SEOmoz's Biennial Page Ranking Factors 2009 Released - part 1

SEOmoz's biennial Search Engine Ranking Factors is finally launched. Every two years, SEOmoz survey 100 of the industry's top SEO minds. In 2009, 72 SEOs participated in the data gathering process, answering survey questions that consumed hours of time. The resulting document is an amazing aggregation of data about how search engines rank documents and, at least in my opinion, should be read by anyone serious about practicing search engine optimization.

Table of Contents

* 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 External Links
* Geo-Targeting Factors

1-On-Page (keyword-specific) Ranking Factors

1. Keyword Use Anywhere in the Title Tag (66% very high importance).
2. Keyword Use as the First Word(s) of the Title Tag (63% high importance).
3. Keyword Use in the Root Domain Name (e.g. keyword.com -60% high importance).
4. Keyword Use Anywhere in the H1 Headline Tag (49% moderate importance).
5. Keyword Use in Internal Link Anchor Text on the Page (47% moderate importance).
6. Keyword Use in External Link Anchor Text on the Page (46% moderate importance).
7. Keyword Use as the First Word(s) in the H1 Tag (45% moderate importance).
8. Keyword Use in the First 50-100 Words in HTML on the Page (45% moderate importance).
9. Keyword Use in the Subdomain Name (e.g. keyword.seomoz.org - 42% low importance).
10. Keyword Use in the Page Name URL (e.g. seomoz.org/folder/keyword.html - 38% low importance).
11. Keyword Use in the Page Folder URL (e.g. seomoz.org/keyword/page.html -37% low importance).
12. Keyword Use in other Headline Tags (35% low importance).
13. Keyword Use in Image Alt Text ( 33% minimal importance).
14. Keyword Use / Number of Repetitions in the HTML Text on the Page (33% minimal importance).
15. Keyword Use in Image Names Included on the Page (e.g. keyword.jpg - 33% minimal importance).
16. Keyword Use in or Tags (26% minimal importance).
17. Keyword Density Formula (# of Keyword Uses ÷ Total # of Terms on the Page)
(25% minimal importance).
18. Keyword Use in List Items (23% very minimal importance).
19. Keyword Use in the Page’s Query Parameters (e.g. seomoz.org/page.html?keyword)
(22% very minimal importance).
20. Keyword Use in or Tags (21% very minimal importance).
21. Keyword Use in the Meta Description Tag (19% very minimal importance).
22. Keyword Use in the Page’s File Extension (e.g. seomoz.org/page.keyword)
(12% very minimal importance).
23. Keyword Use in Comment Tags in the HTML (6% very minimal importance).
24. Keyword Use in the Meta Keywords Tag (5% very minimal importance).

Comments on On-Page (Keyword-Specific) Ranking Factors:

Andy Beal : Keyword use in external link anchor text is one of the top SEO factors overall. I’ve seen sites rank for competitive keywords—without even mentioning the keyword on-page—simply because of external link text.

Andy Beard – Keyword Use in the Meta Keywords Tag – ignore them unless using a blogging platform which can use the same keywords as tags. Google ignores them.

Christine Churchill – Taking the time to create a good title tag has the biggest payoff of any on-page criteria. Just do it!

Duncan Morris – It’s worth pointing out that even though having keywords in the meta description doesn’t impact rankings they can play a significant role in the sites click through rate from the SERPs.

Peter Wailes – Domain name keyword usage gains most of its strength through what anchor text people are then likely to link to you with, not so much from inherent value, which is lower in my opinion.

Wait for part 2 (On-Page (Non-Keyword) Ranking Factors).
Source: Seomoz

GOOGLE Vs BING - Microsoft Officially Announces its New Search Engine – Bing.Com

Microsoft Officially Announces its New Search Engine – Bing.Com

Microsoft’s official announcement of its new search engine OR decision engine, has created quite a buzz. Bing, which is internally called Kumo is described by Microsoft as – “a new Decision Engine and consumer brand, providing customers with a first step in moving beyond search to help make faster, more informed decisions. “

Essentially, Bing would consists of four vertical search areas that would help users in making purchase decision, planning a trip, researching a health condition or finding a local business. Search results for these areas could be better filtered down into images, videos, shopping, news, maps or travel.

