47 Most Important Google Ranking Factors That Really Matter

Apparently, Google uses about 200 various factors to rank a site.

It doesn’t matter how accurate this number is. The sheer magnitude of it is still intimidating, especially for someone who is only starting to rank their site.

But here is the catch. Not all those factors are equally important. Some are indeed must haves, but others might not make much of a difference in your market. Many of you might not even have much direct influence on it.

If you just launched your site and tried to find out what aspects of SEO you should focus on first, here’s a treat for you. A list of the most important Google ranking factors a beginner should know.

What are Google Ranking Factors?

Google ranking factors are several small pieces of information that Google uses to determine how well a webpage answers a particular search query. So, when you search “Top places to visit in Warsaw,” Google uses these ranking factors to display content that is most likely to answer that query.

These ranking factors can include a variety of things, from the image loading time of the website to the number of words on a page. The primary goal of these ranking factors is to provide users with the best available content that can solve their specific search queries while ensuring a positive online experience.

The Top 10 Factors

If you want your website to rank higher for relevant search queries, you must pay attention to the Google ranking factors. You may be tempted to optimize your website and its content for every ranking factor, but it is almost impossible to get everything right per Google’s standards. The best thing you can do is to prioritize the ranking factors that offer you the most benefits. 

Here are the top Google ranking factors that can help your page appear higher on the search engine results pages (SERPs): 

• High-quality Content

The quality of your website's content plays a crucial role in determining its ranking on the SERPs. Google gives higher rankings to those pages and websites with unique, fresh, and helpful content for the users. No matter how optimized your webpage is, it will still be difficult for you to get higher Google rankings if your content is not valuable. Google looks at several metrics to measure the quality of your webpage's content.

• Uniqueness and Originality

Google prefers giving higher rankings to original content. If your content is too similar to other web pages or duplicated from your existing content, it may have a negative impact on your SEO. In some cases, Google does not even index a duplicate page. And if you regularly publish duplicate content, Google may reduce the overall crawl rate on your website. Thus, you should always create content that is unique and better than other websites ranking for targeted search terms.

• Relevance and Freshness

Content freshness plays a major role in determining the quality of your page or website. Google prioritizes new information, whether you publish new content or update existing content with new data. You are more likely to get higher rankings if you cover topics that involve news or trends.

• Content Length

Studies suggest that content length has a crucial impact on your position in the Google rankings. The average content length for a web page that ranks in the top ten results for a specific keyword on Google is around 2,000 words. However, the ideal length for a piece of content depends on the subject matter. You should always create content that has depth and covers the content thoroughly. As mentioned, Google prefers content that fully responds to the needs of its users.

• Content Structure

Lastly, your website's content needs to be well-organized and structured to be in Google’s good books. Well-structured content makes it easier for readers to navigate your website and find solutions to their needs and problems. Consider using multiple headings and subheadings (H2, H3, H4, and more) to organize your ideas properly. 

You can significantly improve the quality of your website content by paying attention to the aforementioned areas. As the content quality improves, you may see a significant boost in your search engine rankings.

• Backlinks

Backlinks are the most significant Google ranking factor after content quality. Inbound links from reputable websites have a massive influence on Google’s ranking algorithm. These backlinks are like a vote of confidence from other websites that have found your content useful. Google analyses these links and their quality to decide whether your content truly deserves a higher ranking.

If your website has backlinks from high-authority websites, it will boost your rankings more than when you have links from lower-rated sites. As you acquire such links, it sends a positive signal to Google that your content is credible since other high-authority websites give their vote of confidence to your content.

• Search Intent

Search intent describes the goal a user is trying to achieve when they perform an online search. Since every user is unique and has different goals than others, you need to identify the search intent behind every search so that your content can address it properly. 

If a user searches for “best colleges in Warsaw,” the top results are most likely to be listicle articles. Both authors and Google believe that the users want to compare themselves and are likely to apply for a college in Warsaw.

For e-commerce websites, search intent also clearly shows where visitors are in the buyer journey. By matching your website content with search intent, you can answer the search queries from users and produce content that most of your target audience is looking for.

