Top 10 SEO ranking factors

SEOmoz have just released version two of their Search Engine Ranking Factors Guide. It is the result of the collective wisdom of the collective wisdom of 37 leaders in the world of organic search engine optimization. The contributors rated each factor on a scale of 1 - 5.

Top 10 positive factors were:

1. Keyword Use in Title Tag
2. Global Link Popularity of Site
3. Anchor Text of Inbound Link
4. Link Popularity within the Site's Internal Link Structure
5. Age of Site
6. Topical Relevance of Inbound Links to Site
7. Link Popularity of Site in Topical Community
8. Keyword Use in Body Text
9. Global Link Popularity of Linking Site
10. Topical Relationship of Linking Page

Top 5 negative factors were:

1. Server is Often Inaccessible to Bots
2. Content Very Similar or Duplicate of Existing Content in the Index
3. External Links to Low Quality/Spam Sites
4. Participation in Link Schemes or Actively Selling Links
5. Duplicate Title/Meta Tags on Many Pages

And the most controversial factors were:

1. Manual Authority/Weight Given to Site by Google
2. Relevance of Site's Primary Subject Matter to Query
3. Participation in Link Schemes or Actively Selling Links
4. Duplicate Title/Meta Tags on Many Pages
5. Global Link Popularity of Linking Site
6. Quality of the Document Content (as measured algorithmically)
7. Domain Extension of Linking Site (edu, gov, com, ca, co.uk, etc)
8. Server is Often Inaccessible to Bots
9. External Links to Low Quality/Spam Sites
10. TLD Extension of Site (edu, gov, us, ca, com, etc)

The complete SEOmoz report can be read here and it is highly recommended.