You probably already know that Google uses about 200 ranking factors in their algorithm…
But what the heck are they?
Well today you’re in for a treat because I’ve put together a complete list.
Some are proven.
Some are controversial.
Others are SEO nerd speculation.
But they’re all here.
Bonus: Download a free checklist that will show you how to tap into the 10 most important Google ranking factors listed here.
Domain Factors
“The difference between a domain that’s six months old versus one year old is really not that big at all.”.
In other words, they do use domain age…but it’s not very important.
2. Keyword Appears in Top Level Domain: Doesn’t
give the boost that it used to, but having your keyword in the domain
still acts as a relevancy signal. After all, they still bold keywords
that appear in a domain name.
3. Keyword As First Word in Domain: A
domain that starts with their target keyword has an edge over sites
that either don’t have the keyword in their domain or have the keyword
in the middle or end of their domain.
“Valuable (legitimate) domains are
often paid for several years in advance, while doorway (illegitimate)
domains rarely are used for more than a year. Therefore, the date when a
domain expires in the future can be used as a factor in predicting the
legitimacy of a domain”.
5. Keyword in Subdomain Name: Moz’s 2011 panel agreed that a keyword appearing in the subdomain can boost rankings:
6. Domain History:
A site with volatile ownership (via whois) or several drops may tell
Google to “reset” the site’s history, negating links pointing to the
domain.
7. Exact Match Domain: EMDs may still give you an edge…if it’s a quality site. But if the EMD happens to be a low-quality site, it’s vulnerable to the
EMD update:
8. Public vs. Private WhoIs: Private WhoIs information may be a sign of “something to hide”. Matt Cutts
is quoted as stating at Pubcon 2006:
“…When I checked the whois on them, they
all had “whois privacy protection service” on them. That’s relatively
unusual. …Having whois privacy turned on isn’t automatically bad, but
once you get several of these factors all together, you’re often talking
about a very different type of webmaster than the fellow who just has a
single site or so.”
9. Penalized WhoIs Owner: If
Google identifies a particular person as a spammer it makes sense that
they would scrutinize other sites owned by that person.
10. Country TLD extension: Having
a Country Code Top Level Domain (.cn, .pt, .ca) helps the site rank for
that particular country…but limits the site’s ability to rank globally.
Page-Level Factors
11. Keyword in Title Tag: The
title tag is a webpage’s second most important piece of content
(besides the content of the page) and therefore sends a strong
on-page SEO signal.
12. Title Tag Starts with Keyword: According to
Moz data, title tags that starts with a keyword tend to perform better than title tags with the keyword towards the end of the tag:
13. Keyword in Description Tag: Another relevancy signal. Not especially important now, but still makes a difference.
14. Keyword Appears in H1 Tag: H1 tags are a “second title tag” that sends another relevancy signal to Google, according to results from
this correlation study:
15. Keyword is Most Frequently Used Phrase in Document: Having a keyword appear more than any other likely acts as a relevancy signal.
16. Content Length: Content with more words can cover a wider breadth and are likely preferred to shorter superficial articles. SERPIQ found that
content length correlated with SERP position:
17. Keyword Density: Although not as important as it
once was, keyword density is still something Google uses to determine
the topic of a webpage. But going overboard can hurt you.
18. Latent Semantic Indexing Keywords in Content (LSI):
LSI keywords help search engines extract meaning from words with more
than one meaning (Apple the computer company vs. the fruit). The
presence/absence of LSI probably also acts as a content quality signal.
19. LSI Keywords in Title and Description Tags: As
with webpage content, LSI keywords in page meta tags probably help
Google discern between synonyms. May also act as a relevancy signal.
20. Page Loading Speed via HTML: Both
Google and
Bing
use page loading speed as a ranking factor. Search engine spiders can
estimate your site speed fairly accurately based on a page’s code and
filesize.
21. Duplicate Content: Identical content on the same site (even slightly modified) can
negatively influence a site’s search engine visibility.
22. Rel=Canonical: When
used properly, use of this tag may prevent Google from considering pages duplicate content.
