Very good analysis for beginner. Thank you Nick.
Best Regards,
K. G. Mozumder

Hi K G,
Thanks for reading glad your found my top Google SEO ranking factor list helpful!

I think age is important, but if the aged domain has just been parked forever, I do not think it will add that much value.

Nice article! Is this in random order?

This is awesome dude! SEOJ is a really cool site, and you guys post similar topics as Search Engine Journal which is also another great blog. Keep up the awesome posts dude, I’m following ya and submitting to Blogger Den

I love your post. Thanks a lot. Domain age is truly important….. and that is where patience comes in. This is truly tough when you really want to rank highly asap through writing content and backlinking but your domain is still new.

Hi Tom,
Exactly, domain age of a full functional website that has been online, for example a business that has had their website up and running for 10 years, this great age.

Hi Mark van Loon,
I would say yes, I never thought about trying to come up with an order (even there probably is one

Thanks Blogger Den!

Hi Made Thursday,
Yes, patience is so very important to being successful with your SEO program. If you read my blog often, you will notice I always refer to SEO as a long term and ongoing process. Thanks for reading!

Topical content network, with traffic, authority in niche and page rank is kinda important.

Hi Ben,
Thanks for reading and your comment. Authority is covered in building up trust and as far as I am concerned Page Rank would be a distant ranking factor on the list. Back in 2004, this would not be the case, but today it plays a lesser role.

Great list for beginners Nick, I’d also add to #1 long term registration. Domains that are only registered for one or two years don’t inspire confidence. People should also throw up a well keyworded holding page as soon as they register a domain while their website is being built. Each client we build a website for we throw up a well keyworded holding page and in some instances we’ve seen this grow to a PR3 within a couple of months while we’ve been working on the site (the delays not due to us I’ll add).

Hi Nick,

Great article! Most of the points you’ve mentioned are good ways to improve your rankings and get more traffic.

The first 3 points were new for me though, but good to know my corporate website dates from 2004, … old enough? So, thanks for sharing this knowledge!

Cheers & Ciao …

Hi John,
Thanks for the comment! Excellent additional point about site registration. On a side note, some of company websites where registered through Yahoo! Domains and I purchased them for 5 years at a time. When I went to renew them for another 5 years Yahoo Small Business told me that it would renew every year and they no longer offered longer registrations…I think this is important put a smaller factor (we shall see if any of our sites are impacted

Hi Gonzo the Great,
Yes, indeed that is a nice age to have!

This is Kenneth Young and I notice these types of XHTML at the top of my comment box in my wordpress could anyone explain them to me. Here they are. XHTML: You can use these tags:

Kenneth Young

Hi Kenneth,

Thanks for the question (even it is off topic of this post

When you added the tags Wordpress automatically made the changes, this is basic code to format within a comment…hope this helps.

Very interesting and insightful Nick. Points 1,2,3,4 and 7 are not usually (and speaking for myself) have never been considered.

Thanks
Chris

Hi Christopher,
Thanks for reading and I am glad my Google ranking factor list helped you…thanks again!

I’m positivly sure that hosting is not a factor.
I’ve got so many websites hosted in different countries, and it doesn’t affect ranking in other countries , local SE, and global SE.
I’m moving websites on a monthly basis , based only on best deal I can find. None of them moved a bit.
In addition, I’ve read a thread from google WBMT which says that it’s irrilevant.

Hi Jack,
Thanks very much for reading and providing your example/real life case study about hosting and SEO. I would say, what you have said makes total sense to me, but again this recommendation is based on 12 years of personal experience and optimizing and building visibility for hundreds of websites, across virtually every industry. If you feel comfortable taking your approach and moving your website(s) within many countries at the lowest cost hosting, then that is your choice. My recommendation is to choose a good quality hosting company that will not cause any potential issues (both an uptime and trust factor issues).

Thanks again for your comment!

Nick,

Pt 10 outbound links;
If I read this correct it would mean that links to referrals, clients etc. that don’t work in our business could harm my Google position and/or number of vistors?

Cheers,
GJ

Hi GJ,
Thanks for reading and your comment. Exactly, if there is a reason to link to another website (partnership, client, vendor, etc.) and you could gain business and it is relevant to your business, then there should not be a problem. Years ago link exchanging used to be a popular SEO task to build Google search ranking positioning. These day not only is it not effective, but it could result in a penalty. Bottom line is I don’t recommended trading links just to boost links…

Anyway, I hope this makes sense and helps.