Another way of looking at Bing is as a tool for navigating through the information overload commonly provided by pure web search engine results. According to Steve Ballmer: “When we set out to build Bing, we grounded ourselves in a deep understanding of how people really want to use the Web. Bing is an important first step forward in our long-term effort to deliver innovations in search that enable people to find information quickly and use the information they’ve found to accomplish tasks and make smart decisions.”

Bing will be publicly rolled out come June 3, 2009. Until then, we really couldn’t say whether it’s got what it takes to challenge Google search and its vertical search products. It’s a promising product, no one can deny that fact but until Bing managed to pull a faster, more relevant and useful search results that what Google is already offering, it might just be another alternative search engine which tried to kill Google search but failed.

On a related note, as soon as Bing is rolled out, some Microsoft web products will start carrying the Bing product branding. The new brand portfolio will include the following changes:

* Microsoft’s mapping platform, Virtual Earth, will now be branded as Bing Maps for Enterprise. More information can be found here.
* Technology from Microsoft’s April 2008 acquisition of Farecast is now a central part of Bing Travel. More information can be found here.
* Microsoft’s popular cashback program, now dubbed Bing cashback, with more than 850 merchants and more than 17 million products available, will be fully integrated into the Bing Shopping experience.

Watch out for this link on June 3, as Bing goes live to the public. In the meantime, you may want to read some more about Bing Decision Enginehere.
Source SEJ

Analysis For Incoming Traffic From Search Queries Is A Gold Mine

Commenting on the previous post: search queries with 8+ words continue to rise
I decided to analyze my search quires because it drew my attention that any of the visits that I receive are a result of four-word search quires or more.
The visits on my blog (e-marketing strategies) were analyzed last week and noticed that my blog appears as a result of the search with the following quires:
1- Google EG : “Retail Statistics Egypt”.
2- Google SA : “Blogsphere.jeeran.com” (check my article: Egyptian Bloggers Full Statistics - Part 1)

There are more than three-word search quires such as:
Google NL : “marketing penetration middle east.” The result of this search is this article: MIDDLE EAST vs GLOBAL INTERNET PENETRATION


Of course that is so far from what the visitor desired to find; as he wanted data about marketing in the Middle East and therefore he didn't stay on the blog for more than a minute. That gave me the idea to improve the content of the articles, since it appeared in the results of that search term. More attention is required for the articles concerned with "marketing in the middle east"; especially after the economic crisis and the need to search for markets all over the world.

More examples of the search quires are:
1-Google UK : “facebooks e-marketing strategies.”
2-Google USA : “e-marketer objections.”

The search quire that contained eight-words is:
Google EG: “statistics about number of internet bloggers in Egypt ”

To sum all that we may say that since the search quires increase, then the visitor needs more specified information, and needs more specified and regional articles than before. That is the reason of using four or eight words per search quire.
The visitor might not find his quest in your article this time, but definitely he will find it next time he visits your blog because you now know the requirements of your reader. It is your job now to use the chance and introduce the content that the reader seeks, especially that you come up in the results under the search terms he uses.

Last week, I analyzed the search quires and found that the field of marketing in Egypt and the Middle East is so vague (especially to foreigners). More information is required about that field, and hence I will concentrate my efforts on articles, statistics and presumptive figures about marketing in Egypt and applying it online.
One of the reasons that infused this idea is that my article (Egyptian bloggers full statistics) is read more than any of my other articles. That article was written in Arabic and was based on a research from the Centre of Decision Making - the Cabinet of Ministers. This article is highly read because of the lack of information about blogging in Egypt and the Middle East.
The bottom line is: analyze your Keywords and create a new content according to the search quires that your article appears in its results.

Seven Steps to Successful SEO

Search Engine Optimization Process

2 Ways To Get Google Traffic Indirectly To Your Website

Google is the most popular search engine. Thousands of searches are made each day on Google alone. Google is also a fast search engine, contains billions of pages and delivers good results. It's true that there are fluctuations in Google but that's the nature of search engines. It can be normal fluctuations or an algorithm change which can alter the search engine result pages.

You can enjoy top search engine rankings for quite a long time with Google but it can happen that you might suffer from a drop in rankings which can be temporary usually because of a glitch or these can also be permanent if you're banned mostly attributed to black hat seo techniques. I've seen all these things on Google and the best thing to do is not to panic right away. Your rankings can come back with time. I've even experienced rankings recovery after 2-3 months without changing anything.

