Positive and Negative Google Ranking Factors

Most people ask us "Why does my site rank lower than their site?". Well, the answer depends on many factors. Google has more than 200 factors to calculate a number which is called the Page Rank. The number fluctuates over time and we cannot guarantee a page rank of 1 (or any number) all the time. Others site rank higher than yours due to the fact that their site is regularly updated with fresh content and they are implementing a very good SEO strategy. Follow the following facts and major game changing factors collected from best of the best SEO's in the world. Read them, add things you missed and avoid things that are blocking you from getting a good rank on Google. 

Any comments or addition to these factors will be highly appreciated.

 On-page positive ranking factors: 

1. Very high: Keyword use in the title tag (try to start your title with a keyword)

2. Very high: Keyword use in the domain name (e.g. www.keyword.com)

3. Very high: Unique content on the page

4. Very high: Freshness of page content (updates)

5. Very high: Content optimization (keyword prominence, density, proximity)

6. High: Keyword use in the headline tags (try to start or use your keywords in the headline tag specially H1)

7. High: Use of search engine friendly URLs (static URLs)

8. High: Keyword use in internal link anchor text on the page (don’t use “click here” to view my product, use the product name in the anchor text)

9. Medium: Keyword use in the first 50-100 words on the page (also try to make the first paragraph stands on itself, sometimes search engines use your first paragraph as a description of your page on the (SERP)  search engine result page)

10. Medium: Keyword use in the sub-domain name and/or page folder URL (e.g. keyword.domain.com) & (e.g. domain.com/keyword/page.html)

11. Medium: Keyword use in image alt text (this also helps you to rank on image search engines)

12. Medium: Internal link popularity (number of other pages on the same domain linking back to your page)

13. Low: HTML validation to W3C standards

14. Low: Keyword use in your page formatting (bold, italic, bullets)

15. Very low: Keyword use in the meta description tag

16. Very low: Keyword use in the meta keywords tag (Google disregards Meta Keyword)

 Off-page positive ranking factors: 

1. Very high: External links keyword-focused anchor text (using keyword in the external Link Anchor)

2. Very high: External link popularity (quality over quantity of external domains linking to you)

3. Very high: External links from many unique root domains

4. Very high: Links from domains with restricted access (.edu, .gov, .mil, .ac.uk, etc.)

5. Very high: External links from trusted sources (e.g. High Google PageRank, TrustRank, Domain mozTrust, etc.)

6. High: Similarity focused external link sources (whether external links to this page come from relevant pages/sites)

7. High: Domain age

8. Medium: Domain registration history (how long it’s been registered to the same party, number of times renewed, etc.)

9. Medium: Percentage of followed and  nofollowed links that point to the page

10. Low: Server/hosting quality (e.g. uptime, other domain hosted on the same IP)

 Top negative ranking factors: 

I m not going to rank these from high to low, just try to avoid them all

1. Cloaking with malicious/manipulative intent

2. Link acquisition from known link brokers/sellers

3. Links from the page to web spam sites/pages

4. Cloaking by user agent

5. Frequent server downtime & site inaccessibility

6. Links from the domain to web spam sites/pages

7. Cloaking by IP address

8. Hiding text with same/similar colored text/background

9. Hiding text with CSS by offsetting the pixel display outside the visible page area

10. Excessive number of dynamic parameters in the URL

Stay tuned to http://www.howgoogleranks.com for new SEO tips and articles to improve your Google rank.

Any thoughts or comments would be highly appreciated. Thanks!