SEO – It’s All Relative

In probably one of the best inforgraphics on Search Engine Optimizaiton, SearchEngineLand.com shows the importance of all the major factors at work to create a perfect storm, for a high page ranking site.

The following chart shows all the major aspects of SEO, their underlying factors, and the estimated weight of each. Weight is a 1 – 3 with 3 being the highest adn can be found int eh upper right corner of each block. Note that the estimated weight is of course subjective and can change from moment to moment depending on a number of factors I’ll discuss a bit later.

No doubt this is a great chart and an excellent representation of how all the pieces fit together.

A Higher Level View

Another way to look at these SEO factors is by their relationship to each other. All have a role in making the other work. Consider the following graphic.

Keeping in mid that just ranking high is not enough, this chart follows top down view of a consumer coming to your website. I added Design (design and usability) as a key factor for SEO. Let’s look at it one block at a time.

1. Architecture – Users dont’ see your architecture but without doing it right the rest of the uderlying blocks are at risk. If serach engines cannot crawl your site or if your site loads too slow, then you risk not getting indexed or having a lower number of pages indexed. It also is the key to content success via your content management system.
2. Content – Content rides on top of your architecture. If your Content Management system is too difficult to use, then you’ll get less new, fresh, timely content. Having a good content planning process will help ensure success.
3. Trust –  Assuming you have a good flow of quality content you will be albe to continually attract new users and build trust.
4. Social and Link Building – Social sharing and natural link builidng won’t happen unless you have trust, built upon your good content that was supported by a solid, easy to manage architecture.
5. HTML (TAGS) – This may not seem to make sense to have at the bottom but consider this. The HTML title, description and header tags are realy part of your content strategy, and your first level of marketing. They are also part of the first thing your potential site visitor sees. If they don’t like the title of your listing you may not get them to read the description. If they read the description it better be exactly what they are looking for or they will move on.

Personal & Design

These factors are shown virticaly to show their effect on Content, Trust, Social and In-bound linking.

• Personal – Location, history &  social are also controled by the searchers previous search history, current events and a dozen other factors we dont’ even know about. Therefore I put it as an over-arching factor against the bottom teirs. Being aware of the world around you as well as current search trending will benefit your content creation,  and SEO strategy.
• Design – Design is really design and usability. With the major search engines offering an instant preview of your content, it also has a major effect on someone clicking through to your site.

The Ultimate Goal – A ClickThrough

The realtive values of all the SEO actions combined, and their relationship to each other is critical for SEO success. It is only as good at the weakest link. Keep in mind that the main goal is not to just rank high on a results page, but to get a click through. So mind your relationships well.

Related articles

• The Periodic Table Of SEO Ranking Factors (searchengineland.com)