• Website Loading Speed

In May 2021, Google included website loading speed in its list of Core Web Vitals. As you may realize, website speed is crucial for a pleasant user experience. Google also understands that and measures your site’s overall speed and responsiveness while ranking it. Google even analyses how long it takes for your website to load different elements, like images and fonts.

To boost your chances of securing a higher rank, your goal should be to meet a minimum page loading time standard. There is no need to go out of your way to beat your competitors’ load times. All Google wants is for your website to load quickly so that users have a nice experience when they visit your site.

• Mobile Friendliness

Besides the load speed, Google also focuses on your site’s performance on smaller screens to decide its ranking on the SERPs. Since 2019, Google has started prioritizing websites optimized for mobile screens. The mobile-first approach suggests that Google will now use the mobile version of every website for indexing and ranking.

Earlier, Google focused on indexing a website's desktop version. However, with the growing population of smartphone users, Google was compelled to change its indexing preference. Now, to secure higher rankings on Google search results, you need to develop responsive websites. If you have a WordPress-based website, a mobile-responsive WordPress theme can be helpful.

• Domain Authority

Domain authority (DA) helps grade your site’s expertise on a specific topic and its ability to rank on Google for related keywords. SEO company Moz has invented this metric, which generates a score from 1 to 100. The higher your DA score, the higher your chances of ranking on Google’s top results for relevant search queries.

You can use different strategies to boost your site’s DA. Acquiring high-quality backlinks is one such strategy. However, having too many backlinks may not always guarantee higher rankings. As mentioned above, you need to create valuable, unique content and try to focus your website and blog content on a major topic.

Creating high-quality content on similar topics increases your topical authority. If you continue doing so, Google will recognize your site as an expert in the particular topic and boost your domain authority. This will ultimately lead to better rankings in the search results.

• Website Structure

While your site’s content structure plays a crucial role in helping you secure a higher search ranking, you should also pay attention to the overall website structure. From a crawling and indexing standpoint, the significance of your website’s architecture is high. A simple structure that does not have too many subcategories can help Googlebot index your website and pages.

You create a sitemap to accelerate the indexing process for your new and updated content. A sitemap helps search engine spiders navigate the website, discover new content, and index your pages. Your site can have multiple sitemaps. You can use certain plugins to make special sitemaps for video and new content. This helps boost your rankings for certain types of content in search results.

• Keyword Optimization

It has now become common knowledge that the right use of keywords on your website can help improve your rankings on Google search results. To make it happen, you need to find keywords that match the search terms that your target audiences generally look for. In addition to matching their search intent and tracking the keyword rankings, you should also strategically place the keywords for maximum impact.

Here are a few keyword optimization tips you must follow to improve your Google ranking:

• Include the target keywords at the start of the SEO title tag of your content.
• Write engaging meta descriptions and mention the primary keyword so that the users know what the content is about.
• Add keywords in the image alt text section to help Google understand what the image is about.
• Use your keywords as anchor text while linking your pages. This helps Google understand what the linked page offers.
• Apart from focusing on the primary keyword, you will also need to use latent semantic indexing keywords that help Google understand the content more precisely.
• Add the primary keyword to your webpage's URL.
• Try to incorporate keywords in the subheadings (H2, H3, and so on).

• Website Security

Your website’s security is also one of the major Google ranking factors. To ensure Google recognizes your website as safe and secure for its users, you need to use HTTPS protocol. This encrypts the data between your website and the browser the user is using. In 2014, Google officially recognized HTTPS as a crucial ranking signal. If your website still uses “http://…” in its URL, you need to update your website security and get the SSL certificate.

• On-page Experience of the Users

The user’s on-page experience is another important ranking factor that you need to focus on. Google uses the following metrics to measure the on-page experience:

• Click-through Rate: Click-through rate (CTR) is the percentage of users that click on your website link in the SERPs. You can boost your CTR using better and more relevant titles and meta descriptions, which can improve your overall rankings.

• Bounce Rate: Bounce rate refers to the percentage of visitors who exit the page without interacting. So, when your site has a high bounce rate, you need to work even harder to make the visitors spend more time on your website. If your website is failing to get the visitors to engage with its content, Google may recognize it as irrelevant to searchers and drop its rank.

