by Ana Hoffman 33 comments

SEOMoz’s Top Google Ranking Factors of 2011: The 60 Second Tour



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It’s not every day that the world’s leading SEO experts get together to collaborate on a project of this magnitude: coming to a relative consensus on what presumably are the most important ranking factors in Google algorithm right now, how they changed in the past 2 years, and what Google has for us in the future.

That’s exactly what Rand Fishkin’s of SEOmoz.org 2011 Search Engine Factors report is all about.

It contains the findings from 132 world’s leading SEO experts and their collective opinion represents what the SEO world perceives to be the most important factors to organic search engine rankings.

The report itself is quite lengthy and requires a lot of digestion, so I decided to present it to you in a more concise manner and the goal of the post is to answer the following question: how does or should this report affect how you do (or should start doing) SEO for your blog.

Here are a few main visuals for your reference and my conclusions following them.

2011 Overall Ranking Algorithm

2011 Overall Ranking Algorithm

Domain Level Link Authority

Domain Level Link Authority

1. SEOs believe that the power of links is declining, although it still represents 43% of all the deciding factors (down from 67% in 2009).

2. Diversity of links outweighs pure quantity. (Link Building Mixology: Your “How To Do It The Right Way” Guide)

3. Exact anchor texts appear to have slightly less significance over partial anchor texts. (Your Ultimate Anchor Text Tutorial – from Basic to Advanced)

4. Domain authority matters when ranking pages (the more authority your domain has, the better your posts will rank).

5. Presence of nofollow links is important to good search engine rankings.

6. Among the most important on-page factors are the title tag, preferably with your keyword as the first word, URL (see my post on What’s in a Slug? for more on that), and H1 tag.

7. Content is EXTREMELY important: the freshness, the uniqueness, the length - longer posts tend to rank better.

8. Long titles/URLs are still likely bad for SEO.

9. Social sharing factors appear to have a fair significance in rankings, i.e. get more retweets/FB shares! (PageRank, Meet SocialRank: How Does Going Social Help Your Search Engine Rankings?; also, check out this helpful post on social bookmarking tools.)

Marketing Takeaway

It’s important to remember that these are just opinions, but since Google is not telling, these opinions are the closest thing we get.

Have an opinion? Comment to show me that you’re alive!

ana hoffman search engine ranking factors


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{ 33 comments }

Steve Hocking September 8, 2011 at 12:16 am

Ana

How does google check the age of a website and the length of domain registration paid upto?. when I get the result for my website, it always comes back n\a compared with others who have dates.

Ana Hoffman September 8, 2011 at 10:17 am

That data is public - pretty much anyone can look it up, Steve, unless you have special privacy settings turned on, most people don’t though.

Your lack of rank has nothing to do with the age; you just need to build more links to your site from authority blogs. Check out my new CommentLuv enabled blog list to get you started.

Faissal Alhaithami June 27, 2011 at 9:17 am

Social sharing has been increased and I think due to the power of social media it will continue to increase!

but I have a question! is it good for the power of links to be declining?? you know it decreased from 67% to 43%.

Ana June 27, 2011 at 9:57 am

Whether it’s good or not, it’s not our algorithm to decide on, Faissal - we are stuck with whatever Google decides to do.

Stephen Guise June 21, 2011 at 12:36 pm

Hi Ana,

What a useful post! Social sharing will continue to climb up rapidly in importance in Google’s eyes. For those of us who want to stay one step ahead of Google - like you said - get more shares and tweets! I wonder if Google would know if you tweeted your own post 42 times though - not that I would do that!

Thanks for this information,
Stephen

Ana June 22, 2011 at 3:34 am

Lol - I am sure they will know. :-)

Ana June 20, 2011 at 3:32 am

But didn’t you imagine that? I did! :-) lol

Self Publishing Blog June 17, 2011 at 1:04 pm

Ana, you gotta admit: It’s extremely difficult to keep up. And I mentioned to another SEO expert the other day that to fix and spend time on proper SEO for a blogger is time intensive. I’ll have to stockpile and spend an entire week with no sleep to get it all right.

Ana June 18, 2011 at 9:36 am

That bad, huh? :-) You must work smart, not hard. :-)

Shadab June 17, 2011 at 12:35 pm

Hi Ana,
I am agree with all of points you listed here but I am confused about a point listed in 5 no. that is nofollow links will help to search engine ranking. Is it right? Ya, I know but that links will not be considered to pass the pagerank.

Ana June 20, 2011 at 1:44 pm

Natural linking is what’s in the heart of your question, Shadab.

Yes, we need both dofollow and nofollow links for our linking profile to appear natural - we don’t want to come off as link building spammers.

It’s debatable whether nofollow links actually pass any authority or not (check out this post: https://trafficgenerationcafe.online/does-nofollow-follow/), but one thing is for sure: all SEOs agree that nofollow links are just as important to build.

Ana

Calli June 17, 2011 at 6:15 am

Hi Anna,

This is indeed the closest information we have since Google isn’t telling about their algorithm. I think that is one of the reasons why their on top of the game. May I clarify, so there isn’t a large gap between the value of a nofollow link from a dofollow one?

Ana June 17, 2011 at 11:34 am

According to all the charts I saw, Calli, there wasn’t much difference between the two as far as positively influencing the rankings. In the end, we equally need both - that seems to be the consensus.

