And an internet marketing guru told me last month that there are just three big ones:
1. Traffic
2. Content
3. Activity
So the more traffic, the higher your ranking; the more content the higher the ranking and the more frequent the updates and activity on your site, the higher your organic search rankings.
My own humble site popped up to a PR of 2 from 1 last week, maybe because I did a Yahoo Directory listing in December, who knows.
Best Regards
Sorry but you are talking to the wrong Gurus.
Traffic and Activity are noting that can be measureed well enough to allow them to be 2 of the top 3 elements.
There are TWO main elements in the Google algorithm (with 250+ variations therein)
1. Importance, this is a mathematical value and is the ACTUAL Live PageRank of your site, not Toolbar PR, but live pr, something that is updated constantly.
2. Relevance, this is a semantic value, and is dependednt on the mathematical value above.
Ok so that is the official version, but what it means in practice is that the main elements are on page and off page. i.e whay YOU say your site is about, and what OTHERS say your site is about. of course the other element is WHO the others are that say what your site is about.
Inbound links (including variations of PR, semantic relevance, geo location, etc) are by FAR AND AWAY the biggest influence on rankings.
On page, the page title is the main influencer.