• Dwell Time: Dwell time is the duration of a visitor’s stay on your site after they discover your content from Google search results. A higher dwell time means better user engagement. Google recognizes longer dwell times as a sign of highly relevant and engaging content for the user.

Apart from these top 10 ranking factors, you may come across a bunch of other elements that influence the ranking of your website in Google search results. Once you master these high-priority ranking signals first, you can explore the other factors that we are about to discuss next.

On-Page Factors

The way your page is optimized has the most profound effect on its rankings. Here are the page optimization factors that can affect its search visibility:

Keyword in the Title Tag

The title meta tag is one of the strongest relevancy signals for a search engine. The label itself is meant to give an accurate description of the page’s content. Search engines use it to display the main title of a search result. Including a keyword in it will indicate to the search engine what to rank the page for.

Ideally, the keyword should be placed at the start of the title tag. Pages optimized this way will rank better than those with keywords closer to the title’s tag end.

Keyword in Description Tag

The importance of the meta description tag today is often discussed in SEO circles. It is nonetheless still a relevancy signal. It is also crucial for gaining user clicks from search results pages. Including the keyword in it makes it more relevant to a search engine and a searcher.

Keyword in H1 Tag

The H1 tag is yet another relevant factor, serving as a description of the page’s content. In spite of an ongoing discussion about its importance, it is still a good practice to include your keyword in a unique H1 tag on a page.

Using Keywords in the Page’s Copy

Up until not long ago, stuffing your page with keywords was a surefire way to increase its rankings for a particular keyword. That’s not the case anymore. Using the keyword in the copy still sends a relevancy signal about what the content is about. How you place it, however, has changed drastically.

Length of the Content

These days, searchers want to be educated and won’t be satisfied with basic information. Google, therefore, looks for authoritative and informative content to rank first. And it’s common sense that the longer your content is, the greater the chance that you can cover more aspects of your topic. Don’t be shy about writing a long but highly useful copy.

Duplicate Content

Not all factors can positively influence your rankings. Having similar content across various pages of your site can actually hurt your rankings. Avoid duplicating content and write original copy for each page.

Canonical Tag

Sometimes, however, having two URLs with similar content is unavoidable. One of the ways to prevent this from becoming a duplicate content issue is by using a canonical tag on your site. This tag does one simple thing: it tells Google that one URL is equivalent to another, clearly stating that in spite of two pages having the same content, they are, in fact, one.

Image Optimization

It’s not only text that can be optimized on a page but other media, too. Images, for instance, can send search engine relevance signals through their alt text, caption, and description.

Content Updates

Google algorithm prefers freshly updated content. It does not mean that you have to edit your pages all the time. For commercial pages, such as product descriptions, Google recognizes the fact that they are not as time-sensitive as blog posts covering recent events. It is wise, however, to include some strategy to update certain types of content once every 12 months or so.

Outbound links

Linking to authoritative pages sends trust signals to the search engine. Think of it this way: the only reason you would send a user to another site is if you wanted them to learn more about the subject. This can be a huge trust factor for Google. Too many outbound links, however, can greatly diminish the page’s PageRank, hurting its search visibility. Outbound links can affect your rankings, but use them in moderation.

Internal Links

Interlinking pages on your site can pass their strength between them.

Keyword in URL

Including keywords in the URL slug (that’s the bit that appears after the “.com/“part of the URL) is said to send another relevancy signal to Google.

Site Factors

Certain site-wide factors can affect your site's search visibility as well:

Sitemap

A sitemap helps search engines index all pages on your site. It is the simplest and most effective way to tell Google what pages your website includes.

Domain Trust

Trust matters. It’s hard not to think that sites Google trusts should rank higher. But how do you build that trust? Brian from Backlinko has a full list of trust factors here. Building trust factors in your domain will certainly pay off.

Server Location

Some SEOs believe that a server location helps boost rankings for that specific country or region.

Mobile Optimized Site

Only a year ago, 46% of searchers used mobile exclusively for research. I believe this number has increased exponentially in the last 12 months. It would be no surprise then that having a mobile-optimized site would affect rankings in some way.

