Top SEO Rank Factors and What They Mean – Part Deux

Continuing on from Part 1, I am going to list some more SEO rank factors, in the order of importance. I have covered topics such as age of the domain, inbound links, tags and keywords on pages. Here are the remaining factors:

6. Page load times: Google started looking at this more recently. Make sure your pages are optimized, and your server takes advantage of gzip compression. I would suggest you use Google Webmaster tools located here: http://www.google.com/webmasters/ to measure the load time and compare to other websites.

7. Hosting: this is important because google still uses IP addresses to track spammers, blackhat sites, etc..If you host your domain on an IP that has been linked to a “bad” website before, you can get penalized, through no fault of your own..I would recommend using a respectable web host that understand small businesses – try www.webmasters.com

8. Internal link structure: this is important..While I feel that inbound links are most important, internal links are as well. Make sure your pages are linked, and you have a site map so that google can crawl easier. Avoid using javascript when linking as much as possible.

9. URL Structure: last but of course not least, the URL strcuture is still important. While I feel that Google learned, and is always getting better at recognizing various URLs, I always recommend an SEO-friendly URL structure. For example, on my website,

I think most of the stuff about is just common sense..After all, Google is programmed by humans, and its made to think like a human as much as possible. So, if it makes sense to you, it probably makes sense to Google.