Vivek Parmar June 16, 2011 at 10:18 pm

SEOMoz is one of the best blog when it comes to SEO and it somehow relates ranking factors but does not claim that these factors remains same all the time

Ana June 17, 2011 at 11:32 am

They certainly earned their place among the best, Vivek.

O. Bachmann June 16, 2011 at 3:50 pm

It’s good to know that I’m still doing the right things. I downloaded the report a couple of days ago, and I’m still trying to take it all in. I like your highlight overview, much easier on the brain :) There really wasn’t anything groundbreaking in this report, but that shouldn’t surprise us. Every update Google does gets closer to forcing you to stop thinking about the link. Just spread the word about your site naturally, and the links will come. If you build a quality site that people will be interested in going to, who cares what kind of links you get. “NoFollow” links are still followed, by people, and isn’t that what really matters?

Ana June 17, 2011 at 3:22 am

You are right and I am glad you’re doing the right thing.

Ana June 16, 2011 at 3:45 pm

I don’t think SEOmoz can affect search engine rankings in any way, but they can certainly tell us their opinion of how we can improve ours. :)

Jym June 15, 2011 at 8:28 pm

Interesting to observe the shift of emphasis over time. the strategies that worked in 2010 are no longer necessarily the most effective in 2011…

You’ve done a great job of boiling down the boffin’s blah, Ana,
Thankyou!

Ana June 16, 2011 at 5:05 am

Thanks, Jym. Your observation seems to be spot on.

Ileane June 15, 2011 at 2:28 pm

Thanks for the quick summary Ana. I’ve been meaning to check out this report since I saw it mentioned on DiTesco’s blog but I didn’t get around to it. At least now I know the basics.

Btw - have you changed your blog to nofollow or are you at least thinking about it? I don’t feel like turning on any tools to check. Better if I just ask you, that way you can let me know what your thoughts are about it.

Ana June 17, 2011 at 11:47 am

I am sticking with DoFollow, Ileane. Most of our blogs are user-driven and that’s the least I can do for my readers.

I did turn on NoFollow Free plugin though that prevents one-time commentators from getting DoFollow links from my blog. I have it set at 3, I think - after 3 comments the links become DoFollow. Just a little protection from link builders.

Ileane June 18, 2011 at 6:58 pm

Great! I’m sticking with DoFollow for now too. As a result I’m getting tougher with my comment moderation and deleting some that I used to let through. Seems like I’m getting an influx of “essay writers” these days - not sure why :)

Ana June 19, 2011 at 5:32 am

I also have many essay writers at the moment - I guess it’s to make the comment seem more valuable.

Wayne Lambert June 15, 2011 at 11:38 am

Some of my best performing posts in terms of ranking within the SERP’s are pages with more content in. This definitely resonates with my experience.

A great blogging approach is to write longer engaging articles which satisfy both search engines and your readership. The age old advice of holding attention and solving a real problem within your post.

Links will have less significance in percentage terms since social votes now has a bigger influence.

Buy how will the pendulum swing with the next algorithm change? Answers on a postcard, eh?

Ana June 17, 2011 at 11:43 am

Definitely keeps us all on our toes, Wayne. Even the most intelligent guess is still just that - a guess.

Love reading your comments: you always find great ways to add to the conversation!

Maky June 15, 2011 at 10:15 am

Hi Ana,

Good to confirm that Facebook has the most influence in the social rankings. We will have to wait 2 yrs to see what influence the Google +1 button will have. Sorry Ana, I know you are a tweet Queen, but you know I am still an “egg” :)

I guess I can confirm Nos 1 & 7 in your list. I recently launched a new site and at a time I have not built a single link to it, I saw a visit from the search engines. This is a very competitive niche and this shocked me so I checked the keyword phrase and saw the site sitting on pg 2 in Google SERPs out of some 130M results. And this is based on just onpage SEO and very long original content.

Maybe content is back to being king as Google can see that a lot of dubious links are not producing quality search results. And with people tribing for everything in the cybeworld, the only thing Google can trust right now is content.

Ana June 16, 2011 at 4:59 am

Hi Maky,

Thanks for your great comment and the new title “Tweet Queen” - I have to put that on my resume!

Page 2 on 130 million results is great, although you want to get to page 1.

I agree with your last paragraph - that would benefit those of us who are doing the right thing.

Hope to see you around again soon!

Maky June 17, 2011 at 5:23 am

Ah sure! If content alone can get it to Pg 2, just imagine what a few good backlinks can do. Actually since the page is that good, I am now aiming for above-the-fold in Pg 1 ;)

TrafficColeman June 15, 2011 at 7:57 am

One truth is the authority of the domain plays a big role in ranking higher and faster..don’t believe me..then check out John Chow last post on “Chopper”

“Black Seo Guy “Signing Off”

Ana June 15, 2011 at 10:27 am

Sure, I agree!

Steve June 15, 2011 at 7:21 am

Ana,

I had checked the report a bit ago. But I love your breakdown. Very concise and to the point.

No huge surprises, since this boils down to everyone taking (some extremely well educated) guesses. It is nice to see that a majority of experts all all thinking similarly.

Ana June 15, 2011 at 10:31 am

Thank you, Steve. It sure is nice to see some agreement.

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