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SEOmoz has released its latest Search Engine Ranking Factors report which gives an idea on how SEO works in 2009. A total of seventy-two SEOs participated in SEOmoz's survey that involved ranking possible factors used by Google while ranking websites, as well as a variety of questions pertaining current SEO trends and topics. The survey was completed earlier this year. The survey compiled the following as the top five ranking factors:

• Anchor Text from External Links
• Keyword Use in Title Tag
• Raw Link Popularity
• Diversity of Linking Domains
• Keyword Use in Root Domain

If we compared this year's list to that of 2007 survey by SEOmoz, it will come clear that the first three factors remain unchanged, however, the order is changed. The top five ranking factors in 2007 were:

• Keyword Use in Title Tag
• Global Link Popularity of Site (”Raw Link Popularity” above)
• Anchor Text of Inbound Links (”Anchor Text from External Links” above)
• Link Popularity within the Site’s Internal Link Structure
• Age of Site

SEOmoz's 2009 survey ranking factors survey features negative ranking factors separately. It also features a new chart of “Overall Ranking Algorithm” elements.

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Search Ranking Factors For 2009 Indicates Little Change In SEO

After introducing 'Standard AdSense font family' back in February, Google AdSense is updating font styles for its ad units once again of late. Reportedly, AdSense is changing the default font used in the different ad units and it's done on the basis of which ad font performs best in a particular ad unit.

Here are the new defaults:

Arial: 728×90, 336×280, 120×600, 120×240

Verdana: 300×250, 160×600, 468×60, 250×250, 234×60, 125×125, 180×150

Times New Roman: 200×200

The new fonts are expected to come into play within the next few days!

I heard something on the radio a few weeks ago that stuck with me and made me think about the basics of SEO. The line went something like this, “You have to have the fundamentals down before trying any of the fancy stuff. ” So before you go out and try to do things like PR sculpting or any of the other advanced techniques you hear about, get the basics down.

SEO can really be broken down into three essential areas: Architecture, Content, and Links. These are the basics of SEO that you need to understand and get right first. Let’s take a look at some key points to understand in each of these main areas.

Architecture – Can Your Site Be Crawled?

One of the first problems that a website has to address is whether or not their site can actually be crawled by the search engine spiders. You can have the best content in the world, but if the search engine spiders can’t get to it you won’t reap the benefits! Here are some things you can do to help your site be more crawl-able:

1. Avoid things like JavaScript or Flash navigation. Both of these kinds of navigation are not crawled very well by search engines at this time. This could change in the future, but for now it’s best to just avoid JavaScript and Flash navigations.
2. Keep your site’s architecture as flat as possible. Don’t have tons of levels in your architecture. Keep pages as close to the root as possible. In other words, mysite.com/folder/product is much better than mysite.com/category/subcategory/other-folder/product.
3. Stay away from parameter strings in URLs. By having parameter strings in URLs you could have multiple versions of the same content and will have to learn how to properly use the canonical element. You can avoid this by not using parameters. Instead, have a static URL for each page whenever possible. For example, mysite.com/productname.html is much better than mysite.com/?prod-id=abc123&cat-id=def456.
4. Use internal linking appropriately. Whenever it makes sense, link to other pages in your site from within the content of the page. Don’t just rely on your navigation to get people (and search engine spiders) to where you want them to go. (More about internal linking.)
5. Sitemaps are your friends. Make sure your site has both an HTML and XML sitemap. (More about sitemaps).

Content – Is It Optimized?

Once you have your website’s architecture set up the right way, the next step is to make sure that your content is well-optimized to help your site rank for your main keyword phrases. Here are a few basic guidelines to follow:

1. Don’t target too many phrases per page. You may have a list of 50 keywords you want to target, but you should only focus on 2-3 main phrases per page. Create other pages around additional phrases as needed.
2. No spammy stuff! Don’t do any keyword stuffing, alt stuffing, meta spamming, or any other spammy techniques. They don’t really work well anymore anyway.
3. Use your keyword phrases in titles, header tags, etc. By using your keyword phrases in your titles and header tags you can give them more emphasis.
4. Use your keywords in your content. Don’t just rely on your titles and header tags. Don’t overdo it; make the text read naturally but make sure you include your keywords and variations of them in the content.