23. Page Loading Speed via Chrome:
Google may also use Chrome user data to get a better handle on a page’s
loading time as this takes into account server speed, CDN usage and
other non HTML-related site speed signals.
24. Image Optimization: Images
on-page send search engines important relevancy signals through their
file name, alt text, title, description and caption.
25. Recency of Content Updates: Google Caffeine
update favors recently updated content, especially for time-sensitive
searches. Highlighting this factor’s importance, Google shows the date
of a page’s last update for certain pages:
26. Magnitude of Content Updates:
The significance of edits and changes is also a freshness factor.
Adding or removing entire sections is a more significant update than
switching around the order of a few words.
27. Historical Updates Page Updates:
How often has the page been updated over time? Daily, weekly, every
5-years? Frequency of page updates also play a role in freshness.
28. Keyword Prominence: Having a keyword appear in the first 100-words of a page’s content appears to be a significant relevancy signal.
29. Keyword in H2, H3 Tags: Having your keyword appear as a subheading in H2 or H3 format may be another weak relevancy signal. Moz’s panel agrees:
30. Keyword Word Order: An
exact match of a searcher’s keyword in a page’s content will generally
rank better than the same keyword phrase in a different order. For
example: consider a search for: “cat shaving techniques”. A page
optimized for the phrase “cat shaving techniques” will rank better than a
page optimized for “techniques for shaving a cat”. This is a good
illustration of why
keyword research is really,
really important.
31. Outbound Link Quality: Many SEOs think that linking out to authority sites helps send trust signals to Google.
32. Outbound Link Theme: According to Moz,
search engines may use the content of the pages you link to as a
relevancy signal. For example, if you have a page about cars that links
to movie-related pages, this may tell Google that your page is about the
movie Cars, not the automobile.
33. Grammar and Spelling: Proper grammar and spelling is a quality signal, although
Cutts gave mixed messages in 2011 on whether or not this was important.
34. Syndicated Content:
Is the content on the page original? If it’s scraped or copied from an
indexed page it won’t rank as well as the original or end up in their
Supplemental Index.
35. Helpful Supplementary Content: According to a
now-public Google Rater Guidelines Document,
helpful supplementary content is an indicator of a page’s quality (and
therefore, Google ranking). Examples include currency converters, loan
interest calculators and interactive recipes.
36. Number of Outbound Links: Too many dofollow OBLs may “leak” PageRank, which can hurt that page’s rankings.
37. Multimedia: Images, videos and other multimedia elements may act as a content quality signal.
38. Number of Internal Links Pointing to Page: The number of internal links to a page indicates its importance relative to other pages on the site.
39. Quality of Internal Links Pointing to Page: Internal links from authoritative pages on domain have a stronger effect than pages with no or low PR.
40. Broken Links: Having
too many broken links on a page may be a sign of a neglected or
abandoned site. The Google Rater Guidelines Document uses broken links
as one was to assess a homepage’s quality.
41. Reading Level: There’s no doubt that Google estimates the reading level of webpages. In fact, Google used to give you reading level stats:
But what they do with that information is
up for debate. Some say that a basic reading level will help you rank
better because it will appeal to the masses. But others associate a
basic reading level with content mills like Ezine Articles.
42. Affiliate Links:
Affiliate links themselves probably won’t hurt your rankings. But if you
have too many, Google’s algorithm may pay closer attention to other
quality signals to make sure you’re not a “thin affiliate site”.
43. HTML errors/W3C validation:
Lots of HTML errors or sloppy coding may be a sign of a poor quality
site. While controversial, many in SEO think that WC3 validation is a
weak quality signal.
44. Page Host’s Domain Authority: All things being equal, a page on an authoritative domain will rank higher than a page on a domain with less authority.
45. Page’s PageRank: Not perfectly correlated. But in general higher PR pages tend to rank better than low PR pages.
47. URL Path: A page closer to the homepage may get a slight authority boost.
48. Human Editors: Although never confirmed, Google has filed
a patent for a system that allows human editors to influence the SERPs.
49. Page Category: The
category the page appears on is a relevancy signal. A page that’s part
of a closely related category should get a relevancy boost compared to a
page that’s filed under an unrelated or less related category.
