Rand Fishkin does it again by releasing his Search Engine Ranking Factors article.

This article contains a large list of the factors that can influence a web document's rank at the major search engines (Yahoo!, MSN, Google & AskJeeves) for a particular term or phrase. Although it is impossible to say for certain which of these items affects which search engine or how important the factors are individually, I've created an estimated ranking importance scale as indicated by the following symbols (based on my personal opinions):

The list, 5.0 is the highest a factor can get:

1. Title Tag - 4.57
2. Anchor Text of Links - 4.46
3. Keyword Use in Document Text - 4.38
4. Accessibility of Document - 4.31
5. Links to Document from Site-Internal Pages - 4.15
6. Primary Subject Matter of Site - 4.00
7. External Links to Linking Pages - 3.92
8. Link Popularity of Site in Topical Community - 3.77
9. Global Link Popularity of Site - 3.69
10. Keyword Spamming - 3.69

Danny has some reservations about it, "There were some factors I didn't think were well explained or unclear on how to vote. But the good news is that what emerged is an excellent starting list of factors for anyone to consider." Those that helped with this list include members at the SEO Chat Forum Thread, Danny Sullivan, Dan Thies, EGOL, Graywolf, Jill Whalen, Donna Fontenot, Michael Martinez, Bill Slawski, Ammon Johns, Scottie Claiborne, 2K, and Todd Malicoat.

Post forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums, good job Rand!

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