Everyone who’s been exposed to search engine optimization can relate to the feelings of confusion, frustration, and nerd rage that so often accompany trying to understand the complex steps necessary to get a website ranked. After all, we’re talking about a massive Google algorithm that’s kept completely secret and that is changed, to at least some degree, every single day. However, the most important factors in SEO ranking have remained mostly stable, and the core steps necessary to a successful foundation remain fairly easy to understand.

The real trick is knowing which steps are the important, base-level steps and which are frivolous, unimportant, experimental, or likely to be shut down. To help with that precise dilemma, the people over at Search Engine Land have released a fantastic infographic: a periodic table of the elements for SEO ranking factors.

This infographic is fairly easy to understand, and it’s free to grab so go ahead and nab your copy now. The version linked above provides specific descriptions of what each factor on the chart means (for example, it translates “Words” as meaning “Do pages use words and phrases you hope they’ll be found for”). Further, the chart is divided into (and color-coded according to) multiple categories.

First and foremost, the chart is divided into positive and negative factors. Both positive and negative are then sub-divided into two other categories (for positive, on-site and off-site; for negative, violations and blocking). Each column of the positive end of the chart represents a specific category, such as Content, HTML, Social, Links, and Architecture. Within each column you’ll see a one word description of the factor and a number ranging from -3 to +3, indicating how helpful or harming the factor is. The chart is designed to encourage a holistic view of SEO that takes into account many factors and core strategies.