Welcome to the 2011 edition of the Search Engine Ranking Factors. For
the past 6 years, SEOmoz has compiled the aggregated opinions of dozens
of the world's best and brightest search marketers into this biennial,
ranking factors document. This year, for the first time, we're
presenting a second form of data - correlation-based analysis -
alongside the opinions of our 132-person panel.
Over the pages of this document, you'll see segmentation of the
search ranking algorithm into various components like "page-specific,
link-level features," or "domain-level, keyword-agnostic features."
These segments represent the different elements illustrated on the pie
chart to the right. In each segment, you'll see three types of charts.

The first, excerpted above, shows the opinions of SEOs on factors in a
given segment, ranked in order from those the panel believes (on
average) to be most important to least.

The second, also excerpted above, shows SEOmoz's analysis of 10,271
keyword search results from Google.com (US). The numbers shown are mean
Spearman's correlation with higher rankings, meaning that a higher
number indicates that websites + pages with the given feature (or more
of the given feature, as in cases like "# of links") tended to rank
higher on average than those without. Remember - correlation is not
causation! Just because pages/sites with a given feature tend to rank
higher doesn't necessarily mean that this particular feature is the
cause of that higher ranking.
The last chart, Future of Search, is illustrated fully
below
and uses aggregated opinions to show the mean answers to specific
questions about SEO tactics or predictions.
We hope that by opening access to this analysis (including the raw
data here) to provide greater access to information about how search
engines may rank documents and empower marketers to have both
statistical and opinion-based data to help validate their own efforts.
If you have feedback or suggestions, please leave them as comments at
this
blog
post.
Thanks much!
Rand Fishkin, CEO, SEOmoz
Future of Search

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