I'm thrilled to announce that after months of hard work, SEOmoz's biennial Search Engine Ranking Factors is finally launching. Every two years, we survey 100 of the industry's top SEO minds. In 2009, 72 SEOs participated in the data gathering process, answering survey questions that consumed hours of time. The resulting document is an amazing aggregation of data about how search engines rank documents and, at least in my opinion, should be read by anyone serious about practicing search engine optimization.
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The document contains five important sections:
- The Overview - offering the most high level view of the ranking elements
- Ranking Factors - the raw data, showing the importance and level of consensus for each factor; this year also includes a set of opinions on how geo-targeting across countries is perceived.
- Link Building - this year, we've also added a section asking our SEO participants which methods they find most effective for link acquisition. I think this data is tremendously valuable and interesting for anyone seeking to engage in link building campaigns.
- Additional SEO Data - we asked a few specific questions around SEO to gauge the opinions of the experts; lots of cool stuff in here, too
- Contributors - a list of those who participated in the survey and details about who they are and where you can find them on the web
My great thanks goes out to Timmy & Sam here at SEOmoz, who helped create this year's document and to all of the generous participants from across the SEO world. Practitioners in more than a dozen countries around the world, all of whom have extremely busy schedules, gave up their time to help those learning SEO get a better view of the subject - please join me in thanking them.
If you've got questions, feedback or want to bring up interesting topics, feel free to do so in the comments on this post.
Regardless of whether you're a greenhorn or a veteran of SEO, this is essential reading. Don't worry about algo changes, daily seo news, or shifts in technology. Worry about understading each of these ranking factors and how they impact your day to month to quarter to annual strategy.
SEO is understanding these factors in your sleep, and using that knowledge on a daily basis for decision making in your everyday website creation and marketing execution.
Considering the contributors to this document, this is probably the most authoratitive, generous, and valuable guide to understanding optimizing your website for search engines that will probably exist for a long long time.
Great job to everyone involved, and kudos to the mozplex for being able to crunch some tough numbers, and work some long hours for the benefit of the community. Looking forward to waxing philosophical about the algo this week in Seattle.
I couldn't agree more!! The reports offers SEOers old and new to see how successful SEO proffessionals see the current SEO landscape, If 100 doctors assumed that an operation was a good idea, due to what they have noticed whilst working what would you do.
Its an itemised best practise proposal! it brings more good than bad!
Good job guys
SEOMoz = The gift that keeps on giving!!
The original ranking factors documents contributed significantly to my personal development as an SEO and I'm so glad to be able to contribute back.
Really looking forward to reading the feedback as it comes in!
I do wish I'd had time to make more comments (there were 200 questions!) - that said I think the data speaks for itself. What's particularly valuable this time round is the inclusion of % contention on each answer. Great work!
I always found the most value in the words last time around as a reader, so I tried my best to contribute a few "social media bites".
It was a long survey, and I am sure I was slacking a bit towards the end, but can't help wishing that more commentary was included.
Also slightly of note is that the survey was taken before supposed changes to the treatment of nofollow by Google
Why do people use so many words when 'awesomesauce' says it all.
Thanks for compiling and sharing.
Fabulous, can't wait to read it. I contributed, and get so much from reading everyones point of view and theories. I agree there are "different ways to skin a cat" but in this document gives a very good foundation for the key areas. I'm also very pleased to see so many SEOs from so many different countries, the contributors are literally from ALL over the world.
Again, thanks for asking me to contribute, it's an honour to be part of it.
Hey Rand,
Given that this has been running for a few years, it may be worthwhile to conduct an analysis of the changes in sentiment over time...then again, having reviewed the content, not much seems to have changed, except perhaps the "social network" non-event (from a pure SEO perspective)...worth a look?
(Timmy is an SEOmoz employee)
If you want to see the old one and compare between the two, I moved it to:
https://www.seomoz.org/factors/v2
Fantastic, I had been waiting for this to come out. I love seeing how wrong everyone else is. J/K. The variance of ideas in the industry shows that there are probably still several ways to skin the cat. Where the cat is google. And by skinning I mean ranking. Because otherwise that would be really really awful.
I've been in the Milwaukee airport for 5 straight hours on layover, I am allowed to ramble.
