All there is to know about TOP SEO Factors! Here are eight factors that really matter when it comes to ranking well on Google.
Ranking is an old art, but one that requires balance and patientness.
However, some readers may be tempted to believe that they know everything there is to know about SEO and assume that following the advice from the example above will help them get better results.
A screenshot from backlinko.com, October 2020
Some weird things will happen, but don't worry about them too much.
Glossary about Top SEo Factors:
Content, search, keywords, users, link, signal, sites, titles, domains, internal links, rate, search engines, search query, traffic, question, search engine optimization, ranking signal, bounce rates, ranking factors, target keyword,.
impact, title tags, resource, high-quality content, Search intent, Domain Authority, audience, target audience, loading, duplicate content, search algorithm, search engine ranking factors, keyword stuffing, inbound links, domain age, click-through rate, experts, update, elements, mobile version, outbound links, link building, user experience, businesses, organic traffic, meta title, metrics, desktop version, ranking algorithm, content quality, type of content, Google Search, search engine rankings, keyword research tool, social signals, loading speed, version, Google Analytics, SEO factors, content freshness,
content strategy, table of contents, low-quality content, piece of content, Google Search Console, mobile search, search ranking, search ranking factors, primary keyword, keyword in URL, external links, spammy links, domain factors, exact-match domains, SEO signal, User Engagement, Google My Business, SEO experts, common questions, social shares, shares, loading time, SEO metrics, SEO rankings, complex algorithms, online profiles, pieces of content, Content Optimization, evergreen content, Hidden content, relevant keywords, affiliate links, nofollow links, behavioral signals, mobile users, user interaction, Business Profile, subject matter experts, direct traffic, monthly traffic, links from sites, Affiliate sites, medic update, algorithm update, Off-page SEO, On-page SEO, SEO Audits, social media accounts, Google's AI, human editors, Page-Level Factors, real estate, SEO perspective, Site-Level Factors, URL string, trust factor, organic rankings, topical authority, social presence, content relevancy, actual content, content people, content relevance, content yields, great, thorough, and value-rich content, poor-quality content, Volume of quality content, search visibility, Search Engine Land, actual search terms, Keyword Research, hub keyword, keyword gaps, Presence of keyword, quality keyword, influx of links, video links, links to domain, seasoned domains, category of trust signals, average bounce rate, percent bounce rate, Google Business Profile, Google Business Profiles, Industry Experts, reviews by industry experts, impact on SEO, impact SEO, tremendous impact, question forums, correct audience, social media shares, relevant resources, valuable resource, complex elements, technical elements, experience metrics
Instead, you could spend all of your time preparing for Easter Egg results and optimize Google Doodles in your SERPs. Or... you could just not do either of these things.
After reading this type of content, I'm asking for a shower and some soap.
What should you focus on to get better SEO results?
According to Google's head of mobile, John Mueller, you should strive for "awesomeness."
Screenshot from Twitter.com, September 2021
With over 1.8 billion sites online today, how do we make our site awesome?
With so many articles out there promising to reveal the secrets of Google’s algorithm, what is true and what isn’t?
It may be difficult to know exactly which keywords to target when optimizing a site for search engines.
We don't know for sure whether Google will change its algorithm again, but we do know that they will keep making changes so that their search results better match user expectations.
Even though new SEO techniques have their roots in the current algorithm, they're not impossible to implement if you know where to look.
Google has released an official document outlining its criteria for determining which websites appear at the top of their search results.
What Are The Top Ranking Factors For Google?
There are several key elements that determine whether your site ranks well on Google.
- High-quality content.
- Mobile-first.
- Page Experience.
- Page speed
- On-page optimization.
- Internal links.
- External links.
And you'll also learn the top local ranking factor below, too. Let’s get started!
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1. Publish High-Quality Content
"I don't really care if my website has high-quality, original, useful, relevant, well-written, etc., articles," said nobody who's ever tried to
Your content is still important. But so is how well you write it.
You need to create high quality pages with useful information for them to be ranked well by Google's Panda and Fred algorithms.
Portal sites like this one.
Big name companies like eBay and Apple aren’t worthy of the content crown because thin content has hurt them in the recent years.
Creating high quality webpages means making sure they're easy to navigate, don't contain too much text, and provide useful information for visitors.
High-level blog posts and guide articles like these are the kind of high-value content search engines and users want.
Today's high-ranking websites need to provide better value than yesterday's sites did. They must not only write good articles but they must also consider these factors when writing their articles.
