Scottie Claiborne

Critical to good optimization.

Eric Ward

Moreso for news search than web search, and especially if the news engine has decided your source is trustworthy. For older sites, yes, for new sites, not right away.

Neil Patel

I have played around by removing and adding keywords within the Title Tag and have noticed a few bumps in search results.

Aaron Wall

If it is overdone it can actually supress a site's rankings, but if the site is well mixed and the titles look more like descriptive newspaper titles than overt SEO it helps a lot. Plus many people link at documents by their official names, and thus the title acts as anchor text for viral content.

Thomas Bindl

Title tag is the strongest on-page factor when it comes down to SEO as it influences the ranking itself as well as CTR on the SERPs

Mike McDonald

If I had to pick only one single aspect of a page to change/optimize, it would be the title tag.

Michael Gray

Having the singular or plural form of the keyword(s) is beneficial.

Ben Pfeiffer

One of the most important but often neglected on page factors.

Guillaume

One of the big 3, and why on Earth does a unique meta Title still exist in top tier companies? Are they are really really dumb or what?

Marcus Tandler

definetly carrys some weight, and also helps you CTR

Jill Whalen

Probably one of the most important factors in determining rankings.

Ani Kortikar

use relevant keywords and text

Caveman

One of the single most important things a site owner can do to affect rankings. Yet, I've rarely met a site with well-deployed titles sitewide. Most underappreciated aspect of page titles: The importance of a sitewide strategy to maximize keyword coverage, clarify distinctions between similar pages, and avoid duplication and dampening filters.

Todd Malicoat

Good titles assist clickthrough (which is likely a portion of current algorithms), and titles still play a very important role in identifying the content portions of a site, and thus the terms that they rank for. Title tags are one of the first areas that nearly anyone claiming to be an SEO will check

Rae Hoffman

I still think the title tag is one of the most important on page elements from an algo perspective as well as a click through perspective.

Jonah Stein

Keywords in the title need to included on the page. Long tail keywords in the page can appear in SERP even when they are no where else. Keyword density is over rated.

Eric Ward

Again, there's always an "if". If the site has earned trust previously, if the text validates the subject matter, if the IBLs indicate quality, then sure, trust on site body copy.

Barry Welford

Particularly in the starting and ending paragraphs

Neil Patel

If you are writing about "dogs" then you should naturally use keywords related to "dogs" within your content. If you don't have keywords within your content it can become hard to rank for those terms.

Russ Jones

Once again, better to than not to, but hardly any value.

Thomas Bindl

content is king

Mike McDonald

Occurrences of your keyword in your actual body text. What a novel concept. Of course it matters.

Ben Pfeiffer

Essential for search engines to determine the relevance of the site.

Guillaume

I think it becomes relevant in terms of how long people will be staying on the page, so down the road it affects SERPs greatly.

Marcus Tandler

With the new "anti-google-bomb" filter it probably carries a little more weight then before

Jill Whalen

You certainly should be using the keyword phrases you'd like to rank highly for in your body text as that definitely is a key place to determine relevancy.

Elisabeth Osmeloski

Having a page focused tightly on one or two main themes is always recommended over having a schizophrenic (sp?) page of body text.

Chris Boggs

Use of semantic variations and less focus on keyword density seems to be key. Go "naturelle!"

Caveman

How could it not be one of the strongest indicators of page subject matter (when aggregated on a Web-wide basis)? If the keywords on a page include "citrus, limes, lemons, tangerines and oranges" it's a good bet the page is NOT about oil and gas drilling. :P

Todd Malicoat

Rather than worrying about density, or other such myths, it is likely better to just use the words associated with topics. The use of semantically similar words is much more important than repeating the same word (which likely HURTS more than helps these days).

Rae Hoffman

I don't think repeating your keywords over and over is going to give you any benefit. But I do think including your keywords and natural variations (think LSI) in natural conversation is something people should focus on when writing content. Also depends on the engine.

Jonah Stein

Natural writing that include stems and semantically related concepts is important.

Barry Welford

Semantic analysis means that related words and synonyms all contribute to the ranking.

Russ Jones

I have seen no substantial evidence to convince me that the surrounding language measurably affects the ranking of a page.

Thomas Bindl

without on-topic content it's a lot harder to rank

Guillaume

Hey - it's all about relevance!

Jill Whalen

Not exactly sure what you mean by this one. How is this different than using keyword phrases in the body text?

Caveman

If this means text that is of no concern with respect to ranking, it's only important that there is some variation and separation of keywords. (Dense, cloaked, keyword stuffed documents still rank well, even in Google). But more importantly, pages attempting to rank well for competitive keywords have far greater success when terms commonly found occurring with the core keywords are also present. This dates back to at least Google's Allegra Update (IMO), and possibly even the Florida Update, when patterns of keyword occurrence and citation patterns came more to the fore.

Todd Malicoat

Using the RIGHT combination of keywords is more important than repetition. For more on this topic - do some research of the purchase of the "applied semantics" corporation.

Russ Jones

In my opinion, the second most important HTML tag available.

