This is the second in the 5-Part Series, “SEO Ranking Factors Unveiled.” If you missed Part 1you can read it here.

You can start a lively (sometimes heated) discussion at any gathering of affiliate marketers if you ask the question, “What are the five most important factors Google uses to rank websites?”

The guys at SEOmoz.org decided to ask the top SEO experts what factors search engine algorithms gave more weight in determining website rank. The results are interesting.

Seventy-three percent of the SEO experts said “Keyword Focused Anchor Text from External Links” has “very high importance.” In at a close second; (71%) of the SEO experts said “External Link Popularity (quantity/quality of external links) has “very high importance.”

External Link Optimization with Linkbait Strategy

It’s not easy to figure out what Google’s thinking. To help you get a better sense of how Google and other search engines decide to rank your affiliate marketing site, we’re launching a five-part series today.

We’ll cover the opinions of top SEO experts concerning the factors that make up the algorithm that search engines like Google use to determine their search engine rankings.

Here is a chart showing this year’s survey results:

Coming in at 73%, the most important SEO ranking factor, according to the survey was “Keyword Focused Anchor Text from External Links”. So optimizing your anchor text is your most important SEO strategy.

Anchor Text Optimization Strategy

This almost fell through the cracks today but it’s certainly interesting information to everyone who is involved in Internet marketing in any form.

It seems that Chinese Government Agents have attempted to hack Google as well as more than a dozen other major corporations. Their purpose for trying to hack Google seems to be an attempt to access email accounts of suspected anti-government activists.

Google says that it will “stop self-censoring its search engine results” and is threatening to shut down its operation in China.

You can read the entire Google press release here.

PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising costs money … sometimes a lot of money. And while most affiliate marketers find it a necessity to invest in PPC advertising, they often forget that spending the time to perform proper SEO (Search Engine Optimization) will produce free traffic.

So if SEO produces free traffic, then it must be more valuable than PPC for affiliate marketers.

And that’s not all. In addition to driving free traffic, SEO also drives traffic that’s more likely to convert. Why? There are two reasons.

Get More Traffic with SEO!

This is the fifth and last part of the “Affiliate Marketers Can Compete With the Big Guys and WIN” 5-part series. If you missed parts 1, 2, 3 and/or 4 you can read Part 1 here, Part 2 here, Part 3 here and Part 4 here.

An affiliate marketer will “choose to lose” if he tries taking on the big guys in a broad frontal attack on a huge ecommerce company’s lofty position in the marketing world. As an affiliate marketer, you just can’t compete with the big guys in wide, all-inclusive, generic niches and win.

But you can compete against the big guys in a specialized niche market and win big if you focus your attention on only one tiny segment of the market.

Winning Strategy #5: Focus on a Niche within a Niche within a Niche