SEO Mentor

SEOMoz recently came out with the new 2009 Search Engine Ranking Factors report that is full of some great insights on what the search engines are looking at with the algorithms. Now you can disagree with all or some of what the report represents but you have to admit that it is a great report regardless.

You can find the full report at http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors#ranking-factors

Here is what SEOMoz says about their report:

The following ranking factors were rated by our panel of 72 SEO experts. Their feedback is aggregated and averaged into the percentage scores below. For each, we’ve calculated the degree to which the experts felt this factor was important for achieving high rankings as well as the degree of variance in opinion, estimated using the standard deviation of the contributors’ answers. Thus, factors that are high in importance and low in contention are those where experts agree the most that the factor is critical to rankings.

The Search Engine Ranking Factors in the report focuses on the following factors in regards to SEO:

• On-Page (Keyword-Specific) Ranking Factors
• On-Page (Non-Keyword) Ranking Factors
• Page-Specific Link Popularity Ranking Factors
• Site-Wide Link-Based Ranking Factors
• Site-Wide (non-link based) Ranking Factors
• Social Media/Social Graph Based Ranking Factors
• Usage Data Ranking Factors
• Negative Ranking Factors
• Factors Negatively Affecting the Value of an External Link
• Geo-Targeting Factors

The scale that the results are based on is by importance:

65% – 100% = very high importance

0% – 24% = very minimal importance

So you might be wondering what my thoughts about the report are. Well I like what I see and am very impressed with the list of SEO experts that have all been surveyed. I really like how the report is presented. I do not agree with everything but for the most part I agree with what I see in the report.

It is obvious that external linking is still one of the most important factors in how the search engines rank web pages. Russell Jones said:

“Russell Jones – The Link is King. All Hail the Link.”

Make sure you check out the Search Engine Ranking Factors Report today and see where you are with your optimization efforts.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 1st, 2009 at 1:50 pm and is filed under SEO. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Tags: Algorithms, Factors, On-Page, Rankings, Report, Search Engine Ranking Factors, Search Engine Ranking Factors Report, Search Engines, SEO experts, SEOmoz