Success factors

Success factors

This table is a great way to have an overview of SEO, and view the key factors (on and off page factors) to achieve success.  On first glance it looks confusing, but when you go over it it actually makes it a lot simpler.

It highlights the the top 33 factors you should consider, by giving each a weighting you can work out what areas you should give more energy to than others.

The key factors they cover are:

• Content – the quality of your material
• HTML – elements used to technically create your web pages
• Architecture – elements involved with your overall site
• Links – how links to your content may impact rankings
• Trust – the degree your site seems to be a trustworthy authority
• Social – how social recommendations impact your rankings
• Personal – various ways personalized search results impact your SEO

1.  Domain Age

The search engines take the age of your website into consideration when determining rank.  The search engines want to provide users with the best possible results, so they favor sites that are trusted.  Inbound links are one indicator of trust, but so is domain age.  To the search engines, a new site needs to earn trust and that takes time.  A website that has been around for a few years will succeed in getting a new page to rank for specific keywords faster than a brand new website.  Any website, regardless of age, should utilize SEO but an older website will see a quicker return.

2.  Competitors

Any smart business has a website and is marketing it online, which means that your competitors are hungry for the same search engine and online real estate that you want.  If your competitors are smart, they’ve been working at SEO for years.  Just getting started now means that you are late to the game and have a lot to catch up on.  Analyze their strategy to find a weakness that you may be able to capitalize on.  However, chances are good that it will be very difficult to ever outperform them if they’ve been executing a thorough white hat SEO strategy on a regular basis for awhile now.

3.  Search Engine Complexity

Google is becoming more transparent and is providing more information to webmasters regarding the algorithms, but we will never know everything.  The algorithms are always changing and personalization has become an important ranking factor.  It’s impossible to determine what the rank will be from one user to the next since results aren’t always the same.  We are at the mercy of the search engines and all we can do is play by the rules.