Thomas Bindl

2nd most important on-page criteria

Mike McDonald

This is so easily gamed through the use of stylesheets that it probably shouldn't be a factor but I suspect it is. It makes sense from a crawler's point of view. This text has been designated a more emphatic font, hence is probably more important.

Guillaume

Help organize the content (so they say...)

Marcus Tandler

Definetly a big helper, when used properly and not too generous across a page

Chris Boggs

If it helps to further support the page's title and the IBL anchor text. using it alone without having IBLs using it will likely not give too much boost.

Caveman

Best used to reinforce a page's most important theme. Exact duplication between title, META Description and H1 can cause trouble. We have tons of highly ranking pages with NO Hx tags at all.

Todd Malicoat

I can't imagine h1 tags having very much weight anymore - they're good practice for coding valid CSS, and seperating form from function. Good to use, but not a whole lot of value on their own.

Barry Schwartz

But the key is that people will link to you by your domain name. So if you sell Blue Widgets and your domain is www.bluewidgets.com, people are more likely to link to you as "Blue Widgets" than if you had the name rustybrick.com. :)

EGOL

That domain name will be used for a lot of your backlinks. Having your KW as your biz name will get you great anchor text links. Not using a domain with your KW will cost you a lot of relevant anchor text. Outside of the algo here is an example why you should buy the KW.com for your turf if you can get your hands on it. Makes you an authority even if undeserved - how valuable is that when you are asking for a link? It makes you THE MAN for that turf - how valuable is that when a customer is on your site. And can provide enormous psychological energy and you should never underrate that! Also looks great in the SERPs and might get you a few extra clicks.

Andy Hagans

This is only of importance when the domain name is an exact match for the keyword phrase; i.e., it's very easy to rank keywordphrase.com or keywordphrase.org for [keyword phrase], however it won't necessarily give keywordphrase.com a bonus for [keyword phrase + modifier]

Eric Ward

Once upon a time, maybe, and for certain types of content maybe still. It depends on the content, the source, and the trust earned previously.

Eric Enge

The influence of this one is microscopic. Main value is to help the use understand what your site is about.

Neil Patel

This doesn't prove that it is important, but if you do a search on Google you will notice domains with keywords bolded.

Russ Jones

Not much weight except in nascent, untapped niches. Does play a good role in CTR from the SERP, though. (keyword highlighting in the title, snippet, and url are great boosts) It can have value when the keyword is a copyrighted term, however. (ie: the only domain with the keyword in it is yours)

Thomas Bindl

Importance is mainly due to the keyword in links when people use the domain name as anchor text.

Michael Gray

Having an exact match for a domain name and keyword is important. Having a partial match isn't. http://www.bluewidgets.com - good http://www.cheapbluewidgets.com - bad

Ben Pfeiffer

Makes a hell of a website to have your target keywords in the domain. Acts as an overall contributor to rankings by means of other rankings factors. Keywords in domain are used extensively in linking, titles, urls, etc..

Guillaume

Being a fairly new SEO'er, I'd say that from all the stories I've heard compared to my actual experimentations, I'd say this has little value if you try to do white-hat, but could be more effective with massive link campaign / spamming (while getting you flagged!)

Lucas Ng (aka shor)

Not from Google itself, but you will get some pages linking to you using your domain's keywords, so there is that benefit.

Marcus Tandler

The only advantage of a keyword in a domain name is, that when you get linked at just with your URL, you have the keyword in the anchortext.

Jill Whalen

Much less weight than many people believe, it's more of an indirect weighting due to the URL sometimes being used as the anchor text. Definitely not the key to high rankings as some seem to think.

Ani Kortikar

Advantage is having natural links reflect positively for keyword rankings, but it is becoming more difficult to get right keywords.

Natasha Robinson

Seems to be more important in Yahoo however guess this should be Google focused, no?

Chris Boggs

Coupled with use in the page Title and on-page content, this is a factor. Having the word in the URL alone will likely not help without some support.

Caveman

Not very important in terms of algo weighting. Factor in backlink anchor text and SERP click-through's, etc., and it is clearly important. I would probably not launch a new brand today without owning the brand name as a domain.

Todd Malicoat

Keywords in domains has come full circle to play an increased role in rankings. My speculative side says that it's to counteract the problems caused by increased trust filters to assist sites in ranking for their brand names. The consequence is that exact match keyword domains do exceptionally well assuming they have no dashes in them.

Rae Hoffman

I think this also depends on the engine. You'll see a lot more benefit from a domain using keywords in MSN than you will in Google.

Jonah Stein

Information Architecture plays a large role in establishing themes.

Scottie Claiborne

This only influences rankings where you have many sites linking to that page using the URL as the anchor text. This isn't seen very often as most sites use your site name or a descriptive phrase as anchor text. It doesn't hurt to do it, but I would never change a page that is already indexed just so that you can add keywords in the URL.

Eric Ward

Again, depends on the content, the source, and the trust earned previously.

Eric Enge

The influence of this one is microscopic. Main value is to help the use understand what your site is about.