Excellent report, though i found few things missing (not extremely important ones, but still with some significance i think):
I wish I could "thumbs up" this post twice! Do you plan on releasing this as a PDF for us SEOers?
A thousand thanks for the great work that you do for us!
See this
Thank you Rand and all contributors for this synthesis of all experiences.
It's interesting to see that the top 5 ranking factors are exactly what I had in mind with the same repartition.
Maybe that's why this article randomly appears on the first result :-)
Thanks a lot for this article. Hope to see another great post..
Love the report, you guys are awesome as usual. Quick clarification, though, on the overall ranking algorithm pie chart. When you talk abouot "Social Graph Metrics," is this referring to demographic data? How is something like this quantified by search engines?
Just ran seomoz through your 'top pages on a domain tool'. This page is now showing as the 2nd most important page (after the home page) on the whole site. It even has more links from domains than the moz blog!!
Great report and a wealth of information. Thanks to all who contributed.
Hey Rand/SEOMoz -
Thank youso much for all this great info!
I do have one quick question though: Factor 8 for "On-page (Keyword specific) Ranking Factors" says "Keyword Use in the First 50-100 Words in HTML on the Page"
Does this mean that if I were to view the source of the page, and do a word count on that, the keyword should be in the first 50-100 words of that?
Any help appreciated!
Not only does it provide valuble information, but it is a pure example of great linkbait.
This url, which is used on some of the previous reports, is showing 15,470 external links in Yahoo Site Explorer. Not bad.
The new Link Building effectiveness section is fantastic. In fact the whole thing is great; it's just as useful as the SEO cheat sheet for an excellent quick reference guide (posting to wall now).
The thing I like most about it is that I don't need to spend hours trawling between different SEO resources trying to determine best practice - the collation of opinion has already been done, so this resource gives me a major shortcut.
Cheers!
Thanks for the excellent and useful source of information!
In the additional data section you wrote that 68% said that links from wikipedia do useful although the nofollow attribute, since they are passing trust and authority. My question is - how deep this trust might "penetrate"? Will the trust percentage significantly reduced with each link?
I'm trying to understand whether it will be an efficient tactic to receive links from sites that received links from wikipedia.
Nice read guys - well done to all the contributors who took the time to help out with this.
The geo-targeting section was really interesting - I've worked with clients who have expected an English language website to rank well in competitive foreign markets. It's so fundamental to use the target language of course!
Keep up the good work guys.
Your post always having new concept.
very good article
Any chance of a print-friendly version?
Pretty please with a cherry on top?
Hmm...time limit on editing your own comment?
Ok, well I just spent a Very Long Time putting this in PDF format so it would print nicely with all the pretty charts and no orphans, etc. It's lovely. If anyone wants a copy, send me a private message - I'm happy to share.
saffyre9, I'm sure this print friendly verison must be lovely due to the time and hard work you put into it. I was actually thinking of doing the same thing, so I can make reference to these data later.
Would you be kind enough to share the pdf with the rest of us?
I would love to be on top of that list.
you can email me at [email protected]
Thank you!
This article provides excellent SEO data that I will use to improve my own sites organic search rankings. I'd like to see more about the value or lack of value of determining competition levels by examining other on page factors such as "intitle".
I thought I might take a look at some older posts for comment spam. Worse than I thought!
frightful! I just killed a bunch. :)
if you've ever wondered how searchengines rank web pages, this is a great place to start. Thanks SEOMOZ! Great work Rand! I must say, great tip for students who are going to prepare a sample essay on similar topics.
This is a great article, there are 200 different elements that Google say influence search engine position for web pages. More and more we are finding that quality back links are key.
Hi John,
What an excellent resource. This is why I love SEOmoz! “SEO is understanding these factors in your sleep, and using that knowledge on a daily basis for decision making in your everyday website creation and marketing execution.”
Bharat Infotech https://www.bharatgrouponline.com
ooohhh my I was really shocked. I just discovered I been doing wrong things in these two keywords( Tenant Check Total National and Bankruptcy ). Its a good thing I found this site...I think its very useful
hi,
I would like to know if anyone have the 2009 ranking factor .
here in the link it only have overview .the link seems to be removed when 2011 ranking factors are in .
https://www.seomoz.org/blog/ranking-factors-version-3-released
please can you e-mail to [email protected] if you have the 2009 ranking factor
thanks in advance
ayyappan
Here's the 2009 Version! https://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors/2009
This is the best article I have read since 7 years till today. I am very excited for 2011..