What you should do is always find other ways of driving traffic to your websites like article writing and submission, doing valuable reciprocal link exchanges with related and relevant sites as these alone can bring traffic. Imagine you get a valuable reciprocal link on a related site which brings you five targeted visitors per day, now say you have 10 such links, you already receive 50 targeted visitors a day and 1500 monthly targeted visitors.

If you focus on some article promotion initially, you can at least give your site some value as far as traffic is concerned. As a result, you have better chances in getting targeted reciprocal links. You have to offer something similar in return to your link partners. Some people are saying reciprocal links have no value at all and they are removing them from their pages but targeted and reciprocal links with similar sites are still of great value. The Internet is an interconnection of websites and you have websites linking to each other to form the web. You can find a valuable website from another website. You click here and you are there and so on. Each link you have has the potential to give you traffic. Of course a homepage reciprocal link is definitely better and a reciprocal link in content articles is also great. These are some sort of partnerships you can potentially make with other webmasters. Just need to be creative.

If we consider the traffic generation ways above like article promotion and reciprocal link exchanges, you have to realise that you can get Google traffic by using these methods. With article promotion, if your article ranks high in another website, and people find your article, they can potentially click on your link in your author bio and gives you visitors. With reciprocal links, if a user finds your partner's website and happens to see your link say on the homepage or on a content page or even a link directory, you've got a visitor.

In my hosting stats, I saw visitors coming directly from my articles on other sites and visitors coming from my partners' websites mostly from homepages. You can still get Google traffic although not direct searches to your site but still it's good traffic. We can call that indirect Google traffic. When going after indirect Google traffic, you are at the same time working on your offpage search engine optimization meaning securing inbound links. With an article, you can get an inbound link with anchor text and with a homepage reciprocal link partnership or content article reciprocal link partnership, same thing.

Not only will these techniques get you indirect Google traffic but they can give you some boost in your search engine rankings for your keyword phrases or at least gives you a solid foundation in link popularity. Once you get some links to your site, you have high chances to get your website indexed in the first place which is the initial step in search engine marketing. If you're not indexed, you can't rank for anything.

Source: Free Articles from ArticlesFactory.com

Top 2 Ways To Get Higher Rankings in Major Search Engines

Top 10 search engine rankings. Everybody wants it but a few achieve it. Search engines have always been an important source of traffic for many marketers. Achieving high search engine rankings should be one of your goals because it can be profitable in the long run.

But what is it that prevent some people from obtaining their coveted rankings?
It's true that some years ago, getting high rankings was very easy. You could just set up a site, heavily optimize it on the page itself and bam, you can appear in the top listings quickly and easily.
Nowadays, this has totally changed. It is becoming more and more difficult to secure and even maintain good rankings on the major search engine result pages(SERPs) like Google and Yahoo. Some of the reasons are:

(1) Competition

There is more and more competition. More and more websites are popping out everyday and everyone is trying to promote their websites, hence increasing pages and websites in the SERPs. An example, Google has more than 8 billion pages now in its index.

(2) Search Engine Algorithm Change

With the search engine algorithm changing, it can become more complex to figure out how to get top rankings or maintain your existing ones.

(3) Search Engines Are More Severe

Doing any foolish mistake with your site can be costly. You should be careful what you are doing when promoting your site. For eg, you can have hidden text or links on your site without you knowing and you can be penalized.
If it's not a mistake, you could be linking to websites that aren't good anymore, hence devaluing your site.
What should you do? Well, you can't do anything about competition neither algorithm change but you need to monitor who you link to and ensure that your site is clean everytime. And above all, links on as many similar and related sites are still highly valuable to get top rankings and you should constantly get them regularly because that's the core building block of good placement in the SERPs no matter what and to outrank your competition, that's what you should do. And you can be sure that good quality links will still be important in every algorithm change.

Here are top 2 ways to get links to your site and higher rankings in major search engines:

(1) Reciprocal Links:

It's being said that reciprocal links are decreasing in value but still though, they are worth getting. If you are exchanging links with sites which are of similar or related topics, it can do you more good than harm. So don't stop getting these type of links. A link is a link and it will benefit you in many ways you can imagine. A link will not only help you in better search engine placement but you will get traffic from that link alone.
I know that because I get lots of traffic from my link partners alone. If you can get one on the homepage, it's even better. So don't underestimate reciprocal linking. They still work. Many sites with high search engine positioning have reciprocal links to them, so they are still of great value. The web is simply a network of websites linking to each other in a way. Links are what form the internet.

