Caffeine and 200 Signals for Google

Since the advance of Google Caffeine – the focus on sites is around performance and social links.  In fact friend feed seems to be getting higher ranking than facebook  at the moment.  So its really important to ensure you site is optimised and if possible you are using a CDN (Content Delivery Network).   For further tips and ideas on how to optimise your site see this post Optimising your blog.

I thought in addition to all this it would be useful to create a check list of all the other signals that Google considers in its algorithm.  There are 200 of these that can be broken down into different themes for you to focus on.  You should use it as a checklist to run against your website to make sure you are appealing to Google and of course your readers.

This list is big reading and I found various key lists around the web mainly Vaugns List and this published by the Search Engine Journal.   I suggest you get on their mailing list as the site is good reading.

I have listed some of their key points below together with some tips on how to capitalise on it.

As a disclaimer its important to understand that this information is not from Google and its not the definitive answer, but a pretty good indication of the what the algorithm might use to deduce your ranking.

Domain: 13 Signals
1. Domain age – Age ranks better, because 1 you can link faster to it, and 2) Most top 10 in your nice are probably older.
2. Length of domain registration – Try and register your domains for longer than 1 year.
3. Domain registration information hidden/anonymous – Google likes to know your accountable
4. Site top level domain (geographical focus, e.g. com versus co.uk)
5. Site top level domain (e.g. .com versus .info) – My tip only use .com, .net or .org for international and .org.uk and co.uk for uk specific traffic.
6. Sub domain or root domain?
7. Domain past records (how often it changed IP)
8. Domain past owners (how often the owner was changed)
9. Keywords in the domain – Exact match domains matter!  If your keyword is in the domain it will rank faster than anything.
10. Domain IP
11. Domain IP neighbors
12. Domain external mentions (non-linked)
13. Geo-targeting settings in Google Webmaster Tools

Server-side: 2 signals
1. Server geographical location
2. Server reliability / uptime – Get a free monitor setup for 2 URLS at http://host-tracker.com

3. Setting in Google Webmaster Tools for location  – http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/

Architecture: 8 signals
1. URL structure – Use proper words in your links that are meaningful.  If using wordpress use permalinks.
2. HTML structure
3. LSI (Latent Semantic Index) words
4. Use of external CSS / JS files
5. Website structure accessibility (use of inaccessible navigation, JavaScript, etc)
6. Use of canonical URLs
7. Valid code – check against http://validator.w3.org/

Content: 14 signals
1. Content language
2. Content uniqueness
3. Amount of content (text versus HTML)
4. Unlinked content density (links versus text)
5. Pure text content ratio (without links, images, code, etc)
6. Content topicality / timeliness (for seasonal searches for example)
7. Semantic information (phrase-based indexing and co-occurring phrase indicators)
8. Content flag for general category (transactional, informational, navigational)
9. Content / market niche
10. Flagged keywords usage (gambling, dating vocabulary)
11. Text in images
12. Malicious content
13. Rampant mis-spelling of words, bad grammar, and 10,000 word screeds without punctuation
14. Use of absolutely unique /new phrases.

Internal Cross Linking: 5 signals
1. # of internal links to page
2. # of internal links to page with identical / targeted anchor text
3. # of internal links to page from content (instead of navigation bar, breadcrumbs, etc)
4. # of links using “nofollow” attribute
5. Internal link density

Website signals: 7 signals
1. Website Robots.txt file content
2. Overall site update frequency
3. Overall site size (number of pages)
4. Age of the site since it was first discovered by Google
5. XML Sitemap
6. On-page trust flags (Contact info ( for local search even more important – Make sure your phone number is on the site), Privacy policy, TOS, and similar)
7. Website type (e.g. blog instead of informational sites in top 10)

