Search Engine Ranking Factors

Over 100 Search Engine Ranking Factors... WOW!
It has been verified by Matt Cutts, a notable Google employee, that "There are over 100 factors in ranking" that make up the Google Ranking Algorithm. A number of ranking elements can be derived from the over 180 patents and patent applications assigned to Google at the US Patent and Trademark Office. Here is a list of some of the proven and speculated ranking components for Google.

Age of Site & Content
• Broken links pointing off-site.
• Content containing additional keyword terms associated with or related to the main content of the page.
• How frequently does the site update or add new content.
• How long a website has been active online.
• How long the domain name has been registered.
• How many levels deep the document is found from the site's root level.
• How many words or characters of text are on a page.
• How old is the website content.
• How unique is the website content.
• Illegal, adult, gambling, pharmacy and unsafe content penalties.
• Negative penalties for on-page factors like extensive keyword stuffing.
• On-page factors like meta, header, bold, alt and title tag.
  
  Keywords & Competitiveness
• Keyword terms associated with or related to the main content of the page. (condo/condominium)
• Plural and singular keyword terms related to the main content of the page. (condo/condos)
• Ranking penalties for keyword stuffing.
• Sandbox effect for new websites for competitive keywords.
• The aged advantage for older more established sites and links in competitive markets.
  
  Links & Link Popularity
• Google PageRank of linking webpage.
• How long the link has been established.
• How many external links are on the webpage.
• Linked sites common data such as shared IP address, web server or WhoIs info.
• Linking page values of incoming links and anchor text of incoming links.
• Links from education, government, military and research sources.
• Links that are broken pointing off-site.
• Penalties for some incoming backlinks from low quality pages.
• Quality and reputation of linking website.
• Text surrounding the links.
• The anchor text of external links and the pages containing those links.
• The content of the sites and pages containing links.
• The speed of which a page gets links.
• The speed of which a page looses links.
• The use of "rel=nofollow" tags on links.
  
  Hosting, Servers, Website Format & Scripting
• How long a site has been hosted and it's continuous uptime.
• Proper use of robots.txt files.
• Quality of scripting and HTML coding.
• Server and hosting service quality including quality of hosted sites on the same server or IP.
• Use of 404 server pages and headers instead of 200 server headers for pages that don't exist.
• Use of correct 301, 302, 303 and 304 to redirects for moved pages.
• Web serves use of cloaking for displaying different content to different visitors.
• Website sub-domains including the use of keywords and quality factors of sub-domains.
  
  Human and Search Engine Data Monitoring & Reporting
• Data collected from advertising programs.
• Data collected from bookmark monitoring.
• Data collected from browser toolbars.
• Data collected from human ratings and reviews.
• Data collected from third party sites.
• Data collected on click through rates monitored by the search engines for sites displayed on their result pages.
• Data collected regarding how frequently users hit the back button when visitors land on a specific page.

It is worth noting that Google's ranking algorithm is the most complex of all the major search engines and that each engine has their own unique algorithm. A good optimization campaign will take into account the factors for all of the search engines and include a plan that will address each engine's needs.