Links – Getting Juice from Other Sites

Setting your site up the right way is one step, but getting traffic to your website takes a lot more than just using keywords on your pages. The other big key to getting a good rank on the search engines is to get other sites linking to you. By getting these links you are showing that your site has credibility and is worth ranking well. Here are a few quick tips to keep in mind when you’re building links:

1. Use a variety of techniques. There are a lot of things you can do to build links: directories, articles, social bookmarking, forums … the list goes on and on. Mix up what you’re doing and get a variety of link types coming into your site. (More about link building)
2. Spread your links over a lot of domains. It’s important to get a lot of links, but it’s also important to get a lot of links spread over many domains. If you follow tip #1 this shouldn’t be much of a problem for you.
3. Use keywords in your anchor text. One problem that I’ve seen over and over is that someone will build links to their site using either their name, their business name, or their URL. This is nice if that’s what you want to rank for, but if you want to rank for a keyword phrase you have to use that phrase as the anchor text of your link.
4. Use a variety of anchors. Don’t just use the same keyword phrase over and over again. Mix it up so that you aren’t spamming one phrase too much. This will help your link building look more natural.
5. The work is never done. Don’t think you can just submit to a bunch of directories and your work is over. SEO is an ongoing process.

While these tips don’t cover everything you need to know about the three main areas of search engine optimization, this is enough to get you started. Spend some time looking over your site to make sure that you are doing these basics. Then, if you want, you can try to get a little fancy.

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Google seems to be testing changes to its “show more results from” feature and has come up with a wider use of the feature. Google removed the simple HTML link to a site command feature and now it shows several more results in the same search results page. It is using an AJAX (JavaScript) driven plus sign box that adds five more results to the web results.

Plus sign closed:

Plus sign opened:

I came back last week from a relaxing vacation and found an email in my inbox sporting the following title: “PageRank is Dead.”

Upon reading the title, my mind went blank, closing up in an effort to prevent shock. Was this possible? The Death of PageRank? I tried to remember the predetermined events of the SEO Ragnarok: Facebook devours Odin; Twitter falls to the venom of the colossal snake, Jörmungandr; Google annihilates PageRank; the giant, Surt, sets the SEO world on fire…

I came slightly to my senses, and realized I don’t need to jump to eschatological conclusions. SEO can continue with, or without, PageRank. This was not the fiery end of linkbuilding or SEO.

Certainly it is true that, for many, PageRank acts as the guiding star for the value of any inbound link. The human mind naturally gravitates toward concrete numbers over the more abstract sentiments existing in a good link.

I consigned to fate. I would navigate my linkbuilding solely by the oft-overlooked principles of RELEVANCE, LINK ENVIRONMENT, and ANCHOR TEXT. Come walk with me while I explain…

Relevance is a principle frequently neglected in the frenzied piranha link building-style adopted by some. This explains why, on any given medical professional’s website, you are just as likely to find links to “Mexico Vacations!” as you are to truly helpful medical sites. But linking in relevant ways is better. (1) It strengthens user experience, (2) it looks natural, and (3) it makes you look more relevant to your industry in the eyes of the search engines. Want to know whether it’s worthwhile to try to put a link on a site? Ask yourself if the site is related to your own site, and/or links out to your competitors. And remember that this is not the 7 Degrees of Kevin Bacon. You need to be slapped by Common and Sense if your logic looks anything like this: My site is about doctors, doctors are typically wealthy, wealthy people like to vacation, Mexico is a great place to vacation, so clearly my doctor site is relevant to “Mexico Vacations!”