Page-specific signals: 9 signals
1. Page meta Robots tags
2. Page age
3. Page freshness (Frequency of edits and
% of page effected (changed) by page edits)
4. Content duplication with other pages of the site (internal duplicate content);
5. Page content reading level
6. Page load time (many signals in here)
7. Page type (About-us page versus main content page)
8. Page internal popularity (how many internal links it has)
9. Page external popularity (how many external links it has relevant to other pages of this site)

Keywords usage and keyword prominence: 13 signals
1. Keywords in the title of a page
2. Keywords in the beginning of page title
3. Keywords in Alt tags
4. Keywords in anchor text of internal links (internal anchor text)
5. Keywords in anchor text of outbound links
6. Keywords in bold and italic text
7. Keywords in the beginning of the body text
8. Keywords in body text
9. Keyword synonyms relating to theme of page/site
10. Keywords in filenames
11. Keywords in URL
12. No “Randomness on purpose” (placing “keyword” in the domain, “keyword” in the filename, “keyword” starting the first word of the title, “keyword” in the first word of the first line of the description and keyword tag…)
13. The use (abuse) of keywords utilized in HTML comment tags

Outbound links: 8 signals
1. Number of outbound links (per domain)
2. Number of outbound links (per page)
3. Quality of pages the site links in
4. Links to bad neighborhoods
5. Relevancy of outbound links
6. Links to 404 and other error pages
7. Links to SEO agencies from clients site
8. Hot-linked images

Take control of your rankings

Backlink profile: 21 signals
1. Relevancy of sites linking in
2. Relevancy of pages linking in
3. Quality of sites linking in
4. Quality of web page linking in
5. Backlinks within network of sites
6. Co-citations (which sites have similar backlink sources)
7. Link profile diversity
1. Anchor text diversity
2. Different IP addresses of linking sites
3. Geographical diversity
4. Different TLDs
5. Topical diversity
6. Different types of linking sites (logs, directories, etc)
7. Diversity of link placements
8. Authority Link (CNN, BBC, etc) Per Inbound Link
9. Backlinks from bad neighborhoods (absence / presence of backlinks from flagged sites)   (It seems that this is less of a factor nowadays – as it would be too easy to affect someone else’s site.)

10. Reciprocal links ratio (relevant to the overall backlink profile)
11. Social media links ratio (links from social media sites versus overall backlink profile)
12. Backlinks trends and patterns (like sudden spikes or drops of backlink number)
13. Citations in Wikipedia and Dmoz
14. Backlink profile historical records (ever caught for link buying/selling, etc)
15. Backlinks from social bookmarking sites.

Each Separate Backlink: 5 signals
1. Authority of TLD (.com versus .gov)
2. PR of a domain linking in
3. PR of a page linking in
4. Location of a link (footer, navigation, body text)
5. Anchor text of a link (and Alt tag of images linking)

Visitor Profile and Behavior: 6 signals
1. Number of visits
2. Visitors’ demographics
3. Bounce rate
4. Visitors’ browsing habits (which other sites they tend to visit)
5. Visiting trends and patterns (like sudden spiked in incoming traffic)
6. How often the listing is clicked within the SERPs (relevant to other listings)

Google now measures CTR (Click Thru Rate) and reports it in Webmaster tools.  So clearly it’s a big ranking factor with Caffeine.

Penalties, Filters and Manipulation: 12 signals
1. Keyword over usage / Keyword stuffing
2. Link buying flag
3. Link selling flag
4. Spamming records (comment, forums, other link spam)
5. Cloaking
6. Hidden Text
7. Duplicate Content (external duplication)
8. History of past penalties for this domain
9. History of past penalties for this owner
10. History of past penalties for other properties of this owner
11. Past hackers’ attacks records
12. 301 flags: double re-directs/re-direct loops, or re-directs ending in 404 error

More Signals (6):
1. Domain registration with Google Webmaster Tools
2. Domain presence in Google News
3. Domain presence in Google Blog Search
4. Use of the domain in Google AdWords
5. Use of the domain in Google Analytics
6. Business name / brand name external mentions

Feedback below…