Russ Jones

Dependent upon a number of factors including the number of words, dashes and slashes. Also good, though, for CTR (as mentioned above)

Wil Reynolds

Remember this also helps people know what a page in their history is about.

Thomas Bindl

Importance is mainly due to the keyword in links when people use the URL as anchor text.

Mike McDonald

Similar to the domain name, I think it's always a good thing to have your keywords associated with your address. If someone is going to link to your page, they will by default be linking to your page using one of your keywords.

Guillaume

I've seen very little effect on that

Lucas Ng (aka shor)

Not from Google itself, but you will get some pages linking to that page using your URL keywords, so there is that benefit.

Marcus Tandler

Matt himself recently said in a blogpost, that the keyword in a page´s URL might help a little - quote: "Most bloggy sites tend to have words from the title of a post in the url; having keywords from the post title in the url also can help search engines judge the quality of a page."

Jill Whalen

Same comments as keywords in domains.

Ani Kortikar

dont overdo it.

Chris Boggs

Even Matt Cutts said this helps. ;) Again though, this is dependent on other factors such as the page content as well as IBL anchor text.

Caveman

Is G helped by seeing that a file has been named "large-long-widgets"? Of course. Even spammers won't often name files in a way unrelated to page contents. The only reason it's not more important, is *because* spammers name files according to page contents. ;-)

Todd Malicoat

It certainly doesn't hurt, and provides bolded listings on many search results which assists clickthrough rates. It is good practice, but likely only has marginal value by itself.

Rae Hoffman

Again, depends on the search engine. I think algo wise it carries some importance, but isn't "needed". That said, I think having a page named something that clearly says to users "this is about the topic your looking for!" may help increase CTR for the ranks you *do* have.

Eric Ward

Same as above

Russ Jones

Same logic as with meta keywords, they at least play some role, although little.

Marcus Tandler

Great for targeting accompanying keyword phrases to a main keyword

Jill Whalen

See comments for H1 tag.

Chris Boggs

This may be helpful for less popular long tailed terms, but then again just having those in the content may be enough. Sometimes it seems to have proven helpful for geographic emphasis, it seems (including the geo location of offices in the "about" or "location" pages as a sub-header for each office).

Caveman

We rarely bother. I know, I know...sorry purists. ;-)

Todd Malicoat

Same as h1 tags - good practice. Smart thing to use, but they're not going to help you rank for "home loans".

Jonah Stein

If you use the images for links, the alt tag is as important as the anchor text. Also, image search delivers some traffic, so tag them anyway.

Eric Ward

Shouldn't really, if it does at all, unless (see 'circle of trust' above)

Barry Welford

That applies to the Alt tags. The Image Titles have no influence.

Neil Patel

Images should contain alts and titles. It helps describe what the image is all about.

Aaron Wall

Important for helping images rank, but not as important for helping a page link, unless the image is a hyperlink, in which case the alt text acts similar to anchor text.

Russ Jones

I would put this on par with keyword in the body.

Mike McDonald

Search engine spiders can't tell what your cool graphics are without them. If your graphics are themed with the keywords/phrases/concepts of your page (and why wouldn't they be?)... all the better.

Christine Churchill

Alt tags are good for the users and since Google is all about improving the user experience, alt tags may have some minor influence. The problem is alt tags are easy to abuse, so I imagine the weight factor on this is pretty low.

Michael Gray

Alt tags and title tags confer some internal anchor text value, not as much as pure text but are helpful.

Ben Pfeiffer

Alt tags really hold the most impact and act as anchor text for externally or internally linked images.

Debra Mastaler

the bold, H1, description tag, etc hey - something has to make up those 100 factors used to determine rank.

Guillaume

I'd make sure those things are dynamically generated so you don't waste time optimizing them.

Marcus Tandler

Only when used for an image with a link, where this will be the links anchortext

Jill Whalen

Practically as good as anchor text for clickable images.

Chris Boggs

Must be combined with other factors to help, such as the image being a link to an on-topic page or other image.

Caveman

For ranking a page? Not of any use, and overuse may be an issue. For ranking images, grossly underappreciated. There's more traffic in image search across some categories than most people realize. One of the closest things on the Web to free traffic.

Todd Malicoat

Images that are linked have their alt text used as anchor text. This is VERY often overlooked by even sharp folks that run websites. Alt text on theair own (unlinked) is great for accessibility, but not that important for direct search rankings.

Rae Hoffman

Again, depends on the engine. Alt tags and Image titles should be usedfor their intended purpose, to describe the image that appears in that spot. If you can get a keyword in there, great, but as a base, you simply want to describe what a user would see if they didn't have images off.

Eric Ward

Shouldn't really, if it does at all, unless (see 'circle of trust' above)

Russ Jones

Same as <h(x>1)> tags. (ie h3)

Guillaume

I'm still doing it sometimes, but I'm really starting to wonder why... Plus, it's not fun to read :/

Marcus Tandler

Again - great for targeting accompanying keyword phrases to a main keyword

Chris Boggs

Similar value to the H2, H3 depending on usage.

