Reply on SEO Factors

1Keyword in URL First word is best, second is second best, etc.

2Keyword in Domain name Same as in page-name-with-hyphens
Keywords - Header
3Keyword in Title tag Keyword in Title tag - close to beginning
Title tag 10 - 60 characters, no special characters.
4Keyword in Description meta tag Shows theme - less than 200 chars.
Google no longer "relies" upon this tag, but will often use it.
5Keyword in Keyword metatag Shows theme - less than 10 words.
Every word in this tag MUST appear somewhere in the body text. If not, it can be penalized for irrelevance.
No single word should appear more than twice.
If not, it may be considered spam. Google purportedly no longer uses this tag, but others do.
Keywords - Body
6Keyword density in body text 5 - 20% - (all keywords/ total words)
Some report topic sensitivity - the keyword spamming threshold % varies with the topic.
7Individual keyword density 1 - 6% - (each keyword/ total words)
8Keyword in H1, H2 and H3 Use Hx font style tags appropriately
9Keyword font size "Strong is treated the same as bold, italic is treated the same as emphasis" . . . Matt Cutts July 2006
10Keyword proximity (for 2+ keywords) Directly adjacent is best
11Keyword phrase order Does word order in the page match word order in the query?
Try to anticipate query, and match word order.
12Keyword prominence (how early in page/tag) Can be important at top of page, in bold, in large font
Keywords - Other
13Keyword in alt text Should describe graphic - Do NOT fill with spam
(Was part of Google Florida OOP - tripped a threshold - may still be in effect to some degree as a red flag, when summed with all other on-page optimization - total page optimization score - TPOS).
14Keyword in links to site pages (anchor text) Links out anchor text use keyword?
NAVIGATION - INTERNAL LINKS
15To internal pages- keywords? Link should contain keywords.
The filename "linked to" should contain the keywords.
Use hyphenated filenames, but not long ones - two or three hyphens only.
16All Internal links valid? Validate all links to all pages on site.
Use a free link checker. I like this one.

17Efficient - tree-like structure TRY FOR two clicks to any page - no page deeper than 4 clicks
18Intra-site linking Appropriate links between lower-level pages
NAVIGATION - OUTGOING LINKS
19 To external pages- keywords? Google patent - Link only to good sites. Do not link to link farms. CAREFUL - Links can and do go bad, resulting in site demotion. Unfortunately, you must devote the time necessary to police your outgoing links - they are your responsibility.
20 Outgoing link Anchor Text Google patent - Should be on topic, descriptive
21 Link stability over time Google patent - Avoid "Link Churn"
22All External links valid? Validate all links periodically.
23Less than 100 links out total Google says limit to 100,
but readily accepts 2-3 times that number. ref 2k
OTHER ON-Page Factors
24Domain Name Extension
Top Level Domain - TLD .gov sites seem to be the highest status
.edu sites seem to be given a high status
.org sites seem to be given a high status
.com sites excel in encompassing all the spam/ crud sites, resulting in the need for the highest scrutiny/ action by Google.
Perhaps one would do well with the new .info domain class. - Nope. Spammers jumped all over it - no safe haven there. Not so much, now - .info sites can rank highly.
25File Size Try not to exceed 100K page size (however, some subject matter, such as this page, requires larger file sizes).
Smaller files are preferred <40K (lots of them).
26Hyphens in URL Preferred method for indicating a space, where there can be no actual space
One or two= excellent for separating keywords (i.e., pet-smart, pets-mart)
Four or more= BAD, starts to look spammy
Ten = Spammer for sure, demotion probable?
27 Freshness of Pages Google patent - Changes over time
Newer the better - if news, retail or auction!
Google likes fresh pages. So do I.
28 Freshness - Amount of Content Change New pages - Ratio of old pages to new pages
29 Freshness of Links Google patent - May be good or bad
Excellent for high-trust sites
May not be so good for newer, low-trust sites
30Frequency of Updates Frequent updates = frequent spidering = newer cache
31Page Theming
Page exhibit theme? General consistency?
32Keyword stemming
Stem, stems, stemmed, stemmer,
stemming, stemmist, stemification
33Applied Semantics
Synonyms, CIRCA white paper

34LSI Latent Semantic Indexing - Speculation, no proof

35URL length Keep it minimized - use somewhat less than the 2,000 characters allowed by IE - less than 100 is good, less is even better
OTHER ON-SITE Factors
36 Site Size - Google likes big sites Larger sites are presumed to be better funded, better organized, better constructed, and therefore better sites. Google likes LARGE sites, for various reasons, not all positive. This has resulted in the advent of machine-generated 10,000-page spam sites - size for the sake of size. Google has caught on and dumped millions of pages, or made them supplemental.
37 Site Age Google patent - Old is best. Old is Golden.
38 Age of page vs. age of site Age of page vs. age of other pages on site
Newer pages on an older site will get faster recognition.