Thank Rand, I believe you have more advice to offer, seomoz blog is such a valuable blog. :)
This gives very fortunate information it helped a lotthank you.
Great information in this post. I especially enjoy the varying perspectives on the data you present. You guys do a great job of helping the SEO community. Keep up the good work so "old school" guys like me can continue learning the art of Internet marketing as we work to help small businesses. Thanks.
Very nice!
Any chance of poping it together, maybe in a PDF, for download?
Many thanks!
Paul Martin
Cube3marketing.com
cool and helpful
First time I see this report, read it all in few hours. very useful information.
This article is more than fabolous. Great refrence for all SEOers out there, especially someone like me eargly wants to learn more about SEO.
Thanks for everyone that contributed to this great community.
Great job as usual!
Great job with the Ranking!!
From time to time, scholars are willing to know the secrets of productive argumentative essay making. Your first-class release just about this post should be a good ground for such people. I know that even custom essay writing service takes some good articles as a ground for the research paper introduction. Hence, your writing talent is very good for people society.
I just wanted to know what means that a factor is 70% (for example) important. In the survey there are a lot of people, so ¿the number is an arithmetic mean? ¿They put the number between 1 and 100 for the importance, or you have given them a few options? And ¿how have you measured the agreement level?
Thanks for your answer!
Many thanks, a resource like this is golden for any SEO technician, up-and-coming and veteran alike. Exact, to the point information providing deep insight. Wonderful job!
Fantastic post - great research - Good Job Mozzers.
Now stand on your heads and juggle!!
Excellent source of info, like the previous one which I often used to convince customers to do what I proposed.
One question, though. Is this data about Google only or other search engines? I see that the top ranking factor is the link text, which is probably more true for Google than for other SEs.
(Timmy is an SEOmoz employee)
Participants were asked to apply the ranking factors to Google’s search engine, and although we’ve found that it’s largely applicable to other major US engines (Bing, Yahoo! & Ask), some variance almost certainly exists.
Alright, I was looking forward to this being released when I first saw Rand tweeting about it. And now I get to look through it..
I was hoping to compare it with the previous release in 2007, but that URI now has this years version. Where are you going to put the old one?
https://www.seomoz.org/blog/ranking-factors-version-2-released
(Timmy is an SEOmoz employee)
I put this in another reply but I don't think to would hurt to mention it here too.
I moved the old one to this URL:
https://www.seomoz.org/factors/v2
Wow, great post, I've been waiting this for a long time.
Very comprehensive and important factors, most importantly, it's from top 100 SEOer's opinions.
Cheers
Awesome Rand. Thanks a lot!
This is totally cool and way useful thanks for doing our work for us!
Important, mistake found in "Additional SEO Data"
Which of the following statements most accurately represents your belief/experience about how 301 redirects are handled by Google?
80%
301’s pass a high percentage (but not 100%) of query dependent and independent ranking factors from one URL to another only when certain content & spam analysis algorithms are satisfactorily met.
It indicates 70% in the chart, but 80% in the text.
Thanks, Rui. We caught that yesterday, too. The percentage next to the answer should match the pie chart and say 70%, not 80%. So yes, you are 110% correct. :-) We will be making the change as soon as possible. Thanks.
:D Glad you've found it already.
I even sent a message to Dr.Pete, I just didn't realize there is a 8-hour lag between London and Seattle lol
Poor Sam was up late just getting this posted and now you won't even let the poor guy sleep in ;)
Have been looking forward to this update! really appreciate the work that goes into creating this valuable resource.
Thanks for putting this together Timmy and Sam! I've been waiting for this for the last few months. I wonder when I get my chance to be one of the top 100. =) A man can dream can't he?
Thank you for the great document. Looking forward to hearing more about this and the rest of the content the next couple of days in Seattle.
Yes! This is one of the best resources in the industry. Can't wait to see what's new! I'll read it on the plane tomorrow on my way to the Pro Training Seminar Series.
Edit: Not that I'm complaining... but would be rad if the nice charts would show up when I go to print. I think you can fix that in the CSS.
