Domain Ranking Factors and Your Website

With over 200 ranking factors for Google’s search engine  it can sometimes be hard to know them all, but if you plan on entering the online search space with your company, it is important that you have a general understanding of some of these factors that might be causing your competitors to rank higher than you. We all strive to be to be number one in the search results for a given keyword, but without knowing the ranking factors a marketer will just be shooting in the dark. Whether you’re an Raleigh Internet Marketer or not, with over 200 factors affecting website rankings, it’s important to know the basics including how your domain history and domain name can affect your search rankings.

Domain ranking factors include:

• Domain Age – Though Google’s head of Web Spam Matt Cutts has came out and said that domain age is no longer as important factor as it used to be, it is still a factor in the search engine rankings.
• Keyword First in Domain – If your domain starts with a keyword it can give your website strong search signals. For example if you’re trying to rank for “Golfing”, it might be crucial to claim GolfingSpecialists.com as your domain.
• Exact Match Domain (EMD) – EMDs still have some value even after the volatile EMD update earlier this year. It’s important for EMD’s to have quality content to continue to rank well.
• Domain Registration Length – Google sees websites that are registered for multiple years, as a legitimate property that plans on being around for years to come, compared to niche websites that sometimes are only set up for weeks or months.
• Private Information – Are you hiding something? If you’ve privatized your Whois information, chances are that Google sees you as hiding something and will possibly use this information to lower your website in the search rankings.
• Penalized Owner – If the domain owner has been penalized in the past, there is a chance that this penalty could affect other websites that they own or are trying to rank well.

Keep in mind that these are just some of the factors that causes websites to rank. Feel free to share some of the other ranking factors that you have seen in action down in the comments below.

Tags: Search Engine Optimization