Link Environment is another principle by which to judge link potential. At this point we’ve determined relevance. But now we must ask where the link will be. While links on a link page are good, a link from a body of text is better. Imagine how someone would feel about your link were it lost in a gorilla-infested jungle of more links. You can only carry so many bananas in your hands, before some gorilla picks you up and carries you off to a more readable site. Imagine now that your link is highlighted amongst a bevy of text, all talking about your topic, and pointing to you as an authority on the subject, or an entertaining take. I guarantee the gorilla population is lower on those pages. But seriously, gorillas aside, your link is better off showing up in the body of a blog post or other content, than it is becoming just another body in a sea of link lists. The search engines think so too.

It is no secret that Anchor Text is the bread and butter of any link building effort. It is the crux, the golden child, the guitar solo. And yet many forget the power of anchor text. For a quick demonstration, type the word “here” into Google. At spot 3 you’ll find Adobe Reader, followed by Apple Quicktime, Windows Media Player, and so on. Nearly all the sites that require you to download Adobe Reader, or a Flash plug-in, or Quicktime to view their contents use the phrase “download here” with “here” almost always being the anchor text for the link. If you want to influence the search engines in what terms you should be showing up for, you better be paying attention to the anchor text of the links pointing to your site. Get too large a ratio of links with the anchor text “website” and you’ll find that your link campaign is a sad sorry affair. Your family will send you emails offering condolences. Your friends will stop returning your calls.

It is almost not worth mentioning to you that the email title “PageRank is Dead” was spurious. Upon opening the email, I learned that PageRank had faked its own death in a publicity stunt.

Further reading revealed that it had, in fact, NOT faked its death, but that we were having a network problem involving a browser plug-in. PageRank is alive and well. And yet… it’s worth keeping the above Triumvirate of principles at the forefront when linkbuilding. They are far more likely to outlive PageRank, an arbitrary numbering system that is bound to be tweaked and changed. These three principles are solid. Allow me to conclude with this quote from a slideshow presentation about the History of SEO given by Greg Boser of 3dogmedia.com and Marshall Simmonds of NYTimes.com:

“The PageRank that is displayed in the Google Toolbar is for entertainment purposes only. Due to repeated attempts by hackers to access this data, Google updates the PageRank data very infrequently because it is not secure. On average, the PR that is displayed in the Google Toolbar is several months old.”

And just because you asked, were I to speak at PageRank’s funeral, I imagine my remarks would be something like this: “PageRank, we obsessed about ye far too much. So we’ve buried you upside-down in case ye decide to come back.”

The Google Mobile Blog recently reported the launch of “Search with My Location” for iPhone 3.0. With the help of this feature, iPhone users will be able to locate specific location without inserting the exact place where they are. It automatically identifies the location of a user, and gives names of restaurants, bars or other establishments when using generic terms.

For instance, when you search for “jazz” clubs, it will display all the jazz clubs near the user’s location. At present, this feature is only available for U.K and U.S iPhone users.

In order to use this feature, visit www.google.com from your iPhone’s Safari browser and click on the “My Location” link. To update the screen, just point to the “update” link and it will display your location on the homepage.

Google also promises not to use a user’s location in search to protect privacy of users. If you want to disable this feature just select the “Preferences”option given below the Google mobile homepage.

Believe it or not, all SEO’s were newbies at one time or another. Launching a website can be a very exciting event for an individual or new business owner. However, that excitement can quickly turn to disappointment when the site owner finds out that they are getting little or no traffic. If they are getting traffic, it is most likely coming from family members or friends who they notified through an email or Facebook.

Being involved in SEO and marketing in general, I am usually bombarded by family members and friends with questions about marketing their website or their future website on the Internet. Because of this and my willingness to help just about anyone I know, you can usually find me in a small dark corner at a family party (it has to be small and dark because my wife gets ticked when I’m not up and socializing with everyone), on the phone in the car, or answering an email, Facebook message, or Twitter message about SEO and other internet marketing tactics.

I was on a call yesterday with one of my best friends from high school. Our conversation was focused on general search engine optimization principles and link building tactics that could provide a good foundation and hopefully, if he does them right, some strong rankings in the search engines. One thing I emphasized is the fact that what ever he does, he needs to build links naturally. A natural link building campaign is crucial for success in SEO.

