The 10 Best Overall Factors Influencing Your Page Rank!
In our last post, summarizing data from SEMoz.org’s recent study, we looked at The Top 8 ‘Keyword Use Factors’ influencing your Search Engine Page Rank. We like to focus some coverage on keyword usage because it’s in the business bloggers control; whereas, many linking strategies aren’t necessarily. What’s more, the war between Google’s Engineers and those that would use link schemes to game their algorithm rages on, making links a highly volatile and potentially unreliable strategic environment.
Regardless, here’s a quick review of SEMoz.org’s 10 Best Overall Factors Influencing Your Page Rank, including various forms of linking.
The 10 Best Overall Factors Influencing Your Page Rank
1. Keyword Use in Title Tag
Agreement amongst the leaders in Search Engine Optimization is pretty much ‘across the board’ that a post or pages title tag is el numero uno when it comes to Page Rank. To quote Christine Churchill, “If you have time to do only one SEO action on your site, take the time to create good titles.”
2. Anchor Text of Inbound Link
Anchor Text defined, if you can get accurate anchor text used for/ from your back links it’s clearly a big deal. According to Marcus Tandler, “Anchor Text is still the single most important factor.”
3. Global Link Popularity of Site
While there is strong overall agreement, consensus amongst the leaders varies here. It is, apparently, measured by links from any and all sites across the web, including the quality and the quantity; however, there is some disagreement over whether it’s the link popularity of pages or of the whole site that matters.
4. Age of Site
For the record, this has nothing to do with an original site registration. Age of site as it’s used here, relates to when the site owner got in the game with actual index-able content. We certainly see a ton of competitive evidence of this factor in our own client markets, where it’s incredibly difficult to unseat a site that has been there since eons ago.
5. Link Popularity within the Site’
We’ve certainly written about this many many times because it’s within your control and white hat if done in the correct way- see Real Estate Blogging Best Practices No. 3: Managing Links in Targeted Anchor TextThis is about the number and importance of internal links pointing to a page. According to Chris Boggs, “Have seen multiple examples of top rankings for competitive keywords with only inbound links pointed to it. Cannot forget to use anchor text links within the content when applicable, which incrementally boost the Navigation link’s value, IMO.”
6. Topical Relevance of Inbound Links to Site
This surrounds a relationship between the sites [and their pages] linking to a target page and the target keyword used. According to Lucas Ng, who describes how this can affect you negatively, “…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.”
7. Link Popularity of Site in Topical Community
This factor centers around a comparison to sites deemed similar in focus. It looks at the link weight and authority of the target website versus its topical peers. Understanding Google can do this well is, in my humble opinion, evidence it can also execute on no. 10 
8. Keyword Use in Body Text
We’ve been vocal about this, but according to SEMoz.org the use of a targeted search term in visible text is of paramount importance. We say emphasize targeted terms a few times in each post and particularly high, but don’t go to far either as you may just set off the ‘key word stuffing filters.’
9. Global Link Popularity of Linking Site
In terms of it’s true importance, this is a highly disputed factor amongst the experts here. Marcus Tandler frankly suggests, “the better the linking site, the better the link.” Ultimately, if the site linking to you has a Page Rank of 8, it may do you a great deal of good versus 2s and 3s.
10. Topical Relationship of Linking Page
This makes sense, when so many abuse gaming in their linking practices. Don’t put it past Google, with it’s vast and ever-improving database of web information, to tune its algorithm to be able to evaluate the relevant [or not] topical focus of sites linking to yours. In fact, bet on it!!
In a final post meant to summarize this great survey, we’ll take a look at the most potentially negative factors to be aware of as it relates to your potential page rank.
Contributed by Chris Frereckschris@kineticknowledge.com
Follow Me on Twitter | Connect on LinkedIn
What You Get With Kinetic Blogs!
Subscribe Here For Better Blogging Knowledge
Join Us on Facebook - Become a Fan!
« Top 8 ‘Keyword Use Factors’ influencing Your Search Engine Page Rank | Home | 10 Reasons Business Blogging is the Top Marketing and Advertising Value Proposition! »
Comments
Trackbacks