The algorithm Google uses to provide search results changes all the time, but there are some factors that any webmaster ought to keep in mind while developing his webpage. This list will help give you some orientation during the perilous task of getting traffic and making those conversions.

Domain Age: Whether your domain is new or old makes a difference but not a big difference.

Top Level Domain Keywords make less a difference than before, but still matter.

First Word in Domain does make a difference in setting a keyword.

Longer domain registration makes a site look more legitimate, and boosts ranking.

Exact Match Domains are useful only if you have a quality site. Google checks and puts down the ranking of low-quality websites.

Public WhoIs on domain name impresses Google better than a private WhoIs. Further, if the WhoIs is a recognized spammer, all his or her sites will be affected.

Having a Country TLD extension, such as .uk, .cn, etc. boosts rank only for that country, not globally.

The title tag is second in importance only to the content of the page, and is a great place to put a keyword. It’s also smart to the title tag with the keyword, rather than putting it in the middle or end. Putting a keyword in the description tag also makes some difference, though not as much as it used to. The keyword placed in an H1 tag, or “second title tag” also makes a difference.

Making your keyword the most frequently used phrase on the site makes a difference regarding relevancy.

Content length matters as well, with longer content looking more legitimate.

Keyword density matters as well, though it is less important than it once was.

Latent Semantic Indexing Keywords in Content (LSI) helps your keywords match up with the proper meaning. As many words have more than one meaning, this helps determine the relevancy of your webpage.

Page Loading Speed: how quickly your page loads helps determine your ranking.

Duplicate content, repetitions on your site, will lower your ranking. The tag of rel=canonical can makes a difference regarding duplicate content.

Images can clue search engines regarding relevancy with their file name, alt text, title, and description.

The Google Caffeine update gives preference for recently updated content. Also, the amount of content change matters: more is better. The number of updates over time factors in.

Having the keyword in the first 100 words increases relevancy.

Keyword word order matters, so research what phrases are actually used. Phrases with words rearranged are less relevant than exact string matches.

By keeping these factors in mind, you will increase the likelihood that Google’s SERP will put you at the top of the list.