Thanks!
Nick

Hi Nick.

Thanks for a great article. I was wondering, you don’t recommended trading links. But, you do recommend linking to other sites that are relevant. Does this help my page rank?

Cheers
George,

Hi George,
Thanks for reading and your question. This should help your page rank, but I do not recommend making any changes to affect your page rank. This should not be your measurement of your SEO efforts. Focus more on visitor growth and leads/sales generated from your search engine optimization efforts over time, not Google page rank.

Anyway, only link to other sites if there is a purpose for it and it helps the user and visitor experience of your website.

I hope this helps & thanks again for reading!
Nick

Hi Nick. Thank you for the list, very useful indeed. Can i possibly repost the list w/a link to this post?

Wow, another completely fantastic post and discussion. What a great list. I printed it out and tacked it to the wall. I never gave much thought to 2 or 3. Thanks Nick.
Lorraine

Hi COOLBUSTER.net,
Thanks for reading, please do feel free to repost this list…

Hi Lorraine,
Glad, I could help decorate your office wall

Hi Nick,

Good points, a couple I was not fully aware of.
Kind regards
John

Good points Nick!

You touched on it in your footnote, but I would also add #12: Page Load Time. Google’s new patent (and Matt Cutts’ videos) explicitly state the this metric will play an increasingly important role in rankings.

A point to remember with page load time is this: Google says it compares page load times with the average load time of pages from other websites in your country. So if you live in a country with slower servers, Google won’t penalize you as long as your page loads in the average time of other sites in that country. In effect, Google is trying to take a server-performance bias out of the equation and boil its ranking down to how well you constructed your page.

Hope this helps…keep up the good work!

Tom

wow..that’s great

I strongly agree with the comments from jack above, I think hosting is not a decisive one in google seo serp much less about. But this can be a very good input.

I am newbie blogger and wanna try to make money online,your article really helpful for me and i wish i can follow all steps,thank you.

Hi there,
very useful list.
I have a question: what can i do if a malicious webmaster links my website from a spam-like website? (in order to get a bad link and google give me a bad ranking)

Thank you in advance,
cheers from italy,
andrea

Hi Nick,

Great list with some fundamental points you may not think about an SEO. One question, are there any practical tips for spotting whether your host is classified as a spammer or not?

3. Your Neighbors: If you have a virtual server, which sites like Godaddy usually are have been known to house hundreds of websites on one server. Make sure that your neighbors on your server are not classified as spam.

Just on this point, how would you work this out? No hosting company will ever tell you.

Great list. even though I class myself as experinced within SEO I still picked up a couple of points. Always good to see someones elses point of view within SEO Cheers

I need opinion on this one. I bought a domain from an approved ICANN Domain Registrar and hosted by a hosting company based in USA but the owner is non USA. So, in the event of any disputes, which law body should it be reffered to? USA or the owner’s country of origin? My apology for an off topic question.

Thanks for the refresher Nick. As I see it the most important point that you have emphasized is to ensure that your page content supports your keywords
Keep ‘em coming

Hi Tom/MasterLinker,
Thanks for the additional thoughts, page load time is very important indeed!

Hi seocosenza,
If someone sends you a bad link, as long as you are building relevant links over time from good, clean, white hat sources, then I would not worry about this. At the end of the day it is about Google reputation, and if a bad links comes in to your site that is out of the ordinary, if you have built up your website and have earned a good reputation, then you should have nothing to worry about. Hope this helps!

Hi Executive Headhunters,
Sure there are a ton of free websites/resources that can ping a server and see what other websites are hosted at the IP address of your server, I just searched in Google for: “find websites on a ip server” and found a good list of free tools:
http://www.google.com/search?q=find+websites+on+a+ip+server&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

Hi Jimi@health-info-tips,
Thanks for the question, although this type of issue is not my area of expertise, I will try to answer your question. If your business is in the USA, then the best practice is that your domain registration and hosting provider should be as well. Unless there is a problem, I would not worry about this as I have not seen any type of issue surrounding this, but still would use the best practice that I mentioned. Hope this helps

Point number 11 is just plain brown nosing Google. It is not true. Inbound links are the most important factor.

While you are right, it does not make sense to exchange links, but you should build links.

If you promote your web site in a smart way, you will get links. And you should make sure that you get lots of relevant links.

Hi HP Jeschke.
Thanks for reading, but I do not brown nose anyone, just embrace the rules that work and provide my living…