Caveman

Keyword Use in Bold/Strong Tags (comments)
We focus on communication to the user; we never bold terms in an effort to rank for them. Anyone can bold anything, even if it's not related much as a keyword to the page contents.

Todd Malicoat

Bold tags are great for catching readers that scan, and getting them to spend more time on a page. If that is an indirect benefit of using bolding then I suppose it could be considered beneficial

Rae Hoffman

Same as keyword in domain - you'll see much more result from this behavior in MSN than you will in Google.

Barry Schwartz

Important for the site command to return unique pages, outside of that, it is easy to add, so do it.

EGOL

Might not influence rankings but will bet a little bolding when your description tag is grabbed for the SERPs.

Jonah Stein

BUT DESCRIPTIONS ARE ESSENTIAL FOR SEM...the use of a unique title is essential to avoid keyword duplication issues and a descriptive title is important for Clickthrough.

Eric Ward

buy viagra buy viagra buy viagra buy viagra... (That is, unless the page is ten years old and already in the famed circle of trust, then they can help.

Eric Enge

used for search engine results descriptions though.

Neil Patel

More than using keywords within meta description tags, I feel it is more important to have unique meta description tags on every page. It seems lots of people like using generic descriptions or none at all.

Aaron Wall

If done well it helps improve CTR by making your listings look more appealing. May hurt your rankings if it is too well aligned with the page title.

Russ Jones

Once again, CTR in the SERPS. Definitely more important that the keywords meta tag, and extremely important for preventing duplicate content issues. Similar to titles, a bad description can kill a page.

Wil Reynolds

The most important thing is contactly upding the meta description with Free Shipping, Buy one Get one, New Whitepaper and other calls to action to get you to get more clickthroughs for the rankings you have achieved.

Thomas Bindl

Mainly useful for CTR on SERPs

Mike McDonald

I think a good description is important because it will sometimes be used as your result summary. That said, while having keywords present is important I feel that a description is better geared towards soliciting an action from a person - not so much spiders..

Michael Gray

keywords and meta tags play very little role in rankings. However if they are being used giving each page unique KW's and meta tags is important. it's better to have nothing, than use something that is duplicated across a large portion of other pages.

Guillaume

It's one of the major thing to optimize for CTR in organic listings... I've seen great influence, especially when you get to the top5 of the SERPs

Lucas Ng (aka shor)

Neglect these at your peril. May not help you rank but sure as hell helps a user clickthrough to your site.

Marcus Tandler

Probably doesn´t really help improve your rankings, but can definetly help with the CTR again

Jill Whalen

Most major search engines do index the words in this tag, therefore they must be given some weight. It's real importance lies in its ability to allow you to have a bit more control over what appears in the SERP for your listing.

Ani Kortikar

avoid spamming. natural variations are better than identical tags.

Natasha Robinson

While not the biggest of ranking factors, it does play a large role in click-thru rates.

Chris Boggs

This is most important from a UX experience, so long as the descritpion is used by the SE for that keyword search result. We have seen little direct influence on ranking, but the value of additional click-throughs makes it something to strongly consider implementing.

Caveman

Best used for word forms and thematic reinforcement, especially in Google. Important that the Description does not precisely mirror the page TITLE. Make sure that META Descriptions reflect what's on the actual page. Hugely important for click-through's (which may affect also rankings).

Todd Malicoat

Fractional at best - though having identical description tags can create duplicate content issues. It's best to use meta descriptions just to control what your snippet says on SE results.

Rae Hoffman

I don't think it matters much algo wise, I think it does matter CTR wise.

EGOL

Do it just in case.

Jonah Stein

Google ignores them

Scottie Claiborne

Useless, IMO.

Eric Ward

buy cialis buy cialis buy cialis....ditto

Danny Sullivan

And, of course, only for Yahoo.

Neil Patel

A lot of search engines just ignore this tag.

Russ Jones

Almost no value, but two pages with gibberish for content, one with a real keyword in a meta keywords tag, the other without... The one with the keyword will rank above. Which weigh's more, an anvil, or an anvil with a feather?

Thomas Bindl

Could not see any influence in Google lately

Mike McDonald

I think some less sophisticated directories and possibly even a few search engines might still look at this tag - but not many- and the few that do likely don't give it a lot of weight (unless they're really dumb)

Ben Pfeiffer

Worthless. Even more worthless for misspellings.

Guillaume

Just so boring to fill simply for wacky engines that will bring 1 visitor every century.

Lucas Ng (aka shor)

On a similar note, it will also be interesting to see what, if anything, Google does with microformats.

Jill Whalen

Doesn't influence rankings at all in Google which doesn't index the information provided within it. Is fractionally weighted with Yahoo, but should only help if there are no other pages indexed that actually use the words in more important areas of the site.

Elisabeth Osmeloski

i do believe it is spot-checked for matching up with a page's content or other SEO elements.

Chris Boggs

Maybe somewhere other than Google. ;)

Caveman

Probably more useful in finding spam than in ranking pages. We bother only because there's still a chance that they matter slightly. Sometimes we use them to mess with competition.