A natural link building campaign is one that is just that, natural! Getting 50,000 links within the first twenty days of your website’s existence is definitely not natural. Getting a slow trickle of links coming into your website and then building up looks much more natural. Also, getting 50,000 links pointing to your home page with the same anchor text is not natural. Vary your anchor text and include long tail versions of your keywords. You should also build links to other pages of your site in addition to your home page. All of these things help with building a natural link campaign.

In terms of links, there are two types of links you can get for your websites, external and internal links. Both are very important and can make a huge difference in your search engine rankings. I want to discuss in detail, ten ways to effectively jump-start your link building campaign.

Friends & Family Members

When beginning a link building campaign, one very natural way of obtaining links is from friends and family members. I just opened up our family blog and counted all of the friends and family who we have added in our blogroll. The grand total… 41. How hard is it to simply call up (recommended – it’s more personal) or email your family and friends who have blogs or other sites, and ask them for a link to your new website? Not hard at all! In fact, because they are your friends or family members, they will probably do it without hesitation. You can do the same thing with Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc.

Add A Blog To Your Domain

Google loves blogs! Google loves fresh content! Google loves internal links! Internal links from other pages of your website are a guaranteed way to help you increase your rankings in the search engines. Adding a blog to your domain is a great way for you to easily add new content to your website on a regular basis. In most cases, adding a blog to your main domain is rather simple and can be done in as little as three clicks of your mouse. Web hosting companies like myhosting.com, Hostmonster, & Bluehost offer one click installations of blog platforms like Wordpress or b2evolution.

Adding a blog, posting to it at least once daily, and linking back to your home page and other important pages of your website with keyword anchor text is a great way to gain a lot of internal links. When blogging, you should also link out to other websites that interest you and websites that are in similar industries. You might also consider adding images, videos, polls, etc. Mix things up! Make it look natural! Most important, have fun!

Local Organizations

Just about every city in the country has a local chamber of commerce; mine would be the Lehi Area Chamber of Commerce. Joining a chamber of commerce will not only get you a very good link back to your website, but also provides networking opportunities with other local businesses. Most times, depending on your business, you can generate new leads rather easily by getting to know other individuals and businesses in your area.

Local News

Developing relationships with local newspaper writers and always making yourself available for comments on news stories that involve your industry is a great way to build awareness about your company and get links back to your website (if the newspaper is published online).

Help A Non Profit Organization

You would be surprised how many non-profit organizations are operating in your city and your state. Every one of us has been given talents and certain things that we are good at. I guarantee that there is a non-profit organization that could use your help, whether it is with designing their website or painting the conference room of their new office building. If you offer of yourself and your services freely, you can most likely ask for, and get a link to your website from theirs.

Submit Your Site To Local & Industry Specific Online Business Directories

Anyone studying SEO can usually find a blog post about submitting your website to directories on the Internet. Yes, this is a valuable link building tactic, but before you go crazy and start submitting to thousands of directories, seek out local directories and directories that are specific to your business. Submit to these first and take your time filling out all of the information that they ask for. These will be some of your most valuable links since they are so relevant to your website and business.

Social Bookmarking

You have probably heard the term social bookmarking. You have probably heard that social bookmarking is a great way to build links. Well, it is and it isn’t… You can waste a lot of time social bookmarking if you are submitting to the wrong sites. I limit my social bookmarking to Mixx, Propeller and sometimes Kirtsy. The trick to social bookmarking is to not only bookmark your website, your blog posts, and other things related to your website, but bookmarking lots of different things that interest you. This will make your bookmarking profiles look much more natural to both viewers and the search engines.

Write An Article And Submit To Article Directories

Writing articles and submitting them to sites like Ezine Articles, Article City, and Go Articles, also known as article marketing, is a great way to get links back to your website. Take time to write a very detailed article about your industry and submit it to a few article directories like the ones I listed above. You will get links back to your website by properly using the author resource or bio box at the end of the article. You should tell a little about yourself and your company, while adding keyword rich anchor text links pointing back to your website.

