By other words, they do use domain age…but it’s not
much important.
2. Keyword present in Top Level
Domain: Don’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 present 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 centre or ending of their domain.
4. Domain registration length: A Google patent states:
“Expensive
(legitimate) domains are often paid for several years in advance, while entrance
(illegitimate) domains rarely are used for more than a year. Therefore, the
date when a domain expires in the prospect can be used as a factor in
predicting the authority of a domain”.
5. Keyword in Sub domain
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 who is) 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”.
“…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.
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 file size.
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.
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: As
pointed out by Backlinko reader Jared
Carrizales, Google may distinguish between “quality” and “useful” content.
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.
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.
“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 web spam. 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 web spam 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 outwhether 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.
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 it 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.
138. Query Deserves
Freshness: Google gives newer pages a boost for certain searches.
139. Query Deserves Diversity: Google
may add diversity to a SERPfor
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.
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.
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.
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
lotdifferently 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.
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.
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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