Todd Malicoat

Meh. This is so '98. If someone mentions writing all your keywords in meta tags you should probably run from them screaming "spammer" at the top of your lungs.

Rae Hoffman

I don't think this counts for anything these days, but I still always recommend they are included and include them on my own commercial sites... it's classification, can't hurt you and simply good practice.

Barry Schwartz

You control this, so go after it.

Jonah Stein

Depends on the size of the site versus the PR. Post big-daddy, some sites do not get spidered entirely, so internal linking can be essential.

Scottie Claiborne

This is one of the most overlooked aspects of optimization- the internal linking and structure of a site.

Barry Welford

Only slightly less important than comparable links from external web pages.

Aaron Wall

Internal links can really drive a page, but if the internal anchor text is too well aligned with the anchor text, page title, and headings that might suppress rankings for the target keyword.

Russ Jones

As mentioned on my blog, you can pulse a page's rankings by including and excluding links to it from your home page.

Wil Reynolds

How a site is architected (in terms of heirarchy) is a critical component to site design / SEO.

Mike McDonald

Very important and often misunderstood and/or taken for granted. You should do this with some thought. You don't want to link to every page from every other page. Props to <a href="http://www.seobook.com/archives/002021.shtml">Aaron Wall</a>

Debra Mastaler

Less now than before. Darnit.

Guillaume

A key element lots of big companies lack

Joost de Valk

The holy grail... Internal link structures are SO often overlooked.

Marcus Tandler

still carries some weight - that´s why old & crusty trusted sites can rank for almost anything

Jill Whalen

This is a key ingredient.

Ani Kortikar

This is one of the underutilized aspects of site optimization , especially for large sites. Careful analysis of what is the desired end result should lead to appropriate internal link strucutre.

Caveman

Link Popularity within the Site's Internal Link Structure (comments)
Internal link juice is still critically important: The nature and quality of internal links to a page says a lot about the page. Factors include: Number of inbound links, importance (placement) of the inbound links within the linking pages, anchor text patterns, nav versus text links, and the content of linking pages.

Todd Malicoat

If you haven't figured out how optimize your site's internal anchor text "price is right style" (closest to the high bid without going over) - then it's time to start hunting for a new occupation.

Eric Ward

Some sites with zero outbounds rank first, so it can't be a hard rule.

Aaron Wall

Your outbound links help define what community your site belongs in.

Mike McDonald

You can't be all things to all people. The search engines know this ( I suspect my mother told them).

Michael Gray

linking out to relevant trusted pages can be big help.

Debra Mastaler

Quantity still beats out quality in a lot of cases.

Lucas Ng (aka shor)

Let's look at a link neighbourhood - hmm... XYZ real estate website has zero outbound links and the majority of its neighbours have at least 200? Consider yourself flagged for an unnatural linking pattern :)

Marcus Tandler

Your outbound links are almost equally important then your inbound links

Jill Whalen

This has some importance in that if you link to spam sites, it could supposedly get you into trouble. This is one of those things I simply trust Google on as I've never tested it myself.

Ani Kortikar

link to quality external sites with relevant content surrounding why you are linking.

Chris Boggs

This seems to have risen in value over the last year.

Caveman

This is such a frequently discussed factor that smart SEO's almost don't want to hear about it anymore. It's still important. How does one judge the quality of a directory? An authority site? Outbound links matter. They can hurt you or help you ... because the choice is yours, not someone else's. Unfortunately, linking to quality sites has become such an overused tactic that getting wikipedia out of the tops three spots on most SERP's is going to be a problem.

Todd Malicoat

It's no longer the ONLY thing - but it's still quite important. A site cannot rank with content alone. A site CAN rank with links alone.

Rae Hoffman

Who you link to says a lot about who you are and what your topic is - especially in an engine like Google.

Barry Schwartz

with diminishing returns...

Scottie Claiborne

Age seems to be playing more of a role than ever.

Eric Ward

If the document also sends other algorithmic signals of quality.

Thomas Bindl

Only linking

Michael Gray

older documents on trusted domains have more value.

Guillaume

Yeah, Google still ranks crappy old things that just can't get off the 1st spots :/

Joost de Valk

More dependent on the age of the links towards the document

Chris Boggs

Although we have had success with new documents on older domains.

Caveman

Important to Google, but not something worth worrying much about from an SEO perspective because it is dependent on so many other factors. Newer documents are more important to certain kinds of sites and searches. Older documents with good link equity may signal credibility. Older, weakly linked documents not frequently updated may signal lack of importance. Age, in conjunction with active update and link patterns, is almost certainly a plus.

Todd Malicoat

I like 'em old:)

Wil Reynolds

You don't need tons of content per page, but obviously you need something indexable. Due to the prevalence of the long tail, shorter pages with less content may miss out on several searches.

Mike McDonald

Indexable content is good.

Ben Pfeiffer

Don't go overboard.

Guillaume

Accessibility to spiders... that's kinda a no brainer

Marcus Tandler

I could image, that the SEs compare the whole array of sites ranking for a peticular term and then rate the sites based on the average level against each other. Could help deranking affiliate-landing-pages

Jill Whalen

The amount of content isn't really important. Sheer volume isn't useful.