RankBrain
Understanding user search intents is vital to crafting pages that drive organic traffic through Google SERPs. That's where Rankbrain is used.
RankBrain is a software system developed by Google that helps them understand the intent behind a search request.
It matters because CoSchedule saw an impressive 694 percent boost in traffic when they changed their SEO content strategy to better match searcher intent.
Intent can change over the course of a session; therefore, aligning with searcher intent is extremely important.
Google has even added a new feature called "featured snippets" which is designed for multi-intent searches.
You need to look at your Google Analytics to see which keywords people use when searching for your business.
Fortunately, there are a variety of techniques available to help you.
These reports can help you get an understanding of what your customers are looking for.
A screenshot from User Flow, October 2021
You can also view your performance reports in Google Search Console. These reports show you exactly which pages are performing well and which ones need some improvement.
Keyword Usage
Keywords are no longer just used for finding good content; they're now used to create better content.
By conducting competitive analysis through competitor analysis and data mineing, you can uncover keywords that have low search volumes but a high click-thru rate for your audience.
Read how Chris Hornack, cofounder of Blog Hands, increased his site's organic search ranking by 80 percent after conducting keyword research.
As long as you continue to focus on identifying your primary keywords, you should be able to determine which ones are most suitable for your site.
For example, a recent Google survey showed that searches for brands like and stores like have grown by 60 percent over the last two years. This survey suggests that companies must adapt their marketing efforts to include keywords related to these types of searches.
Andrea Lehr, brand relationship strategist at Fractl, shares some tips for bucketting keywords here.
Gone are the days when you did keyword research for each individual keyword.
You should think about grouping keyword topics into thematic buckets. For example, if you're writing an ecommerce blog post, you might group topics by product categories. If you're writing a content marketing piece for a B2B company, you could group topics by industry verticals.
Freshness
Freshness has been an issue for years now. When Google announced its algorithm update in 2011, it caused some confusion around what was considered fresh content.
What is it? And how is it different from evergreen articles?
Don't just update the date every year; instead, go through the meat of the text and figure out what needs to be updated.
For instance, if you created a roundup of tools, you could edit the images, prices, and descriptions associated with each one.
It's important to periodically review your site's existing page structure and determine which ones need an update and which ones can be redirected into similar sections. Before making any changes to your page structure, take a look at your data to see if there are better ways to organize your material.
2. Make Your Site Mobile-First
Mobile-first index has been slowly rolling out since 2017. It took almost two years for it to be fully implemented.
Mobile-first indexing is the way Google ranks websites. If you have a separate mobile website, the URL of your mobile site will be ranked instead of the desktop version.
There is no separate mobile-only (or mobile-first) web crawl. When Google crawls your site, it looks at both the desktop and mobile versions of your site.
Mobile first indexing refers to putting content first for mobile devices. It doesn't mean making websites unusable for desktop browsers.
Mobile Usability
Back then, we used to recommend that people host their websites on URL.com instead of using a subdomain for mobile sites.
While it may not always be harmful, more websites are moving towards responsive web design rather than using mobile websites.
Despite Google saying that they don't publicly favor one set method for creating mobile sites, we recommend using a responsive design.
Google states that responsive design makes it easier for its "algorithms" to determine whether a web page exists on mobile devices.
With the rise of mobile-first indexing, your mobile site is now the lifeblood of your business. Make sure your site looks exactly the same on both mobile and desktop devices.
You don't need to use mobile responsive designs when optimizing for mobile-first indexation, but you still want to make sure they're optimized for good user experiences and thus, good rankings.
Whenever you can help a web crawler get better at indexing websites, do it!
3. Enhance Page Experience
Improve Your User Experience
UX has an impact on SEO because we've recently seen changes to page speed and page load time.
Without thinking about user experience (UX), your site will likely end up in the trash.
People tend to ignore websites that look unappealing.
Updating the copy and optimizing the CTA buttons for their attorney profiles increased their site traffic by 66%.
After making improvements to their user experience, Ezoic experienced an 18 percent increase in earnings per 1K visitors.
Rover is an excellent user experience because...
Screenshot of Rover.com, September 2021
If you're designing an interface for your site, be sure to choose a design that complements your SEO strategy. You don't want to pick a song that doesn't match the lyrics.
Site Architecture
The site architecture is an important part of UX and has a significant impact upon SEO.
