SEO Ranking Factors - Domain Quality Disguised As Anchor Text

If your business is the Internet, the ranking factors document is one you'll want to follow and understand.   It's fascinating to see such valuable information being shared publicly. 

In August, 2005, SEOmoz launched the first series of ranking factors. We asked a dozen folks in the SEO world to vote on the importance of over 100 unique factors surmised to be part of the search engines' ranking algorithms. Today, we've released a new version that addresses many of the issues that frustrated users of the first version and updates the series to modern times.

Here are the new top 5: 

Top 10 Ranking Factors in 2007:

1. Keyword Use in Title Tag (4.9)
2. Global Link Popularity of Site (4.5)
3. Anchor Text of Inbound Link (4.4)
4. Link Popularity within the Site's Internal Link Structure (4.1)
5. Age of Site (4) 

Look at number 3 -- of particular interest to me is the central role of the anchor text.  This is what gives 'exact match domains' their special powers.  I've learned this lesson personally and painfully by developing my first Internet business on a domain that contains none of my keywords.  

Pay careful attention and you'll see that SEOmoz could have easily replaced

"Anchor Text of Inbound Link (4.4)"

with

"Domain Quality (Use of Exact Match or Generic Keyword Domain)".

Why?  When bloggers and webmasters link to your website, they'll use your domain name 99.9% of the time as the anchor text.  That means a smaller weaker competitor can knock you out of your first place ranking at Google by using a keyword domain, even one with a dash in it or heaven forbid a .org or .us.

But make no mistake, I've talked to some of the SEO's that wrote this document and they understand the role domains play in their business and many are devoting a lot of resources to acquiring generic domains for their own projects.  So SEOs and domain professionals understand these dynamics... but this a relatively small group of individuals.  When the average business person understands them, WATCH OUT -- we'll experience a SEA CHANGE.  Will you be ready?

Thanks San.