50. WordPress Tags: Tags are WordPress-specific relevancy signal. According to
Yoast.com:
“The only way it improves your SEO
is by relating one piece of content to another, and more specifically a
group of posts to each other”
51. Keyword in URL: Another important relevancy signal.
52. URL String: The categories in the URL string are read by Google and may provide a thematic signal to what a page is about:
53. References and Sources:
Citing references and sources, like research papers do, may be a sign
of quality. The Google Quality Guidelines states that reviewers should
keep an eye out for sources when looking at certain pages: “This is a
topic where expertise and/or authoritative sources are important…”.
However,
Google has denied that they use external links as a ranking signal.
54. Bullets and Numbered Lists: Bullets
and numbered lists help break up your content for readers, making them
more user friendly. Google likely agrees and may prefer content with
bullets and numbers.
55. Priority of Page in Sitemap: The priority a page is given via the sitemap.xml file may influence ranking.
56. Too Many Outbound Links: Straight from the aforementioned Quality rater document:
“Some pages have way, way too many links, obscuring the page and distracting from the Main Content”
57. Quantity of Other Keywords Page Ranks For: If the page ranks for several other keywords it may give Google an internal sign of quality.
58. Page Age: Although Google prefers fresh content, an older page that’s regularly updated may outperform a newer page.
59. User Friendly Layout: Citing the Google Quality Guidelines Document yet again:
“The page layout on highest quality pages makes the Main Content immediately visible”
60. Parked Domains: A
Google update in December of 2011 decreased search visibility of parked domains.
Site-Level Factors
62. Content Provides Value and Unique Insights: Google
has stated that they’re on the hunt for sites that don’t bring anything new or useful to the table, especially thin affiliate sites.
63. Contact Us Page: The
aforementioned Google Quality Document states that they prefer sites
with an “appropriate amount of contact information”. Supposed bonus if
your contact information matches your whois info.
64. Domain Trust/TrustRank: Site
trust — measured by how many links away your site is from
highly-trusted seed sites — is a massively important ranking factor. You
can read more about TrustRank
here.
65. Site Architecture: A well put-together site architecture (especially a silo structure) helps Google thematically organize your content.
66. Site Updates: How often a site is updated — and especially when new content is added to the site — is a site-wide freshness factor.
67. Number of Pages: The
number of pages a site has is a weak sign of authority. At the very
least a large site helps distinguish it from thin affiliate sites.
68. Presence of Sitemap: A sitemap helps search engines index your pages easier and more thoroughly, improving visibility.
69. Site Uptime: Lots of
downtime from site maintenance or server issues may hurt your ranking
(and can even result in deindexing if not corrected).
70. Server Location:
Server location may influence where your site ranks in different
geographical regions. Especially important for geo-specific searches.
72. Terms of Service and Privacy Pages: These two pages help tell Google that a site is a trustworthy member of the internet.
73. Duplicate Meta Information On-Site: Duplicate meta information across your site may bring down all of your page’s visibility.
74. Breadcrumb Navigation: This is a style of user-friendly site-architecture that helps users (and search engines) know where they are on a site:
76. YouTube: There’s no doubt that YouTube videos are given preferential treatment in the SERPs (probably because Google owns it ):
77. Site Usability: A site
that’s difficult to use or to navigate can hurt ranking by reducing
time on site, pages viewed and bounce rate. This may be an independent
algorithmic factor gleaned from massive amounts of user data.
78. Use of Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools: Some
think that having these two programs installed on your site can improve
your page’s indexing. They may also directly influence rank by giving
Google more data to work with (ie. more accurate bounce rate, whether or
not you get referral traffic from your
backlinks etc.).
79. User reviews/Site reputation: A site’s on review sites like Yelp.com and RipOffReport.com likely play an important role in the algorithm. Google even posted
a rarely candid outline of their approach to user reviews after an eyeglass site was caught ripping off customers in an effort to get backlinks.
