{democracy:2}
So it seems that I stirred up a little storm last week with my post with my opinion on SEO stuff… So what do you think is most important? Its our question of the week for Jan 15th!
About the author...
Jeremy Schoemaker – who has written 2412 posts on ShoeMoney.com.
Hi I am Jeremy Schoemaker and ShoeMoney.com is my blog. 99% of the post here are done by me but you will see others occasionally make guest posts. This blog is fun to write but for my day job I run several online companies.
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Perception is Everything (or “Fake It ‘Til You Make It”) 
{ 31 comments… read them below or add one }
You don’t have it listed by for this list I’d reckon title tag as long as on page isn’t unreasonable (i.e. output via javascript). External links are obviously #1 and yes that is SEO. Also internal linking is up there as well.
Thats a tricky question. Its a toss up between onpage and title tags though.
If you consider onpage optimization including content then that is the definite winner.
There should be a option of “I don’t have a clue.”
I agree 100% with Aaron. Title tags are very important, but the most important factor is the content itself, which I would say falls under on page optimization.
I saw gray wolf’s blog got hacked by a dude named FuckingPirate and he listed you as a future target. Is this for real?
Anchor text in external links?
The problem with choosing an option is that it isn’t about the code, it’s about confidence. it’s possible to have a page with more than one topic or to have words on it that may give a search engine a different idea about your topic than it really is. Many people who have made Adsense pages has seen this type of behavior – where totally wrong ads show up because Google didn’t understand the topic of the page properly.
On the other hand, it’s less likely that you will have misleading content in your title and header tags – they generally reference the topic of the page. Therefore, a search engine tends to place more value on them. But it doesn’t have to (some titles are misleading, too)
If you have a page called blue-frog.htm, and the title of the page is “blue frog breeding” and the headers all talk about blue frogs related topics, then even if the content hardly mentions blue frogs, a search engine is more likely to trust that the page is actually about blue frogs. Likewise, if you have meaningless titles and headers, then the content will be where the search engine looks, though it may not be as confident in it’s assumptions, because now it’s guessing.
So I guess my answer would be the title tag, but only barely.
I agree with Tyler, anchor text in external links from trusted, related sites are probably the biggest factor in SEO. On-page SEO only plays out when none of your competitors have very good off-page SEO.
The title of this pose might be misnamed. Looks like you got everything except links, which is like > 80% of SEO ranking factor. Did you mean “Non link based SEO” or “On page SEO”?
Hey Shoemoney, this is a little off topic but could you recommend to me your web host. I have a blog and wordpress is bogging down on my current host.
The problem with the question is, that the answer depends on the site and the market. Also, I don’t really care what is most important but rather what it takes to rank well in any specific case.
How funny. Does the title really have that much weight in the matter? I always thought it was SEO and page content.
It’s a heady brew and mixture, I don’t think anyone individually is the be all and end all its doing okay in all that’s the trick.
It really depends on search engine, you know that
As from mine experience, Yahoo puts more atention on domain that Google or Live (ok, ok… MSN Search). So I’ve voted for this one.
Regards,
Maybe you should’ve mentioned which search engine the SEO’ing is for…
There is no clear cut answer on this. Together they can kick ass, but you cant always get certain aspects, namely the domain.
Also what about factors like you have the domain but no links, in that case you are going nowhere chief!
You need them all ideally, so i cant vote as it says you must pick one
So yeah you kinda left out the anchor text on inbound links option
You forgot the ‘Blackhat’ option..
Hehe
I’m not seeing links as an option.
IMO SEO is two main areas:
1. On page optimisation
2. Link development
The best performers have both of the above, IMO.
SEO is a complex because it matters on the search engine. As for my vote I chose on page SEO which in my mind does include content for some reason. Content is still king and the queen are the back links.
None of the above.
Case in point – search for “robots” on google. First spot is http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0343818/ – the Hollywood movie. No onpage seo, no keyword in title/url (but 170 .gov links and 54,700 [yes] .edu links)
The most important SEO factor is trust.
Similar to the real world, you can gain trust online in an honest way (whitehat, linkbait, press releases, articles) and you can take shortcuts (blackhat, grayhat). Ultimately it all boils down to trust.
In my opinion it has to be keyword in the domain. Currently I feel that inbound link anchor text is king (miserable failure, etc), and a lot of the time you will get people linking to you using your domain name as the anchor text as opposed to the specific anchor text keywords you want.
Look at his Recs page for the answer
Age and trust
Keyword in Title tag, without a doubt.
It all plays a role so stuff those keywords!!!
Referrer, trackback and comment spam, doorway pages, keyword stuffing, social networking exploits, cloaking, B & P, etc.
there is no option for spam
Well then, lets see if your poll has paid off.. or if your tweak to your own title tags makes a difference..
I see you shakin that $ !!
Out of those four, I would say on page SEO. Using keywords effectively in title, url, tags, and articles are all important too.
Cheers for the blog post, I’m going to be making use of this to finish my paper!