Google Webmasters Tools Integration

Lastly, having your site verified at Google Webmasters Tools is said to help with the indexing of your site. Even if that’s not the case, the tool provides valuable data you can use to optimize your site better.

Backlink Factors

When ranking your pages, Google looks at factors outside of your site as well. Here are some of the key ones:

The Number of Linking Domains

The number of domains linking to you is one of the most important ranking factors.

The Number of Linking Pages

There might be a number of links from a particular domain to your site; their number is a ranking factor, too. However, it is still better to have more links from individual domains than from a single part.

Pagerank of Linking Page

Not all pages are equal. Links on pages with higher PageRank will be a bigger factor than those on low PR pages. Therefore, you should strive to build links from high PR pages.

Link Relevancy

Some SEOs believe that links from pages related to your page’s topic carry more relevance for search engines.

Authority of Linking Domain

Similar to page PR, the power of a part may also be a ranking factor. For that reason, a link from a low PR page on a high PR site will be worth more than a link from a lower PR one.

Links from the Homepage

Similarly, some SEOs believe that links from the home page of a linking domain are stronger than those on one of its pages.

Number of Dofollow vs. Nofollow Links

Google officially stated that they don’t count nofollow links (link with rel=nofollow attribute attached). Therefore, the number of your do-follow links should affect your rankings, too.

Diversity of Link Types

The types of links you build to your site matter, too. Too many links of one type may be a spam indicator and impact your rankings negatively.

Contextual Links

It is said that links within the content of the page are worth more than links in a sidebar, for instance.

Link Anchor

The anchor text of a link used to be a strong ranking factor. Today, it can be used as a web spam indicator, negatively impacting your rankings.

Domain Factors

Your domain can affect your rankings as well. Some of the domain signals aren’t as strong as they used to be; there are a few things worth paying attention to:

Domain Registration Length

Google considers domains registered for longer than a year to be more trustworthy. QUOTE.

Domain History

You may not be the first person to register the domain. And if your domain has been penalized in the past, its history might affect its current rankings.

Country TLD Extension

If you try to target a specific local market, it is said that having a domain with a country-specific TLD (.pl, .co.uk, or .ie, for instance) will help you achieve better rankings for that location.

User Interaction

Lastly, how users interact with your website content can have a major impact on your Google search rankings. You need to focus on the following metrics to turn things in your favour.

• Organic CTR for a Keyword

Pages with a higher CTR are more likely to secure a better position in the SERP for a particular keyword.

• Bounce Rate

Even though several SEO experts believe that bounce rates are not that important, studies have found a strong connection between bounce rates and search engine rankings.

• RankBrain

Many believe that RankBrain, an AI algorithm from Google, measures how users interact with the search results and ranks the results based on that data.

• Direct Traffic

It has been revealed that Google uses data from Google Chrome to determine how many people visit a particular website and how often. If your website receives more direct traffic, it will likely experience a SERP boost.

• Repeat Traffic

If your website gets plenty of repeat visitors, it may boost your ranking in Google search results.

• Number of Comments

Pages that have received several comments from genuine users may appear to Google as a sign of user interaction and quality, which may impact the website’s ranking.

• Chrome Bookmarks

Pages that are bookmarked in the Chrome browser will likely boost their ranking. This is because Google collects Chrome browser data and may use that information to gauge user interaction.

Google Ranking Factors Takeaway

As you can see, there are numerous factors that can impact your site’s position on the search engine results pages for a specific search query. While it may be a good idea to optimize your website, its pages, and the content for as many ranking factors as possible, you should prioritize the most important ones we discussed at the beginning of this article. To summarize, you should:

• Create high-quality content
• Acquire backlinks from reputable sites
• Prepare content that meets the search intent of the users
• Optimize the website loading speed
• Make your website mobile-responsive
• Improve your website’s domain authority
• Focus on keyword optimization
• Maintain a healthy website structure
• Enhance website security
• Boost the on-page experience of the users

As soon as you master these top Google ranking factors, you can see a significant improvement in your search rankings. However, it is important to note that it may take weeks or even months to see changes in your rankings, even if you do everything right. In such cases, patience is the key.