The 7 Basics of a Google Ranking |

Travis McAshanSEM
Mar 2010

A Quick Disclaimer

There is a never-ending discussion over the actual factors used in ranking a website in most search engines. The SEO (search engine optimization) industry is rife with so-called experts claiming they KNOW the secrets. Last time I checked, there are no degrees or canonized literature for the actual ingredients in cooking up a Google ranking. However, based on our experience, expertise and viewed results we wanted to share our take on things.

The Cheat Sheet

If you’re in a hurry and simply want a bullet list rundown of the factors we’ll be discussing, just catch the list below and go about your way. If you’re interested in a few more details, stick around to get the full low-down.

HTML Page Title
Visible HTML Text (on the page)
Inbound Links (quality and quantity)
Inbound Link Anchor Text
Age of Domain
Site Authority
Other Lessor Factors

#1. HTML Page Title

The HTML page title is the single greatest factor in optimizing a web page in Google. It’s important to realize that each page of your site is analyzed individually. This gives you the chance to specifically target multiple keyword combinations throughout your website. As a bonus, you might not know that by changing your page title, you can change the title that is displaying in your search result listings in Google.

#2. Visible HTML Text (on the page)

You would think this is obvious, but there are quite a few site owners that miss this important point. In order to rank well for a particular set of terms, your site should have those terms on the page in regular HTML text. The rule of thumb is to NOT stuff the keywords but to use as many keywords as you need to state your message clearly. Lastly, if you can’t highlight and copy the text it’s probably not HTML text.

#3. Inbound links (quality and quantity)

While some people may have heard this, others have no clue how important inbound links are for your website. Back at MIT when Larry Page and Sergey Brin came up with the idea that eventually spawned Google, the algorithm was used for ranking medical documents. The idea was that the more people that referenced your medical paper, the more you could trust it, and the larger number of references meant a greater authority or ranking. They took this algorithm to the web, and the rest is history. The idea behind inbound links is that they establish quality, popularity and relevance, while not necessarily being under the control of a site owner. This makes inbound links an important part of most search engine ranking algorithms. The best links you can get from other sites are (a) from a home page, (b) links that don’t require a link back to them, (c) links from authorities in your industry.

#4. Inbound Link Anchor Text

How another site links to your site is important. In fact, it can be the difference between a rank boosting increase or just another link to your site. “Anchor Text” refers to the actual text in the link or the text that is “clickable” on a webpage. If the anchor text (or clickable link text) contains your desired keywords in it as opposed to just your website domain, you can significantly improve the value of the link in Google’s algorithm. Also note that combining this keyword-rich anchor text with relevant text surrounding the link can amplify this already good effect. Don’t worry if this one goes over your head just take a mental note and ask your SEO guy about it next time you chat.

#5. Age of Domain

On average, newer domains have a much tougher time making their way up the ranks than older ones. There is quite a bit of discussion as to why this happens. Many believe it’s related not only to the age of the domain, but also the age of the pages on the site. Others think that the longer a site is live the more chance it has to build quality inbound links. Whatever the case, don’t be discouraged if you have a newer domain, we have seen plenty of newer sites move up the ranks within a few months time. One word of caution is to carefully think about changing your website’s domain, as it could hold quite a bit of value in Google’s eyes.

#6. Site Authority

This is a little bit of a cheat, to be honest, and encapsulates quite a few ranking factors. You could think of “site authority” as a term meaning “how important the search engines think your site is”. The really interesting thing about site authority is that individual pages belonging to websites with higher site authority will gain even higher ranks, even if the individual pages don’t have the other higher ranking factors. I’ve seen this in my own blog when I wrote an article called “primary aim in life“, that is #1 in Google for that term. (This is pretty good considering my site isn’t about that particular topic). Authority can be viewed as a site that is big and well known, like wikipedia.com. However, in most cases it refers to the site’s authority in a specific theme, subject or industry. There are quite a few factors that figure into a site’s authority including inbound links, age of the domain and even website traffic.

#7. Other Lessor Factors

If “site authority” was a cheat, then I suppose “other lessor factors” is a complete cop-out. However, getting into the hundreds of other factors that go into a Google ranking would become an exercise in diminishing return of investment. Aside from the factors mentioned above, there are probably hundreds, if not thousands of other smaller, less important factors involved in ranking, such as keywords in your page URL, image ALT tags, meta tags, how often your site is updated and many more. Another interesting factor outside of your control may be the “click-through” ratio on your search results in Google. If you’re intersted in learning more about ALL of the factors that go into a search engine algorithms, check out this page, www.seomoz.org/articles/search-ranking-factors.php.

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