Factors and Myths that Influence Search Engine Ranking

Keyword Use Anywhere in the Title Tag

Keyword Use as the First Word(s) of the Title Tag

Keyword Use in the Root Domain Name (e.g. keyword.com)

Keyword Use Anywhere in the H1 Headline Tag

Keyword Use in Internal Link Anchor Text on the Page

Keyword Use in External Link Anchor Text on the Page

Keyword Use as the First Word(s) in the H1 Tag

Keyword Use in the First 50-100 Words in HTML on the Page

Keyword Use in the Subdomain Name (e.g. keyword.seomoz.org)

Keyword Use in the Page Name URL (e.g.seomoz.org/folder/keyword.html)

Keyword Use in the Page Folder URL (e.g. seomoz.org/keyword/page.htm)

Keyword Use in other Headline Tags (<h2> – <h6>)

Keyword Use in Image Alt Text

Keyword Use / Number of Repetitions in the HTML Text on the Page

Keyword Use in Image Names Included on the Page (e.g. keyword.jpg)

Keyword Use in <b> or <strong> Tags

Keyword Density Formula

Keyword Use in List Items <li> on the Page

Keyword Use in the Page’s Query Parameters (e.g. seomoz.org/page.html?keyword)

Keyword Use in italics(<i>) or emphasis (<em>) Tags

Keyword Use in the Meta Description Tag

Keyword Use in the Page’s File Extension(e.g. seomoz.org/page.keyword)

Keyword Use in Comment Tags in the HTML

Keyword Use in the Meta Keywords Tag

Source: http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=25475

Unique, original content

Site’s load time

Number of backlinks

Quality of backlinks

Oneway links

Diversity of external links – from more than one domain

Internal links

Search engine robot attributes (dofollow and nofollow)

Xml sitemap

Metatags (minimal effect)

Anchor text

Image description

Too large tag cloud on your blog - a negative effect

Keyword staffing - a negative effect

Number of spam/porn sites in shared hosting servers - a negative effect

Link farms and banner farms - a negative effect

Source: Youtube/GoogleWebmasterCentral’s Channel (http://www.youtube.com/user/GoogleWebmasterHelp)

Frequency of posting – backlinks count, frequency is good only for repeat visitors

File directory level

Duplicate content – google just ranks the most relevant sites and pages

Blogs do not rank better than static websites   

Non html coding- google can handle advanced coding and scripting, like javascript, flash, ajax, ruby, etc

301 page redirects – they do not decrease search engine ranking

Automatic feeds – again, frequency and freshness is not a factor, only things like backlinks and keywords.

Size of website – the number of pages in a website is irrelevant; it does not increase the authority of the site in google. Again it is the incoming, oneway, links to each of the pages that matter.