(2) One-way Links:

On the other hand, one-way links are best because they are independent votes. Other websites link to you without linking back. Well these type of links are harder to get.
Some good ways to get them are:
(i) Build a useful site and allow others to link to you freely by providing them with the necessary materials like text links or banners. Text links are better because you can include your targeted keywords in them. Some people will even link to you just because your site has good content and will find a way to link to you usually just by taking your homepage title. I've seen that.
(ii) Buy some text advertising on other quality related sites. This will give you traffic and automatically benefit you in your rankings.
(iii) Write articles of interest to your audience and submit them to other websites which accept articles. In your author bylines, you have a link to your site. Well this will certainly help your traffic, link popularity and rankings. But to boost your rankings better, check out section (iv) which reveals how to use the article marketing strategy to get one-way inbound links with your targeted keyword in your anchor text.
(iv) Create a section on your site allowing others to re-publish your articles. Provide them with the exact html code so that they can just copy and paste that code on their sites easily. Don't forget to mention that the article and author bio should not be modified in any way if it's used. Hence by facilitating their tasks, you can be sure to get your articles distributed on the web much more faster.
In your author bylines, be sure to put an anchor text with your targeted keyword in the link to your site. This is how an author bylines can be extremely beneficial for your rankings. This is not just a url but a keyword targeted url. Imagine your reprint article page gets decent traffic, you increase your chances to get some people interested to re-publish your work on the net. With time, you will boost your link popularity and get higher rankings.
Well you work hard to produce quality content and it can pay itself many times over. One article can be published on hundreds of websites and if your url is automatically coded with an anchor text containing your targeted keyword, you will have 100 one-way keyword-rich inbound links. Now what's the value of that? I let you figure it out.
Getting high search engine rankings takes time, work and patience but if you are serious about your business and you are here to stay for long, you should devote some of your time everyday doing some search engine promotion. In the long run, you are going to reap the rewards of your on-going work.
Source: Free Articles from ArticlesFactory.com
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
This article can be freely published on a website as long as it's not modified in any way including the author bylines, plus the hyperlink must be made active just like below.
Jean Lam is the author of the highly acclaimed eBook "Top Search Engine Ranking Secrets in Google Revealed", a concise, step-by-step guide to high search engine ranking for the beginner to intermediate level webmaster.

10 Ways To Indirectly Get To The Top Of Search Engines!

There are millions of web sites trying to get listed in the top 20 spots of the major search engines.

That amounts to a lot of competition! I say if you can't get listed at the top, indirectly get to the top.

How do you do this? Look up the top 20 websites on the major search engines under the keywords and phrases people would find your web site.

The key would be to then advertise on those web sites.The most expensive way would be to buy ad spaceon those web sites. If you don't want to spend anymoney, you could use the ten strategies below.

These strategies may not apply to every web site.

1. Participate on their discussion boards. You could post questions, answer other peoples questions, and join in on conversations. Just include your signature file and link at the end of your messages.

2. Ask the web site owner if they would like a free e-book to giveaway to their visitors. You could have them link to your web site or include your ad in the free ebook.

3. Submit content to their web site. You could write articles for their web site and include your resource box and link at the end of the article. If they publishit, you'll indirectly be at the top of the search engines.

4. Write an excellent article review of their web site,products or services. Then publish the review on your web site. E-mail the web site owner and tell him orher about it. They may link to your web site so their visitors read it.

5. Ask the owner of the web site if they would want to trade advertising. If you don't get as much trafficas they do, you could throw in some extra incentives.

6. Propose a cross promotion deal with the web site.You both could promote each others products orservices together in one package deal. This means amention and link back to your web site.

7. Give the web site a testimonial for their product orservice. Include a little text link for your web site with the testimonial. You never know; it could end up on their ad copy.

8. Post your advertisement on their free classified adsection on their web site. You want to be sure you have an attractive headline so they will read your ad.

9. Post your text link on their free-for-all links page.You want to go back and post your link regularly soit stays towards the top.

10. Sign their guest books. You could leave a short compliment about their web site on their guest book. Just include your signature file and link at the end of your message.

Source: Free Articles from ArticlesFactory.com
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Larry Dotson.