Chris Boggs

This depends on how well the content is structured in relation to other relevant pages. Also, too much content on the page seems to still equal less stellar results. The old rule was 200 words but we feel that as few as 75-100 can now be effective, if supported by other pages.

Caveman

A "signals of quality" issue. It is not essential for a directory site to have lots of indexable contents per page. Absence of substantial indexable content misses an opportunity to score "points" with Google, but that can be overcome with other signals of quality (e.g., quality inbound links, quality outbound links, KW's that commonly appear together are all present, intelligent keyword deployment across TITLE, META's, Hx, etc.).

Todd Malicoat

I would venture a guess that the quality of the amount of indexable content as a ratio is more important than the total amount of indexable content.

Eric Ward

Strongly weighted once overall site is trusted.

Barry Welford

Scraper sites will not command the position their volume might suggest.

Wil Reynolds

Did not understand the question

Thomas Bindl

Could not see any evidence, only good for links.

Ben Pfeiffer

I don't think this could affect organic rankings yet, better Google or Y could use an algorithm to separate pages based on certain quality criteria for spam detection.

Guillaume

I haven't done much research on this, I guess you have to be close to the search engine people to figure it out!

Marcus Tandler

if SEs will ever do a good job on evaluating this algorithmically, it probably could become a defining factor, but right now -> no chance!

Jill Whalen

This is too subjective. What does quality mean and how would it be measured?

Chris Boggs

Content is still undoubtedly King, but needs that support from the court!

Caveman

Too abstract for comment, except to say that "quality" documents, in tandem with effective marketing efforts, increase chances for one-way in-bound links. Algorithmically, if one can rank a cloaked keyword pile of junk, then that more or less makes the point here, IMHO.

Todd Malicoat

If I was measuring relevancy in search, I would place a grade reading level on all topics and websites. This helps to seperate material written by a college graduate in journalism - and a scraper using markov chains much more effectively.

Caveman

Within a site, document organization can be important to the extent that it helps G understand what a given page is about, and how it differs from similar pages. Many times I've seen pages mis-categorized, or not sharply enough distinguished from other internal pages, which led to a dampening of the page's rankings. On a page level, it's important to the extent that the most critical ideas and keywords should be more dominant and higher on the page.

Todd Malicoat

Information architecture as a whole is probably the most overlooked area of search optimization - why? because it's hard to recreate a site's architecture on the fly, and generally a BIG project that no one wants. This can be deemed quite important by helping to control the flow of DEEPLINKS - and encouraging deeplinking to subsections of a site.

Jonah Stein

New content ranks well for some time, but so do older pages. This really depends on the vertical.

Eric Ward

I have a page I haven't touched in 8 years that ranks #1 for its key phrase, so for that particular page, the high rank is not because I did or didn't update it. OTOH, I see other sites where it does matter.

Aaron Wall

Some types of documents are frequently updated while others are rarely updated. Make sure your page matches your site's profile.

Russ Jones

This is a "things I believe but can't prove". Site's that constantly change content on a page have difficulty controlling several other on-page ranking factors (such as whether keywords occur in h1, strong, em, or even occur at all). I believe that if you were able to control this, and able to keep content updated, that the page would out rank the other.

Wil Reynolds

I think this is somewhat overrated, people developing scripts to randomize content may be a stretch, if you have legitimate updates, make them.

Ben Pfeiffer

More updates the better. Keep that content fresh.

Chris Boggs

Depending on niche. News sites obviously need to focus on this, while product pages may not need it at all as long as traffic and linking contunues to grow.

Caveman

Over-rated. G has ways of assessing historical and newsworthy data and associating rate of change with other qualitative factors. For example, they clearly do not expect a well-linked page on Wordsworth's poetry to change often or dramatically. Do what makes sense for each page.

Todd Malicoat

Unless you're CNN, have super high pagerank, or are shooting for keywords that have "news" and other such words (where up to the minute advice is imporant) - I don't really see frequent updates being important. It is likely considered as a factor - but in 9 cases out of 10 NOT updating is likely to be more beneficial (though not to the point of being paranoid about it).

Eric Ward

Again, 'circle of trust' trumps poor directory structure.

Barry Welford

More is a negative factor.

Mike McDonald

<a href="http://ww.tmz.com/2007/03/02/slash-yes-the-guitarist-is-at-annas-funeral/">Trailing Slash</a>

Ben Pfeiffer

Do you mean deep content in subdirectories?

Debra Mastaler

KW in filenames!!

Guillaume

Above 2 or 3, you're getting on the edge

Joost de Valk

Strongly related to internal link structure of course.

Lucas Ng (aka shor)

Similar to the hierarchy of document flow, this should not have any influence on ranking.

Chris Boggs

Does not seem to be a factor, as long as the pages are accessible.

Caveman

This is a misnomer. It's not about the folder depth - it's about linking and page juice. A document with four trailing slashes that is well linked internally and from the homepage might be a killer page. Also, deeper pages are typically more narrowly focused, and can grab great long-tail traffic that converts well.