Write And Submit A Press Release

Writing press releases and submitting them to places like PR Web or Web Wire is a great way to generate interest and buzz about your business and also to get links back to your website. This method of link building is a little more difficult than other links that you can get for your website. Writing a press release takes skill… a skill, which the average person, like me, does not have. Press releases have certain requirements that must be met, a certain format that must be followed, and in most cases, need to be super interesting. Not having any of these elements can almost guarantee that your press release will either be outright rejected or not distributed to other news related websites.

Build A Hub Page Or Squidoo Lens

Building a Hub Page or Squidoo Lens is a fun way to get links back to your website. To date, I have built 73 Hubs and 25 Lenses for my own personal websites and hundreds for clients that I have managed. The most effective Hub Pages and Squidoo Lenses are those that have at least 450 words of text about a certain topic or subject, videos, pictures, polls, and other gadgets that are easy to add. You want to make the page as interactive as possible so it provides value for anyone who happens to read it. You are allowed two links to other websites from your Hubs and a handful of links (be conservative, don’t spam) from your Lenses.

Building links isn’t pretty. But, in order to rank well in the search engines, it is absolutely necessary. These are ten excellent ways for new companies or new website owners to start building links to their websites. There are many others and I encourage any of our readers to add to this list by commenting on this post.

It does not take long for ecommerce webmasters to learn that links impact their rankings in the search engines. However, many webmasters make a big mistake with the links within their own site.

In order to develop a clear understanding for this article, let’s lay down some basic information about internal links. When discussing internal links, I am referring to any and all links within your website and links that stay within the same domain. I make this clarification because some may refer to links across domains, but within sister sites, as internal. For this article we will only refer to links within the same domain as internal links.

To further clarify information you should already know, (but we won’t hold it against you, if you don’t) the clickable text in a link is called “link text“, or “anchor text“. These mean the same thing, so no need to argue which phraseology is correct, right? Anchor text is vitally important in search engine algorithms.

Good. Now that we have ground rules, let’s discuss why internal link structure is the “enemy” for most webmasters. A large portion of webmasters do not take full advantage of the ability to link to themselves using the right anchor text. Many of you are eating, drinking, and sleeping link building. You are dreaming up new ways, reading endless information on the latest link building tactics, and working hard to obtain links with the right anchor text from outside websites. How many link requests have you sent with unsuccessful results? How many hours have you spent building other web pages all in the name of link building?

Now, how many hours have you spent ensuring the links within your own site use the correct anchor text? I can hear all of the excuses already, but before you go there, let me answer the most common questions. If you still have a question, leave a comment and we will address it.

Many webmasters do not use the right anchor text within the links of the navigation bar due to lack of space. I get it and understand. No need to have an ugly site. If you cannot fit the correct anchor text in the navigation bar (top, left, right, or any combination) without the text wrapping or a really wide or tall nav bar, then just use the root word.

Example: keyword = “Easton little league baseball bats”

nav bar link suggestions = “Easton baseball bats”, or “little league bats”.

Do the best you can with the navigation bars. The truth is, they are important, but not the most important internal links you can have.

Many webmasters also overlook the page footer. This space works well for longer keywords, as it allows greater space flexibility without negatively affecting site aesthetics. Check your footer for correct anchor text usage on all relevant links. For larger sites (in terms of pages), it is not recommended to use the footer for every link. If there are too many links, navigation can be messy or difficult for site visitors. Like anything else, this can be abused and a footer stuffed with keyword links is impractical.

Another way to get anchor text is to use the alternative text (commonly misnamed the alt tag) of an image. Search engines count alternative text as the anchor text for a link within an image. Be careful to use alternative text that relates to the image, or there is danger of being labeled a spammer.

The best place for obtaining value from internal links is the content area of your page. Search engines look at this area with more trust. Why? The odds are more likely that a webmaster will place relevant and helpful links in this area, which is what search engines want. I recommend that the text color on these links matches the color of other links within the site, and that links are underlined. (For most sites this would be blue and underlined.) Don’t try to disguise the link because it shows the search engines you are not trying to hide something.

