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Because of the fact that Aaron Wall's SEO book is now available for sale on ebook-scene.com we provide three articles in which Aaron Wall gives his comment on the different ranking factors search engines use. Together with 37 other SEO experts Aaron Wall voted on the various factors that are estimated to comprise Google's ranking algorithm (the method by which the search engine orders results). Each factor regarding the search engine optimization is listed, briefly described and added with Aaron Wall's comment.
Site/Domain Attributes and Negative Crawling/Ranking Attributes.
In this third article we concentrate on Site/Domain Attributes and Negative Crawling/Ranking Attributes. First we take a look how the factors below contribute to Google's rankings based on the site/domain on which a page resides.
1) Global Link Popularity of Site
The overall link weight/authority as measured by links from any and all sites across the web (both link quality and quantity)
Aaron Wall about this: "You can publish low quality documents on well linked sites and they will rank based largely on the domain's link authority".
2) Historical Performance of Site as Measured by Time Spent on Page, Clickthroughs from SERPs, Direct Visits, Bookmarks, etc.
Metric of click-through-rate, time spent on a page/site, direct navigation via bookmarks, etc. that Google may be measuring through use of their toolbar, free wifi, Google analytics, etc. (note that this is purely speculation as Google has never publicly admitted to monitoring or recording this data)
Aaron Wall: "If many people search for a specific brand that is a strong sign of trust, quality, and demand from users".
3) Manual Authority/Weight Given to Site by Google
Google is occassionally suspected or accused of applying manual manipulation to a domain or page (note that this factor refers specifically to positive ranking manipulation)
Aaron Wall says: "I do not think the authority is manually given, I believe it is more an issue of it earning trust through aging and/or gaining authoritative links".
4) TLD Extension of Site (edu, gov, us, ca, com, etc)
The top-level domain extension of the site. Note that some domains, such as .edu, .gov, .mil and others have restrictions on who may purchase them
Aaron Wall: "Strongly weighted for local results. Typically non commercial trusted domains (like .gov and .edu) likely also get a boost".
5) Verification of Site with Google Webmaster Central
Aaron Wall about this last attribute: "Most quality sites will not be verified for some time to come".
Negative Crawling/Ranking Attributes.
These components may negatively affect a spider's ability to crawl a page or its rankings at Google.
1) Server is Often Inaccessible to Bots
Aaron Wall about this: "If they can't crawl your new content then others are at an advantage by being crawled first. Plus if a server is down often search engines may not want to send visitors to that site as much.
2) External Links to Low Quality/Spam Sites
Aaron Wall: "Every good site probably has at least a few bad outbound links, but a well upkept site is easier to trust and rank".
3) Duplicate Title/Meta Tags on Many Pages
Aaron Wall opinion regarding this issue: "Duplicate content filters are getting tougher. If a site does not have much content and has excessive duplication it not only suppresses rankings, but it may also get many pages thrown in the supplemental results".
4) Inbound Links from Spam Sites
Aaron Wall: If you have a new site and most or all of your links are from spam sites it might be hard ever earn trust in Google. Older sites with many trusted links can get away with having many more spam links. It is more about the ratio of good links to bad links than the exact number of bad links.
5) Low Levels of Visitors to the Site (Measured via Toolbar, Clicks in SERPs, etc.)
Aaron Wall about the level of visitors: "Usage data is one sign of quality. If a site lacks that it may need to make up for that with other signs of quality.
Everything you need to know about search engine optimization can be found in Aaron Wall's SEO Book. It is the #1 ranking SEO book on all major search engines. If you need help marketing your website we highly recommend reading it.
Note that these attributes are just a few of the many attributes which contribute to Google's ranking. There are more of them with comment of other SEO experts as well on seomoz.org.
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