John Doherty of RedCredo claims, “The biggest change I can make for them is fixing their website architecture.”
He discusses a website where he changed the URL structure so that they were linked higher in the hierarchy. They increased their organic traffic by 74%, and pages per session by 40%.
Here is an example for good site structure:
A screenshot from Kanopy.com, August 2020
Site architecture not only helps users find what they're searching for with better website navigations, but it can also improve the ability of web crawlers to index more content on a website.
Your websites should be easy to navigate and understand.
Pages and navigational elements should be laid out as clearly as possible.
There are some things you can do to improve the usability of your site so that it takes fewer than five clicks for a user to get from one page to another.
With the release of Google’s new page experience algorithm, sites will be affected by their architecture more than ever before.
Core Web Vitals
According to Google's John Mueller, Core Web Vitals affects many other aspects of SEO besides just ranking.
For example, if someone visits your site and clicks through to another page, your user experience, page load time, and content all affect their ability to convert.
Basically, Core Web Vitals was created to help you improve your web page's performance.
Make sure your site uses HTTPS
According to Dr. Pete J. Meyer, 30 percent of the first pages of Google searches were using HTTPS.
If you don't switch to HTTPS, it may not hurt your site, but there have been some changes since Google first announced that HTTPS would be a ranking factor in 2014.
Last year, Google made an announcement stating that it was going to start marking websites as not secure if they weren't using HTTPS.
After they've given you one last chance to change your behavior before taking action, you might notice an increase in bounce rates if you continue to ignore them.
Here's what Chrome looks like when you enable HTTPs (HTTPS):
Screenshot from Google Chrome, September 2021
It seems that Google thinks HTTPS is important.
However, using HTTP/2, which works together with HTTPS, can also cause some canonicalization issues for websites if not done properly.
For more information, read HTTP to HTTPS Migration: the Ultimate Stress-Free Guide.
Even though it hasn’t been proven to significantly improve SEO by itself, the Google Chrome upgrade means that switching your site over might be worthwhile.
Ad Experience
Ad Experience was launched in 2017 and targeted Chrome browser users.
If you're running aggressive ads, Google may soon be able to remove them from your site.
Google's Chrome web browser has been known to filter ads for some time now.
Because ad experience is related to web experience and core web vitals, it is affected by the user experience and the way the user engages with your site.
Optimizing your page speed means making sure that your web pages
After becoming a desktop-only ranking signal, web pagespeed became a Google smartphone ranking factor in 2018.
If your site takes too long to load, you'll be losing visitors and revenue.
For Amazon, just 1 second could cost it $16 billion in annual revenue.
A study conducted by The Telegraph found that a 4 second delay reduces the number of people who click on a link from 11.02 percent down to 8.98 percent.
Why take that risk?
You can use tools to measure a website's average load time.
Lighthouse is your friend.
If you know what you're doing, then most things can be fixed easily.
Faster page load times mean a better user interface for visitors, which is why Google has started considering them when calculating its algorithm.
5. Mastering your on-page optimization
On-site optimization focuses on the “behind the scene” aspects of your site and its SEO.
These factors have been around for years, but they still play an important role in determining your site's ranking.
Mockingbird increased its organic traffic by simply updating its H1 tag.
And, Brand New Content increased organic traffic by 48 percent by cleaning up its metadata and internal linking structures.
It's worth it.
Improving your site's performance can improve its visibility among both users and web crawlers.
There are many different ways that on-page optimizations will continue to be effective long after they're implemented.
Metadata
This article covers your titles and meta descriptions – the text content that appears below your site’s URL in the search results.
Sometimes, Google pulls content from the page into its own database and uses it for dynamic descriptions in SERPs.
Here is an example of how that might look:
A screenshot from a Google image result for cloud data storage, circa September 2021.
There are lots of other meta tags to learn in SEO. And remember this: Adding just one specific meta description could result in a 300 percent increase in clicks from Google Discover.
Schema
Schema markup is one of the “hidden” components of a website that tell search engines more about its contents.
There are now approximately 600 different types of content you can include.
Schema markups make it easier for search engine spiders to pick up the essential information on a web page.
For example, if you're designing a schema for a local business, your schemas could be structured like this:
At Google I/O 2017, Google showed some examples of how structured data helps improve user experience and click through rates.
A study found that adding rich media (such as images) to web content increased its click-through rates by up to 25%. Another study showed that adding rich media to recipes increased their views by up to 35%.