Backlink Factors
80. Linking Domain Age: Backlinks from aged domains may be more powerful than new domains.
81. # of Linking Root Domains: The number of
referring domains is one of the most important ranking factors in
Google’s algorithm, as you can see from this chart from
Moz (bottom axis is SERP position):
82. # of Links from Separate C-Class IPs: Links from separate class-c IP addresses suggest a wider breadth of sites linking to you.
83. # of Linking Pages: The total number of linking pages — even if some are on the same domain — is a ranking factor.
84. Alt Tag (for Image Links): Alt text is an image’s version of anchor text.
85. Links from .edu or .gov Domains: Matt Cutts
has stated
that TLD doesn’t factor into a site’s importance. However, that doesn’t
stop SEOs from thinking that there’s a special place in the algo for
.gov and .edu TLDs.
86. Authority of Linking Page: The authority (PageRank) of the referring page is an extremely important ranking factor.
87. Authority of Linking Domain: The referring
domain’s authority may play an independent role in a link’s importance
(ie. a PR2 page link from a site with a homepage PR3 may be worth less
than a PR2 page link from PR8 Yale.edu).
88. Links From Competitors: Links from other pages ranking in the same SERP may be more valuable for a page’s rank for that particular keyword.
89. Social Shares of Referring Page: The amount of page-level social shares may influence the link’s value.
90. Links from Bad Neighborhoods: Links from “bad neighborhoods”
may hurt your site.
91. Guest Posts: Although guest posting can be part of a
white hat SEO campaign,
links coming from guest posts — especially in an author bio area — may
not be as valuable as a contextual link on the same page.
92. Links to Homepage Domain that Page Sits On: Links to a referring page’s homepage may play special importance in evaluating a site’s — and therefore a link’s — weight.
93. Nofollow Links: One of the most controversial topics in SEO.
Google’s official word on the matter is:
“In general, we don’t follow them.”
Which suggests that they
do…at least in certain cases. Having a certain % of nofollow links may also indicate a natural vs. unnatural link profile.
94. Diversity of Link Types: Having an unnaturally
large percentage of your links come from a single source (ie. forum
profiles, blog comments) may be a sign of webspam. On the other hand,
links from diverse sources is a sign of a natural link profile.
95. “Sponsored Links” Or Other Words Around Link: Words like “sponsors”, “link partners” and “sponsored links” may decrease a link’s value.
96. Contextual Links: Links embedded inside a page’s content are considered more powerful than links on an empty page or found elsewhere on the page.
A good example of contextual links are
backlinks from guestographics.
97. Excessive 301 Redirects to Page: Links coming from 301 redirects dilute some (or even all) PR, according to a
Webmaster Help Video.
98. Backlink Anchor Text: As noted in
this description of Google’s original algorithm:
“First, anchors often provide more accurate descriptions of web pages than the pages themselves.”
Obviously, anchor text is less important
than before (and likely a webspam signal). But it still sends a strong
relevancy signal in small doses.
99. Internal Link Anchor Text: Internal link anchor text is another relevancy signal, although probably weighed differently than backlink anchor text.
100. Link Title Attribution: The link title (the text that appears when you hover over a link) is also used as a weak relevancy signals.
101. Country TLD of Referring Domain: Getting links from country-specific top level domain extensions (.de, .cn, .co.uk) may help you rank better in that country.
102. Link Location In Content: Links in the beginning of a piece of content carry slightly more weight than links placed at the end of the content.
103. Link Location on Page: Where a link appears on a
page is important. Generally, links embedded in a page’s content are
more powerful than links in the footer or sidebar area.
104. Linking Domain Relevancy: A link from site in a
similar niche is significantly more powerful than a link from a
completely unrelated site. That’s why any
effective SEO strategy today focuses on obtaining
relevant links.
105. Page Level Relevancy: The Hilltop Algorithm states that link from a page that’s closely tied to page’s content is more powerful than a link from an unrelated page.
106. Text Around Link Sentiment: Google has
probably figured out
whether or not a link to your site is a recommendation or part of a
negative review. Links with positive sentiments around them likely carry
more weight.
107. Keyword in Title: Google gives extra love to links on pages that contain your page’s keyword in the title (“Experts linking to experts”.)