Todd Malicoat

Less than three is probably optimal. SE's can index DEEPLY - I would be surprised if this had much weight as a standalone variable - though it could possibly be viewed as a small indicator of where a page falls in a site's overall heirarchy.

Jonah Stein

To quote Danny Sullivan from last time around, I am tempted to vote 5 to trick webmasters into writing well.

Eric Ward

Maybe if the search term used was "expert spelling resource sites" :)

Barry Welford

Mis-spellings may even help to pick up some of the 'long tail' searches.

Aaron Wall

I actually think having a few misspellings in a page makes it easier to rank because there are so many less legitimate pages using those misspellings. But if misspellings might cost credibility points with end users it might make sense to have a person make a misspelling in a page comment or in one of your inbound links.

Thomas Bindl

Content has to match targeted search terms

Ben Pfeiffer

Like my dad said, if you can't spell the target terms then you might as well not try to rank for them.

Guillaume

Yeah, you gotta make sure that you use da kind of language that yo kind of visitors are using too man

Joost de Valk

Having lots of spelling errors might make you look spammy... Ask Shoemoney :)

Lucas Ng (aka shor)

Accommodation? Accomodation? Acommodation? Acomodation? Mispelling is a Google Adwords industry in itself.

Chris Boggs

I would say this is weighted only in the way that this may cause less people to link to the content.

Caveman

Non issue for SEO ... unless all of your important KW's are misspealled. :P

Todd Malicoat

Poor speeling will likely reduce the qualitee of a docuaments reeding level - thus deecreesing the overal trust scor.

Rae Hoffman

Again, engine based. It does matter massively from a user standpoint though, so it should be done as practice.

Eric Ward

Not in my case, but other's have said yes.

Thomas Bindl

SEs have to be able to extract content, so a certain amount of valid code is important

Christine Churchill

Only becomes an issue when the error keeps the spider from indexing a page properly.

Michael Gray

validation is not a requirement to rank, but having massive amounts of errors can create problems.

Ben Pfeiffer

Doesn't influence ranking unless it greatly alters page structure.

Guillaume

I suppose it does, but we're not a good example and we can still achieve great SERPs.

Joost de Valk

I don't believe this affects the ranking, having little markup and lots of text-content does though.

Ani Kortikar

Google will always want good content, even if it is not in a properly validated document. Its good to have validation, but slight deviations are acceptable.

Caveman

From an SEO perspective, all but completely useless. By products of validation (ease of access, fast load times, browser compatibility, etc.) provide some value.

Todd Malicoat

Invalid code can be a stumbling block to proper indexing. Valid code is the only solution. I really doubt search engines spend the processing cycles to make sure your code is valid. Validating code does however: 1. increase the likelihood you'll be properly spidered. 2. Improve accessibility (and users on your site)

Eric Ward

But not for all subjects. Some subjects should show a wide IBL profile, like global warming, but what about a site devoted to ice fishing on lake superior? Nope.

Danny Sullivan

I'd prefer if you called this link authority of site rather than link popularity.

Aaron Wall

You can publish low quality documents on well linked sites and they will rank based largely on the domain's link authority.

Ben Pfeiffer

The talk of the town. These days its more about quality than quantity.

Debra Mastaler

Is this 'global' as in geographic or as in overall?

Guillaume

Technorati skyscrapping feeds is a great example!

Marcus Tandler

even better, if most of the links are of great quality!

Caveman

Links matter greatly, but massive linking may be over-rated by SEO's. We have sites with a fraction of the links that competitors boast, and still win in the SERP's. The quality of linking sites, the proximity to important "seed sites", the number of thematically related links from other relevant sites, and ratios of one-way inbound links to other kinds of links are all important, and together can trump pages that are far more heavily linked.

Todd Malicoat

The trends are moving away from link popularity as the biggest factor in information retrieval - though new solutions won't be extremely effective anytime soon. Until then, we'll all be worried about getting mo' betta links.

Rae Hoffman

Look at about.com and then do backlink checks on some of their smaller sections that are ranking for medium competition keywords. A lot of times you'll see nothing but scrapers and some links from the about.com network... they're able to rank on domain authority.

Barry Schwartz

with diminishing returns... the importance depends on the age... so hard to judge with this one. a new site, this is very important and old site, this is not so important.

Eric Ward

Link Moses has the proof...

Neil Patel

Older sites seem to be grandfathered in.

Mike McDonald

Certainly taken into account by some search engines.

Michael Gray

it's not really the age of the site that's important it's the age of the links to the site that are.

Ben Pfeiffer

Can't be faked. Links assist in this determination of age and has some impact on ranking.

Guillaume

Buying a new domain now is just a nightmare.

Lucas Ng (aka shor)

Old sites with ye olde registrar are tremendously respected by Google.

Marcus Tandler

see "Age of Document" - a little de-valued, but still a very important factor!

Caveman

Young sites must prove themselves before they can start ranking for much of anything important; middle-aged sites are left to fight it out on their own; and well aged sites enjoy a halo I wish I experienced in my personal life. :P

Todd Malicoat

The older the berry the sweeter the link juice.

