The 40 Most Important SEO Ranking Factors for Google

It often appears at the very top of Google’s search results for local searches. Using a local rank tracker can significantly simplify the process of monitoring your local keyword rankings. Rush Analytics’ Local Rank Tracker offers a suite of features designed to make tracking your local SEO performance a breeze.

• This makes SEO a powerful inbound marketing strategy, where users come to you rather than the other way around.
• Interestingly, having a Google Business Profile was cited as the #1 ranking factor for small businesses in a recent survey of marketers.
• The more votes (or backlinks) a web page receives, the more trustworthy it appears to search engines, which can significantly impact its ranking in search results.
• This makes even so-called stop words relevant in search when they contribute to the meaning of a query.
• Semantic search represents a shift from a literal interpretation of search queries to a more nuanced, context-aware system.

This means you should create a video or an infographic for the best chance of ranking for those keywords. So, if you were to create content on either of these example topics, it’s important to match the search intent and create the right type of content. You can also use bulleted and numbered lists to make information easier to read.

Monitor your competitors’ SEO performance, rankings, and market share regularly to stay aware of shifts in the competitive landscape. Use tools to conduct a thorough backlink analysis and look for relevant backlink opportunities that you could replicate. Generate a more comprehensive list of related keywords and phrases using your seed keywords. Implementing basic technical SEO best practices creates a strong foundation for your website’s future success in search. There’s a ton of information out there, and search engine algorithms are constantly changing. In today’s internet-driven world, having an online presence is a make-or-break necessity for businesses of all shapes and sizes.

These provide tips on how to search in ways that might lead to more helpful results. Learn more about our approach to delivering high-quality information in Search. Passage ranking is an AI system we use to identify individual sections or “passages” of a web page to better understand how relevant a page is to a search. We have various “query deserves freshness” systems designed to show fresher content for queries where it would be expected. For example, if someone is searching about a movie that’s just been released, they probably want recent reviews rather than older articles from when production began.

Your external backlinks are recommendations to your users and have to be of very high quality. There are millions of websites competing with you for higher rankings and more organic traffic. To compile our list of the top SEO ranking factors, we looked at a variety of sources–-including our own in-house experts and other popular lists.

#12 – HTTPS/SSL

Then, you can start to understand how to shape your approach to content and SEO strategy in order to rank. Links do not have the same impact as they did in the early days when it was possible to rank with a high-volume of low-quality inbound links. Internal linking not only helps Google crawl and index all linked pages on your site – it also helps to interlink topic clusters, which is a valuable SEO content strategy. In the early days of Google, links quickly became the most leveraged spam technique for ranking. It took Google until 2012 and the legendary Penguin update to wipe out low-quality links, and it has been trying to downgrade the importance of links since this time. Since Google first launched, SEO professionals have been using links to manipulate rankings.

How to Optimize?

If your website loads slowly, a lot of people will simply bounce off your page and click on another search result. This, in turn, a lot of bad UX signals to Google showing that people are not liking your site. You can show your expertise in your niche by creating topic clusters and covering all important keywords in extreme detail. Create multiple content pieces on related keywords that revolve around a central keyword or theme.

Pay attention to the mobile report, and address any URLs marked as poor or in need of improvement. Mobile-friendliness ensures users can access your site from any device, including smartphones. Bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who weren’t engaged with your content, meaning they clicked away from your site without visiting any other pages or triggering any conversion SEO Anomaly events. It categorizes URLs as good, poor, or in need of improvement for both mobile and desktop users. To fix any URLs that are poor or in need of improvement, click to view the report and follow the instructions. Some of the most common include excessive ads that interfere with organic content and interstitials that make it difficult for visitors to navigate the site.

The structure and complexity of ranking factors, added to the strong influence of user signals, is designed to produce the most relevant content for the user. When high quality sites link to yours, this tells search engines that your site is also trustworthy and reputable. Optimizing for conversion involves aligning your SEO strategy with user intent.