Factors that affect Google SERP other than PageRank

Someone asked Matt Cutts what are the factors that effects the SERP other than PR, and the answer that Matt gave wasn’t totally clear. But he did told us a few of the factors and I honestly think those are some of the main factors.

Google SERP

Let’s have a look at Matt’s answer

“PR is surely matters in determine the ranking, but it is only one of the 200 factors that matters. One shouldn’t be obsessed or biased about pagerank as the other factors also used in rankings.

There are other factors like Links, Anchor Text, Content, URL Structure, Title of the page etc also carries almost same weight as pagerank. In fact, one should use his common sense on optimizing the page.

Let us discuss the points that he mentioned. These are the most common factors that matters and in my opinion optimizing them are carries importance as much as pagerank do.

1. Links
Links are the most important factor in field of SEO as each of them are like votes or references. When a page links to your page, search engines thinks that page referring your page and gives your page some priority. So, getting links from other pages is necessary to get the better ranking.

Its the same when you link other pages from your page. It gives a vote to that page to which you are linking in eyes of search engines. So, keeping it to minimum is a wise idea.

2. Anchor Text
Anchor Text are the keyword which is used to link you. Like, if you want to rank higher for the keyword “Branded Watches for Men”, you should get links with that keyword as the anchor text. Anchor Text tells search engine what the linked page is about.

3. Content
One of the important factor in SERP. There’s a phrase that may describe it’s importance, “Content is King”, and its not entirely inaccurate. Search Engines loves unique content and tends to rank those pages higher. Content also tells the search engines what that page is about and which keywords are stuffed in it. All they want is a quality and unique content with intelligently stuffed keywords in it.

Placement of content also matters. Say, you have one or two paragraphs of content near header and some other at near footer. It’ll give less priority that contents floating next to each other.

4. URL Structure
A well structured URL also helps. It’s highly helpful if you have different categories of content. You should also include those categories in your URL as they’ll serve as the keywords. It also helps to get sitelinks.

5. Title of the page
It’s also one of the main factors for high SERP. Intelligent use of the keywords in the title of a webpage pushes it high. The more relevant title, the better chance of high ranking.

6. Common Sense
Now what it has to do with SERP? Actually, being the webmaster, you are the one who have to decide on which should work or which shouldn’t. You’ll keep optimizing your page untill you get the results and that’s what the common sense is.

Here is the video that I was discussing. Watch it let me know if I missed something.