(Timmy is an SEOmoz employee)
Printing has bars now.
What an excellent resource. This is why I love SEOmoz!
What a great document. Thanks for putting this together!
Thanks for posting this Rand.
It really is such an incredible amount of invaluable information. Kudos to you for making it free to access.
Bookmarked!
Thanks...Its great I am comparing it with last years ranking factors.
Thanks for compiling this data. I personally don't see any big surprises, which I guess from my perspective is a good thing because it proves my knowledge is a-ok!
great report!!!!!
i have a slot in a small business seminar that will be dedicated to the education of web design and seo and how it's important for small businesses in today's world.
can't wait to see if i can incorporate some of this info into the presentation. if i can't [which i'm sure i will be able to] i will definitely be combing it for a good layout of info to present to clients...
note: i also drop seomoz as the place to go for seo info to everyone in my bni group and those looking for quality [on most fronts] info. i don't know how many have heeded my suggestion, but hopefully they have listened to me and subscribed... :)
Excellent. Everything stuntdubl said above.
Except unlike Mr. Dubl, I unfortunately won't be in Seattle this week. Gutted. Tom will be though and he looks a bit like me so say hi to him instead.
Great Report as always Rand!!
Thanks for including me in the contributors to this one. As a lot of people have already mentioned this document is a great resource and I am sure it is going to be used by a lot of people in the coming year.
Looking forward to having a read of it later.
Great info, thanks!
Any chance this report will be converted to a printable pdf or Word doc?
I am not sure if the Moz team planned this but I think the real power of this document is that it gives 'street cred' to a few earlier (major important in my opinion) posts from Rand and the Gang:
4 Essential SEO Graphics mainly:Scatterplot of Seo Tactics and the other posting Perfecting Keyword Targeting & On-Page Optimization
Review this information and cross reference with the Ranking Factor survey and now you have strong data to build successful websites.
Thanks for putting all of this together! Looks great- will keep me up all night, I'm sure!!
Wow, this is amazing! Thanks for putting all of this together, it's an interesting read. Is there a section coming soon on a comparion of the years you've been running it? That'd be... twice as amazing!
Thanks SEOMoz for the wonderful and useful research.
Going to to follow them for even better results.
#3 Link Aquisition Strategy:
"Classic “Create Valuable Content” Strategies w/o Promotional Marketing"
Would this be considered article marketing? I didn't see another category that really fit that. I love to write, and I have had some great success with this approach. I guess it could be considered Link Bait (#1 on the list) if you take Rand's approach to it...
"Rand Fishkin, chief executive of a Seattle-based search consultancy called SEOmoz, said he focuses on getting editorial links for his clients, partly by creating feature articles that Web publishers will link to: "We call it link-baiting. The idea is to attract a lot of natural links."
It's funny, but I never considered article marketing to be a "link-bait" strategy, but when I went back and looked at some of my most syndicated content, a handful of articles that people "took the bait" with have generated hundred of backlinks from other blogs and sites using my content. I guess I just like to think I am using the "Create Valuable Content" method.
"Valuable Content" does sound better than "Link Bait" :)
Seoteric, Thank you! I was scanning all the comments to see if anyone had asked this question, that was EXACTLY what I wanted to know. What does "Create Valuable Contenct" Strategies really mean? Can someone (from SEOmoz) please give some examples? And is article marketing considered to fall within this category, or another?
Thanks!Ellen Bell
you all are fantastic!
Genius
GENIUS
GENIUS........
Oh, I almost forgot thumbs ^
This is a fabulous reference document for the entire industry...Looking forward to hearing more about the results in depth tomorrow at the Mozinar!
I agree with this since I have been #1 for very competetive phrases where that phrase was not even listed/mentioned on my page
I love rankings. It is good to see what the industry is thinking. Thanks a lot for this article.
Great resource, I will definitely by pouring over this this weekend.
Before it can be a "resource for the entire industry" I think there needs to be a little more peer review/disclosure. Is there a list somewhere of the participants who provided the data used in this report? Data on how much of the survey was completed by these volunteers (or maybe they are not volunteers?) It would be great to see this sort of thing submitted to Search Engine Marketing Journal (SEMJ.org) so it could be reviewed before being promoted as fact or "representative". I so much want to believe it, but I am pretty sure some of the data is skewed by selection bias and other methodology factors. At least they look clearly skewed based on my experience (I was not a participant).
