The truth is only Google know the various factors that form the ranking matrix for your website. Unfortunately there is no such thing as a “Google Optimisation Handbook” and this holy grail of trade secrets continues to be the hot topic of conversation in webmaster land.

While the rules seem to be changing constantly, based on our experience, the following gives a fairly accurate representation of some of the more important factors used by Google to determine your web sites ranking.

Keyword Usage:
This includes keyword usage in your meta tags, in particular your Title and Keywords Tag, the keyword density of body text, use of keywords in both your internal and external linking, and URL construction. Please view our Meta Tags page for further information.

Domain Strength:
Domain strength refers to the age of your domain and its registration history. Older domains with a strong stable history are viewed more favorably by Google.

Inbound Link Score:
It is an established fact that good quality inbound links will help to improve your Google rankings. When assessing inbound links, Google looks at factors like link age, quality of web page source, use of keywords in link text, and relevance of the content on the source website, to determine your link score. Please view our Link Popularity page for further information.

User Data:
This is based on Google behavioural data from their users. The number of times your URL is clicked on, search requests for the domain, and other historical usage factors all contribute towards your User Data score.

Quality Score:
This is probably determined by Google manually, either by using human scoring, or specialised algorithms that determine page content quality, independent of the core algorithm. Updating the content of your website will help to improve your quality score.

Size of Website:
The size of your website measured by the number of pages will influence your rankings. The bigger your site the better chance you will have of achieving higher rankings.

For further information you may wish to view our Professional SEO optimisation page or Contact Us for further assistance.

Alternatively, to discover and control how search engines rate your website please request your FREE Web Site Analysis report.