Domain
Factors:
1. Domain Age:
“The
difference between a domain that’s six months old versus one year old is really
not that big at all.”
In
other words, google may focus on 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.
4. Domain registration length: A Google patent states:
“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.
46.
URL Length: Search Engine
Journal notes that excessively long URLs may hurt search visibility.
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.
61.
Useful Content: Google may
distinguish between “quality” and “useful” content.
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.
71.
SSL Certificate: Google has confirmed
that they index SSL certificates and that they use HTTPS as a ranking signal.
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:
Both
SearchEngineJournal.com and Ethical SEO Consulting claim that this set-up may
be a ranking factor.
75.
Mobile Optimized: Google’s official stance on mobile is to create a responsive site.
It’s likely that responsive sites get an edge in searches from a mobile device.
In fact, they now add “Mobile friendly” tags to sites that display well on mobile
devices. Google also started penalizing sites in Mobile search that aren’t
mobile friendly
76.
YouTube: There’s no doubt that YouTube videos are given preferential
treatment in the SERPs (probably because Google owns it ):
In
fact, Search Engine Land found that YouTube.com traffic increased significantly
after Google Panda.
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.
134.
Chrome Bookmarks: We know that Google
collects Chrome browser usage data. Pages that get bookmarked in Chrome might
get a boost.
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:
138.
Query Deserves Freshness: Google gives newer pages a boost for certain searches.
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
145.
DMCA Complaints: Google “downranks”
pages with DMCA complaints.
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.
154.
Single Site Results for Brands: Domain or brand-oriented keywords bring up
several results from the same site.
Social
Signals:
155.
Number of Tweets: Like links, the
tweets a page has may influence its rank in Google.
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.
158.
Facebook Shares: Facebook shares — because they’re more similar to a backlink — may
have a stronger influence than Facebook likes.
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.
176.
Number of RSS Subscribers: Considering that
Google owns the popular Feedburner RSS service, it makes sense that they would
look at RSS Subscriber data as a popularity/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 :
179.
Panda Penalty: Sites with low-quality content (particularly content farms) are
less visible in search after getting hit by a Panda penalty.
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.
182.
Popups or Distracting Ads: The official Google Rater Guidelines Document says that popups and
distracting ads is a sign of a low-quality site.
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.
190.
IP Address Flagged as Spam: If your server’s IP
address is flagged for spam, it may hurt all of the sites on that server.
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.
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