All of the contributors are listed, including their companies. I don't believe that SEOMoz intends to say that the contributors are necessarily correct, nor that they are necessarily THE top industry leaders. However, I believe that the group represents a diverse number of contributors and professionals who have, over time, developed a reputation for their devotion to the topic of SEO - whether through speaking, research, or mere successful search engine exploits.
Could you elaborate how you believe it was skewed? Or what the selection bias may have been? I am quite intrigued.
I see the contributor list now. I don't question their competence Russ. But the top factor is "73% Very High Importance" and the next down is 66%, with the rest of the Top 5 just a few % points away from each other. The top one is also "13.6% Moderate Contention" while the second didn't make the "most contentious list".
So the chart presents #1 as "the winner" over #2, yet a look at the variance (if one could see real data) might show them as equal or perhaps even inverted for all I can tell (point being, we can't tell). More so for the next 3... you'll need very tight data to support a claim that 3 and 4 are in order.
No one has time to run real stats on your data, but if you present it like this, someone should. A peer review might come back suggesting you list "the top 5" and not try to rank them in order, for example, unless you have enough data to support such a rank order (in which case, you would normally show it by publishing the variance).
It is supposed to the community's job to ask these questions, when someone in our industry publishes data like this.
You are right in those regards. Considering the small number of respondents, displaying the variance could present a more accurate picture. Considering that none of these factors are mutually exclusive in action, the "rank" in the list has little impact on how an SEO campaign should look, aside from some measure of prioritization.
Admittedly, expert survey data is valuable only inasmuch as the participants are truly experts. Unfortunately, significance data cannot account for the trust we place in the participants. I would gladly trade off the potential concern of selection bias over a random selection of industry actors in this case.
Its also how much we wish to trust them. While I trust SEOmoz, I wonder how much of the "good" tips are ignored by them... or if they do miss-information at all in these.
Still, its a great asset!
There is no miss-information here. However, don't expect to get the latest/hottest tips from any website or conference, unless you're a part of the circle. If you do enough testing, you'll know what works.
The contentiousness, according to the description, is actually based on the standard deviation, so it is technically a measure of variance. I don't want to put words in SEOmoz's mouth but, if memory serves, they did release some of the raw data the last time around to let industry folks analyze it. Historically, the ranking factors survey has been incredibly transparent. You can choose to agree or disagree (and, honestly, I think sparking that debate is half the point), but it's hardly the work of a secretive cabal.
Hi John,
I'm with you on this one.
How can "100 of the industry's top SEO minds" find so few areas of agreement? There is only 1 (0.6%) "strong concensus" and 36% "moderate consensus" (or higher) levels of agreement across all responses.
Does that mean the questions were not understood or poorly framed? Were most of the top SEO minds wrong to 64% of the questions? Were there other issues that compromised the relevance and accuracy of the survey?
An awful lot of work has gone into this survey but it only identifies 1 ranking parameter that has a "strong consensus" of agreement from the top minds.
It seems to me that the the companies flogging sponsored links campaigns will be quoting this survey to prove how useless SEO is.
PS I'm a total believer in SEO and have been doing it for 14+ years.
As one of the contributors I urge you to use this as a "guide" - there are no definitive answers - none of us are employed by search engines - these answers were given based on our own experiences.
For example, I disagree with Jill Whalen on a couple of her points when we discussed it, but thats because in SEO, no "true" experiments can be carried out - there is no such thing as "all other things held equal" hence every test is somewhat tainted.
A great resources to SEO industry. My great thanks goes out to SEOmoz and Timmy & Sam.
Great work..keep it.
(Edit: link removed)
What I think is really cool is that you guys give this away for free. Where other people would charge at least $17 to access this kind of report, you just offer it up for people to take and use and profit.
As the beneficiary of that, thank-you.
Warmest,
Jonathan(on edit - link removed by Rand)
This is probably not the best blog to try and spam. If you use the Mozbar you’ll see your link is highlighted because it is Nofollowed! Never mind.
I came here to write what a great piece of work this is and I’m looking forward to going through it in the morning. Thank you SEOmoz the work you do is awesome.