Neil Patel

Getting highly relevant links carry more weight. Hosting companies are notoriously known for buying links from everyone who ranks in the top 100 for "web hosting".

Mike McDonald

This is one of the most important things about 'good' inbound links.

Michael Gray

Links from sites about a specific topic play a role in determining topical relevancy.

Guillaume

I don't think it needs to be 100% topic, I think a good part should though.

Marcus Tandler

Is important, and will probably get even more important in the future

Chris Boggs

Difficult to pinpoint what you mean here, but if the link comes from a topical page, it seems to help more. This is with the exception of news, informational or media sites which by nature have a variety of subjects.

Caveman

We seem to have moved from analysis of simply anchor text, to including surrounding text and probably even page theme.

Todd Malicoat

Very important factor. Relevant, targeted links from relevant citations.

Rae Hoffman

Again, traffic = footprints of good and valid marketing/attention.

Eric Ward

Bingo. Especially if that topical community contains many other signals of trust.

Michael Gray

You need to have some links from within your topical community to rank.

Marcus Tandler

I think this will become even more important in the future. ASK is doing it quit nicely at the moment. And for now - it always help getting your link up on a topical authority and the hub(s) in your topical community

Jill Whalen

Link popularity in general is important. I'm not sure if it actually matters whether it is in a topical community or not.

Chris Boggs

Look at the top SEM forums and blogs for proof.

Caveman

One of the most important aspects of external linking. I'll take two high quality links from thematically connected sites in the same community, over four links from sites of equal stature in unrelated communities. The papers on TrustRank and seed sites are helpful.

Todd Malicoat

You gotta have link love from all the popular kids in your niche. Play nice.

Rae Hoffman

I do believe there is something to be said for themed links - if for no other reason than that they will actually bring traffic. What I'm implying with that statement is up to you to decide. ;-)

Barry Schwartz

totally depends on other things...

Scottie Claiborne

I believe this can impact new/untrusted sites. I think the more "trustworthy" your site is (age, links, etc) the less impact you will see.

Eric Ward

There are many legit reasons why a site might inspire a bunch of links quickly, as well as reasons why it shouldn't.

Barry Welford

A large apparently automatic addition of large numbers of inlinks would trigger some reaction.

Aaron Wall

See Rand's post here http://www.seomoz.org/blog/two-clarifications-on-how-search-engines-interpret-links

Mike McDonald

Could be a sign of link gaming/spamming.

Michael Gray

Bursty link growth assed as both a signal of quality or spam depending on the occurance of other factors. An increase in links and an increase in search volume, and SERP click throughs, or toolbar traffic is good. Link growth without any secondary corroborating data is bad.

Guillaume

I think it kinda proves the long term credibility of a site so I'd have to agree

Lucas Ng (aka shor)

I don't believe it has much importance for ranking, but combined with other filters, will give Google an indication whether a 'google-bomb' went off.

Marcus Tandler

New links are always good, and tell google that your content is still worthwile

Jill Whalen

I don't really know enough about this one from any person experience, but of course anything that would create a red flag, could cause further scrutiny to a site.

Natasha Robinson

I think this plays a bigger role in Google's News Algo

Chris Boggs

We have not been able to trigger any seeming penalities for this, but when a site starts out with a gazillion links to it...

Caveman

Hugely important. It was probably a critical tool in the fight against blog spam, for example. A site right out of the gate gets 2,000 links in weeks: It's either a really hot new site, or it's spam. Spikes in link appearance can indicate spam, bought links, or a legitimate news event. Either way, those links are a strong indicator of something worth knowing. Prediction: G is working right now on a way to better evaluate (and IMO dampen) the effects of link baiting within the blog and 2.0 community.

Todd Malicoat

Likely just a threshhold variable. If you're gettin 1,000 links a week and have no real user traffic - you'll likely have a problem. Links ALONE don't cut it anymore.

Rae Hoffman

I don't think getting fifty links overnight will kill you. Especially if those links are bringing traffic and from quality sites. Getting 100K links overnight and having no visitors or search queries as a result smells abit fishy no matter how you look at it. I had a site launch recently that got 300-500 links virtually overnight, but they were from trusted and authoritative sites, we had an alexa rank to match it and search queries being done in the engines about the site - all things pointed to us deserving and obtaining those links legitimately. And we broke the "sandbox", "trustbox", whatever the term of choice is lately in less than a week.

Eric Ward

More for Web search than news search, but sometimes I see results that make no sense at all.

Barry Welford

Particularly given the other listings that Google offers, e.g. in Google Blogsearch

Russ Jones

Does it include the keyword? Aside from that, I still think themes are bunk.

Michael Gray

Subject matter does help but it plays an inferior role to domain trust and authority.

Guillaume

We have seen examples of both sides happening (Technorati, YouTube vs Zillow)

Marcus Tandler

old and trusted sites can still rank for anything!

Chris Boggs

This is especially true now that "Google bombing" has been addressed.

Caveman

I'm a big believer in t