5. Link Popularity within the Site's Internal Link Structure
In Laymen's Terms: How prominent is the webpage within your own site?
Without the proper linking structure, certain pages may not get enough emphasis. For example, ... links directly from the homepage usually do really well.
- Neil Patel
The more prominently you feature a particular page on your site, the more weight search engines will give it.
Your Action: Showcase your best content or the webpage you most want to highlight. Put it in your main navigation menu or link to it from your homepage.
6. Topical Relevance of Inbound Links to Site
In Laymen's Terms: Are the sites linking to you related to your topic (and targeted keywords)? The more relevant, the more weight those links are given.
I think, in a perfect algorythm, relevance matters. Whether Google has figured out how to pull it off yet or not, I don't know but I do believe that is the ultimate goal. Whether they get more "weight" or not, relevant links are good business and help with rankings as well.
- Scottie Claiborne
All of your neighbours have a wide variety of thematic inbound link text from a wide variety of topical sites. You have the same anchor text from your unrelated porn/pills/casino link farm. Chances are a search engine can instantly spot you as a 'deviant' from the norm and flag you as having an unnatural inbound linking pattern.This factor is similar to #2 (anchor text of inbound links). How other sites link to you matter. For example, if you have a site about chess
- Lucas Ng (aka shor)
Your Action: Relevance matters. Focus your link building efforts on sites within your topical niche.
7. Link Popularity of Site in Topical Community
In Laymen's Terms: How popular is the site that is linking to you? Especially withing your niche.
A niche site may not have a high quantity of links but a few links from the 'authorities' in the neighbourhood is often enough to rank the site above the authorities for niche-related keywords. The authoritative sites are telling the search engines "Hey, we're voting for this site for these niche (anchor text) keywords".
- Lucas Ng (aka shor)
Your Action: Relevance and authority matter. For #6, we said you should focus your link building efforts on sites within your topical niche. This factor says you should prioritize your link building on getting links from the biggest of the relevant sites.
8. Keyword Use in Body Text
In Laymen's Terms: Within the webpage/article, how often and what keywords being used? How relevant is your article to target keywords?
It is important to use the keyword phrase throughout the page where it makes sense. As engines get more sophisticated, it's not just the targeted keyword phrase that counts, but the mix of all the words on the page that help to determine what the page is about.
- Scottie Claiborne
Your Action: Use the search keywords and phrases you're targeting throughout your page or article.... when it makes sense. Don't cram so many keywords in the article that Google penalizes you for keyword stuffing.
9. Global Link Popularity of Linking Site
In Laymen's Terms: Links from big websites (ie., sites that have lots of inbound links) are worth more than links from smaller sites.
I like links that are linked to by many sites. I think there's a big difference between a PR 6 site with 20,000 links and a PR 6 with 500 inbounds.
- Roger Montti aka martinibuster
Your Action: Focus your marketing efforts on the biggest, most authoritative sites. Think of it this way -- it's better to get one link from a big site (like About.com) than to get 10 links from 10 small sites (like personal blogs).
10. Topical Relationship of Linking Page
In Laymen's Terms: Relevance matters. Links from a webpage that is related to your page's content are worth more than links from random, unrelated sites.
All links help - on topic helps a lot more overall.
- Todd Malicoat
Your Action: Relevance matters (again). Focus your link building efforts on sites within your niche. And if you can help it somehow, try to get links on specific webpages within a site that's even more relevant.
Analyze the Full Survey
Google Search Engine Ranking Factors Survey - SEOMoz
The results of the full survey are very interesting. We've only scratched the surface with our discussion of the top 10 most influential search ranking factors. This survey represents the most authoritative and comprehensive collection of knowledge about Google's search algorithm. (Outside the company, of course.)
Rand Fishkin, CEO of SEOmoz:
This document represents the collective wisdom of 37 leaders in the world of organic search engine optimization. Together, they have voted on the various factors that are estimated to comprise Google's ranking algorithm (the method by which the search engine orders results). The result is a resource of incredible value - although not every one of the estimated 200+ ranking elements are included, it is my opinion that 90-95% of the knowledge required about Google's algorithm is contained below.