Site Attribute Ranking Influences

Score

Global Link Popularity

4.4

The quality and quantity of external links to a website - it is very important that you have as many quality links as possible, the search engines promote websites that are in turn promoted by authority websites.

Site Age

4.1

Older content has the edge, all things being equal - it is the age of the content (page) on a website that is important, not necessarily the age of the domain.  This influence seems to be gaining in importance with the search engines.

Relevance of Inbound Links

4.0

The relevance of both the linking page and the linking key phrase - a measure of relevance is the search engines ultimate goal, although I don't believe that they are quite there yet, they are improving all the time.

Link Popularity within Niche

3.9

The link popularity of a site within its niche, how the niche community sees the site - links from authority websites in your niche will help you rank better for the key phrase used as your link anchor.

Linking Rate

3.4

The volume and timing of new link acquisitions to your website - with new websites, an influx of links will assist with the rankings, although Google frowns on link farms, the don't seem to be penalizing websites for using them yet.

Site Relevance to the Browsers Search

3.1

The subject matter relevance of the entire site to the phrase searched by the browser  - this one is contentious most believe this important, those that dispute this, offer Wikipedia as a counter example.

Historical Performance

2.8

Historical performance as measured by time on site, CTR, direct traffic and bookmarks - this is purely speculative, as Google has never admitted to gathering this data, it is very possible though and most search marketers believe they do.

Manual Manipulation

2.6

Google is suspected of intervening on occasion and manually weighting sites in the rankings  - although I don't really think this happens often, there is no other reason for some sites ranking as well as they do, Wikipedia, for example.

Domain TLD Extention

2.5

The websites top level domain extension - this is of particular relevance if your target market is country specific, but in general, this influence has lost weight as the search engines have focused more on the site relevance.

New Content Rate

2.4

Both the Volume and Frequency that New Pages are Added - the important thing here is to understand your market and not to deviate from the norm. Eg a news site would be expected to add lots of new pages every day, whereas a parenting site might only be expected to add one page a week.

Domain or Brand Searches

1.9

The volume and frequency of the domain name or the brand it represents - although this is of limited importance, and possibly open to abuse, if there are crowds of people looking for your website on a regular basis, I am sure Google listen and up your rankings.

Site Verification

1.4

Registering your site with Google's Webmaster Central - although this seems to influence the rate at which Google indexes pages on your site, there is little evidence of it affecting the websites ranking.