You tell the search engines what each page is about by using anchor text within the site. Search engines use the external links pointing to your site to verify this information. Get your internal links correct, and it will likely take fewer external links to rank well for the keyword phrases you are targeting. Go fix those internal links today to see improved rankings.

The question I would like to answer today is: ‘How valuable is it to build links to your sites deep pages?’

The whole issue could be summed up with 1 one sentence: It is VERY valuable to build links to deep pages on your site. Let’s explore why.

Think of your site as a large dam with many tributaries feeding water into it constantly. The tributaries represent all the links pointing to your home page, whether from internal or external links. Your home page is the dam. It is the largest and most popular place for people to link to your site, and therefore usually holds the most weight in the search engines. For the purposes of this analogy, let’s say that when the dam releases some water each month, that water then filters out into the surrounding country, eventually making its way back into the tributaries that feed the dam itself (internal links). It’s a big circle. That is how page rank gets distributed on your site. Your home page has a lot of ‘link juice’ pointing at it. That link juice eventually finds it’s way to some of the inner pages on your site, but probably won’t get to all the pages on your site unless you’ve only got just a few pages one level from the home page.

So again, why is it valuable to build links to your inner pages (a part of the system of tributaries pointing to the dam) if the home page (dam) of your site will always be the biggest source of traffic and links? Because with larger tributaries feeding it, the dam (your home page) will grow at a faster rate, which will then release more water (page rank/organic ranking) to the surrounding country on a faster schedule, which will, in turn, feed more water into all the tributaries of the dam, not just the one tributary being built up at the time.

If all that is too confusing, here’s a real world example:

I have 10 deep pages on my site each targeting a specific keyword. I build 10 links to each of those pages. Since these pages are created in my site template, they all include links back to the home page of my site. So I just got 10 links to my home page, from inner pages on my site that are each getting links themselves. So the inner pages benefit from the links I’m building externally, and if I link to them from the home page as well, they get the added benefit of the strength of my home page too. This creates one big circle of links to deep pages, which link to the home page, and the home page, in turn, links to these deep pages.

One thing to note is that most of the time, you don’t get a choice of getting a deep link vs. a home page link and most sites will only link to your home page anyway. So if you have to choose between building links to your home page, or to your inner/deep pages, link to your deep pages. For tips on how to get more links to your deep pages naturally, read my post about link bait.

Let’s face it 404 pages are a pain, for webmasters and for users. I absolutely hate clicking on a link and getting a 404 error page. However, what’s really our concern here is what it does for your SEO. What should you do about those 404 pages? Should you just leave it alone or should you 301 redirect all of them? As usual moderation and common sense is the answer to this dilemma. Randfish recently gave his opinion on when to redirect the 404 pages an when to just leave them alone.

Basically what he said was to just leave all 404 pages alone unless the page:

A) Receives important links to it from external sources,
B) Is receiving a substantive quantity of visitor traffic,
and/or C) Has an obvious URL that visitors/links intended to reach.

In short unless you can see that you’re really losing on substantial link juice then let it be. From the user stand point though I have to agree with Yoshimi that 301s can actually be more confusing to searchers then 404s. 404s are irritating but it is even more irritating to click on a link and be baffled when you end up back on the site’s homepage. At least a 404 page makes you realise that there’s a problem somewhere along the way and that you’re not just being crazy clicking again and again and encountering the same frustrating problem of ending nowhere you want to be. Of course, as Randfish says if it’s obvious that the URL was misspelled then a 301 redirect to the desired URL won’t be confusing at all.

To make 404 pages less irritating and baffling what you can do is to customise your 404 page. Jeff Atwood’s post on Creating User Friendly 404 Pages is a useful guide on how to do this. Remember though that a customised 404 page will not affect your SEO but anything that will make things better for your users is always good for your end goal.

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404 Pages: Tips for SEO and User-Friendliness