You know that Google – and other search engines – use many different signals to determine how to rank websites on their search results pages. But how many SEO ranking factors can you actually name? 10? 20?
Google says it takes more than 200 factors into account in its ranking algorithm while Bing claims to use over 1000 signals. Of course, these ranking factors are not made public. Search engine algorithms also change over time, with new signals being added and others dropped.
SEO experts have managed to get a pretty good grasp on at least the most imporant factors that play a role in search engine rankings.
Below, I’m listing 50 Google ranking factors that are important in 2011. For easy reference, I’ve put them into three different categories: