An earlier post about the Top 5 Search Engine Ranking Factors covered the highest-potential impact elements to understand and take action to improve.

However, there are literally 100’s of factors that Google considers, according to Matt Cutts at PubCon.

Check out the list over at WebmasterWorld to get a better idea of how complex the Search Engine ranking algorithm really is. We have heard tales of website owners stuffing keywords in their meta tags and getting first-page rankings for competitive terms in mere days, but over time Google has refined its algorithm to include everything you can imagine…and then some.

A big focus has been filtering out the tricks & gimmicks that webmasters have tried to employ over the years. It used to be much worse, which was the reason Googlers would find themselves on pages with 500 links to spammy websites or with 100 words of content and 12 banner ads.

Thankfully, Google has pioneered the advancement of search results, eliminating the chance for (most) of these sites to exist. It appears to be their goal to continue improving the experience of their users as much as possible, and while many website owners have been crushed in the path of the mighty Google, most have been for the better.

The key here is to remember that the Search Engines are NOT our enemy!

It’s crucial that we work alongside Google, Yahoo! & Bing to improve the quality of results, by creating “Unique, Useful and Updated” pages.

What do you think? Are there too many “rules”, or is this the best way to improve search results?