108. Positive Link Velocity: A site with positive link velocity usually gets a SERP boost.
109. Negative Link Velocity: Negative link velocity can significantly reduce rankings as it’s a signal of decreasing popularity.
110. Links from “Hub” Pages: Aaron Wall claims that getting links from pages that are considered top resources (or hubs) on a certain topic are given special treatment.
111. Link from Authority Sites: A link from a site considered an “authority site” likely pass more juice than a link from a small, microniche site.
112. Linked to as Wikipedia Source: Although the
links are nofollow, many think that getting a link from Wikipedia gives
you a little added trust and authority in the eyes of search engines.
113. Co-Occurrences: The words that tend to appear around your backlinks
helps tell Google what that page is about.
114. Backlink Age: According to
a Google patent, older links have more ranking power than newly minted backlinks.
115. Links from Real Sites vs. Splogs: Due to the
proliferation of blog networks, Google probably gives more weight to
links coming from “real sites” than from fake blogs. They likely use
brand and user-interaction signals to distinguish between the two.
116. Natural Link Profile: A site with a “natural” link profile is going to rank highly and be more durable to updates.
117. Reciprocal Links: Google’s Link Schemes page lists “Excessive link exchanging” as a link scheme to avoid.
118. User Generated Content Links: Google is able to
identify links generated from UGC vs. the actual site owner. For
example, they know that a link from the official WordPress.com blog at
en.blog.wordpress.com is
very different than a link from besttoasterreviews.wordpress.com.
119. Links from 301: Links from 301 redirects may lose a little bit of juice compared to a direct link. However,
Matt Cutts says that a 301 is similar to a direct link.
120. Schema.org Microformats: Pages that support
microformats may rank above pages without it. This may be a direct boost
or the fact that pages with microformatting have a higher SERP CTR:
121. DMOZ Listed: Many believe that Google gives DMOZ listed sites a little extra trust.
122. TrustRank of Linking Site: The trustworthiness of the site linking to you determines how much “TrustRank” gets passed onto you.
123. Number of Outbound Links on Page: PageRank is finite. A link on a page with hundreds of OBLs passes less PR than a page with only a few OBLs.
124. Forum Profile Links: Because of industrial-level spamming, Google may significantly devalue links from forum profiles.
125. Word Count of Linking Content: A link from a 1000-word post is more valuable than a link inside of a 25-word snippet.
126. Quality of Linking Content: Links from poorly written or spun content don’t pass as much value as links from well-written, multimedia-enhanced content.
127. Sitewide Links: Matt Cutts
has confirmed that sitewide links are “compressed” to count as a single link.
User Interaction
128. Organic Click Through Rate for a Keyword: Pages that get clicked more in CTR
may get a SERP boost for that particular keyword.
129. Organic CTR for All Keywords: A page’s (or site’s) organic CTR for all keywords is ranks for may be a human-based, user interaction signal.
130. Bounce Rate: Not
everyone in SEO agrees bounce rate matters, but it may be a way of
Google to use their users as quality testers (pages where people quickly
bounce is probably not very good).
131. Direct Traffic: It’s confirmed that
Google uses data from Google Chrome
to determine whether or not people visit a site (and how often). Sites
with lots of direct traffic are likely higher quality than sites that
get very little direct traffic.
132. Repeat Traffic: They
may also look at whether or not users go back to a page or site after
visiting. Sites with repeat visitors may get a Google ranking boost.
133. Blocked Sites: Google has discontinued this feature in Chrome. However,
Panda used this feature as a quality signal.
135. Google Toolbar Data: Search Engine Watch’s Danny Goodwin reports
that Google uses toolbar data
as a ranking signal. However, besides page loading speed and malware,
it’s not known what kind of data they glean from the toolbar.
136. Number of Comments: Pages with lots of comments may be a signal of user-interaction and quality.
137. Dwell Time: Google
pays very close attention to “dwell time”: how long people spend on your
page when coming from a Google search. This is also sometimes referred
to as “long clicks vs short clicks”. If people spend a lot of time on
your site, that may be used as a quality signal.
Special Algorithm Rules
139. Query Deserves Diversity: Google may
add diversity to a SERP for ambiguous keywords, such as “Ted”, “WWF” or “ruby”.
