wouldn’t have awarded a -1 to Blocking Total (BT), the number of people who have blocked your site from search engine results. This is something that can so easily be manipulated that I can’t see it having any real impact on your ranking. It would be all too easy for a competing website to orchestrate a campaign of blocking against its rivals.

The above are only minor adjustments to one of the clearest explanations of SEO ranking factors I have ever come across. Others involved in SEO will have their own tweaks to make, but as graphics go, it’s definitely one for the office noticeboard.

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My book, Get Out While You Can, is available now from Amazon. It contains a chapter on SEO.

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