140. User Browsing History: Sites that you frequently visit while signed into Google get a SERP bump for your searches.
141. User Search History: Search chain
influence search results for later searches.
For example, if you search for “reviews” then search for “toasters”,
Google is more likely to show toaster review sites higher in the SERPs.
142. Geo Targeting: Google gives preference to sites with a local server IP and country-specific domain name extension.
143. Safe Search: Search results with curse words or adult content won’t appear for people with Safe Search turned on.
144. Google+ Circles: Google shows higher results for authors and sites that you’ve added to your Google Plus Circles
146. Domain Diversity: The so-called “
Bigfoot Update” supposedly added more domains to each SERP page.
147. Transactional Searches: Google sometimes displays different results for shopping-related keywords, like flight searches.
148. Local Searches: Google often places Google+ Local results above the “normal” organic SERPs.
149. Google News Box: Certain keywords trigger a Google News box:
150. Big Brand Preference: After the
Vince Update, Google began giving big brands a boost for certain short-tail searches.
151. Shopping Results: Google sometimes displays Google Shopping results in organic SERPs:
152. Image Results: Google elbows our organic listings for image results for searches commonly used on Google Image Search.
153. Easter Egg Results: Google has a dozen or so
Easter Egg results.
For example, when you search for “Atari Breakout” in Google image
search, the search results turn into a playable game (!). Shout out to
Victor Pan for this one.
Social Signals
156. Authority of Twitter Users Accounts:
It’s likely that Tweets coming from aged, authority Twitter profiles
with a ton of followers (like Justin Bieber) have more of an effect than
tweets from new, low-influence accounts.
157. Number of Facebook Likes: Although Google
can’t see most Facebook accounts, it’s likely they consider the number of Facebook likes a page receives as a weak ranking signal.
159. Authority of Facebook User Accounts: As with Twitter, Facebook shares and likes coming from popular Facebook pages may pass more weight.
160. Pinterest Pins: Pinterest
is an insanely popular social media account with lots of public data.
It’s probably that Google considers Pinterest Pins a social signal.
161. Votes on Social Sharing Sites: It’s possible that Google uses shares at sites like Reddit, Stumbleupon and Digg as another type of social signal.
162. Number of Google+1’s: Although Matt Cutts gone on the record as saying Google+ has “
no direct effect” on rankings, it’s hard to believe that they’d ignore their own social network.
163. Authority of Google+ User Accounts: It’s logical that Google would weigh +1’s coming from authoritative accounts more than from accounts without many followers.
164. Known Authorship: In February 2013, Google CEO Eric Schmidt famously claimed:
“Within search results, information tied
to verified online profiles will be ranked higher than content without
such verification, which will result in most users naturally clicking on
the top (verified) results.”
Although the Google+ authorship program has been
shut down,
it’s likely Google uses some form of authorship to determine
influential content producers online (and give them a boost in
rankings).
165. Social Signal Relevancy: Google probably uses relevancy information from the account sharing the content and the text surrounding the link.
166. Site Level Social Signals: Site-wide social signals may increase a site’s overall authority, which will increase search visibility for all of its pages.
Brand Signals
167. Brand Name Anchor Text: Branded anchor text is a simple — but strong — brand signal.
168. Branded Searches: It’s
simple: people search for brands. If people search for your site in
Google (ie. “Backlinko twitter”, Backlinko + “ranking factors”), Google
likely takes this into consideration when determining a brand.
169. Site Has Facebook Page and Likes: Brands tend to have Facebook pages with lots of likes.
170. Site has Twitter Profile with Followers: Twitter profiles with a lot of followers signals a popular brand.
171. Official Linkedin Company Page: Most real businesses have company Linkedin pages.
172. Employees Listed at Linkedin: Rand Fishkin thinks that having Linkedin profiles that say they work for your company is a brand signal.
173. Legitimacy of Social Media Accounts: A social media account with 10,000 followers and 2 posts is probably interpreted a lot differently than another 10,000-follower strong account with lots of interaction.
174. Brand Mentions on News Sites:
Really big brands get mentioned on Google News sites all the time. In
fact, some brands even have their own Google News feed on the first
page:
175. Co-Citations: Brands get mentioned without getting linked to. Google likely looks at non-hyperlinked brand mentions as a brand signal.
177. Brick and Mortar Location With Google+ Local Listing: Real
businesses have offices. It’s possible that Google fishes for
location-data to determine whether or not a site is a big brand.
178. Website is Tax Paying Business: Moz reports that Google may look at whether or not a site is associated with a tax-paying business.
On-Site WebSpam Factors
180. Links to Bad Neighborhoods: Linking out to “bad neighborhoods” — like pharmacy or payday loan sites — may hurt your search visibility.
181. Redirects: Sneaky redirects
is a big no-no. If caught, it can get a site not just penalized, but de-indexed.
183. Site Over-Optimization: Includes on-page factors like keyword stuffing, header tag stuffing, excessive keyword decoration.
184. Page Over-Optimization: Many people report that — unlike Panda — Penguin targets individual page (and even then just for certain keywords).
185. Ads Above the Fold: The “
Page Layout Algorithm” penalizes sites with lots of ads (and not much content) above the fold.
186. Hiding Affiliate Links: Going too far when trying to hide affiliate links (especially with cloaking) can bring on a penalty.
187. Affiliate Sites: It’s no secret that Google
isn’t the biggest fan of affiliates. And many think that sites that monetize with affiliate links are put under extra scrutiny.
188. Autogenerated Content: Google
isn’t a big fan
of autogenerated content. If they suspect that your site’s pumping out
computer-generated content, it could result in a penalty or de-indexing.
189. Excess PageRank Sculpting: Going too far with
PageRank sculpting — by nofollowing all outbound links or most internal links — may be a sign of gaming the system.
191. Meta Tag Spamming:
Keyword stuffing can also happen in meta tags. If Google thinks you’re
adding keywords to your meta tags to game the algo, they may hit your
site with a penalty.
Off Page Webspam Factors
192. Unnatural Influx of Links: A sudden (and unnatural) influx of links is a sure-fire sign of phony links.
193. Penguin Penalty: Sites that were hit by
Google Penguin are significantly less visible in search.
194. Link Profile with High % of Low Quality Links:
Lots of links from sources commonly used by black hat SEOs (like blog
comments and forum profiles) may be a sign of gaming the system.
195. Linking Domain Relevancy: The famous analysis by
MicroSiteMasters.com found that sites with an unnaturally high amount of links from unrelated sites were more susceptible to Penguin.
196. Unnatural Links Warning: Google
sent out thousands of “Google Webmaster Tools notice of detected
unnatural links” messages. This usually precedes a ranking drop,
although
not 100% of the time.
197. Links from the Same Class C IP: Getting an unnatural amount of links from sites on the same server IP may be a sign of blog network link building.
198. “Poison” Anchor Text: Having
“poison” anchor text (especially pharmacy keywords) pointed to your
site may be a sign of spam or a hacked site. Either way, it can hurt
your site’s ranking.
199. Manual Penalty: Google has been known to hand out manual penalties, like in the well-publicized
Interflora fiasco.
200. Selling Links: Selling links can definitely impact
toolbar PageRank and may hurt your search visibility.
201. Google Sandbox: New sites that get a sudden influx of links are sometimes put in the
Google Sandbox, which temporarily limits search visibility.
202. Google Dance: The Google Dance can temporarily shake up rankings. According to a
Google Patent, this may be a way for them to determine whether or not a site is trying to game the algorithm.
203. Disavow Tool: Use of the Disavow Tool may remove a manual or algorithmic penalty for sites that were the victims of negative SEO.
204. Reconsideration Request: A successful reconsideration request can lift a penalty.
205. Temporary Link Schemes: Google has (apparently) caught onto people that create — and quickly remove — spammy links. Also know as a
temporary link scheme.
“How Can I Use This Information For My Site?”
I created a free step-by-step checklist that you can use to quickly
apply the most important information from this post to your site.
The checklist contains the 10 most important ranking factors on this list…
…and super-actionable strategies that you can use to get higher rankings and more traffic.
