What are the most important SEO ranking factors?

Who or what do people turn to first for information, inspiration, goods, or services? Don't turn to the Yellow Pages. not into the town. at this time, not even to relatives and close friends. Google is where they go. Furthermore, the majority of them just look at the first page of results.

Search engine optimization, or SEO, is a multi-billion dollar industry because of this. The process of aligning a website with Google's ranking factors is known as SEO. What exactly are these ranking elements, and how can your website be made more effective for them? Find out by reading on.

What are Google ranking factors?

The practice of optimizing your website for organic search engine results is known as SEO (and yes, you can aim for the first page). We refer to unpaid search results as "organic" results when discussing search. Compared to paid results, which come from PPC advertising, this is different.

These are your ranking factors. An algorithm used by Google to calculate organic rankings considers a number of parameters and SEO data.

While we will never be able to fully understand all of the over 200 Google ranking variables, we do know a good number of them. We also know that while ranking variables and algorithms may change, experience, authority, and trust are the qualities Google is attempting to discern through them (E-A-T).

E-A-T is not a ranking factor; rather, Google uses ranking factors to calculate E-A-T.

Google ranking factors types

Let's first discuss the various kinds before moving on to the top 10 Google ranking variables around which you can optimize your website pages.

On-page ranking factors refer to the quality of the content on the page and the keywords its targeting.

Off-page ranking factors are like endorsements from other pages on your site or other websites, and primarily involve backlinks.

Technical ranking factors measure your site’s ability to be crawled, indexed, and render content quickly and safely for searchers.

Local ranking factors involve all three of the above, with a special focus on reviews, reputation, and listings.

Your SEO won't succeed or fail based on a single ranking element. Your technical, on-page, and off-page initiatives all work together to boost your Google ranking, increase traffic, and establish credibility.

According to First Page Sage, the following are the main Google ranking factors:

On-page Google ranking factors

The technical search engine ranking variables mentioned above concern your website as a whole, whereas the subsequent ranking elements—hence the phrase on-page SEO—are more page-specific.

1. Relevant, high-quality content

The caliber of your content is the single most crucial element in Google ranking. This is related to the above chart's user interaction, specialist expertise, and regular production of high-quality content. So what constitutes great, pertinent content?

• It’s trustworthy. The information is in-depth, accurate, useful, and free of spammy links and/or comments.
• It’s readable. That means organized logically, written conversationally, and not stuffed with keywords (Google will actually penalize you for this). Incorporate it naturally into your page and use it interchangeably with related keywords.
• It’s fresh. Even the most evergreen content loses relevancy over time. So in addition to writing net new content, you should also be updating outdated pages with new information and new keywords that are relevant to today. This is the key to maintaining a good freshness score.
• It matches the intent of the keyword. In addition to using keyword research tools to find out what your ideal audience is searching online, make sure to search the keyword on Google itself to make sure you understand what users are seeking when they perform that search.

In a recent Directive poll, 78% of marketers cited keyword research as a high-impact strategy for bringing in new customers. By conducting research, you may learn more about what your audience is looking for and provide content that immediately responds to these search terms.

2. Keyword placement

It's critical to place your target keywords in strategic locations across your page once you've decided the ones you want to rank for. This comprises:

• Title tag: aka meta title; the title that appears on the SERP
• H1 title: title that appears on the page
• H2 headings: aim for at least two
• URL: keep your URL short and clean as well.
• Naturally in the body: and also in the first 100 words
• Meta description: the blurb that appears below the title tag/meta title. Make sure it accurately sums up your page and gives searchers a reason to click. Google doesn’t always use the meta description you provide, but it’s still important to include.

The most significant keywords are by far those in the title tags, followed by H2s and URLs.

3. Image optimization

This is significant not only due of Google Image Search, but also due to the increasing visual nature of ordinary search results, particularly on mobile. Here's how to make your photos SEO-friendly:

• Assign alt text: This is the text alternative of an image, and the only way that Google can “see” them. Be short but descriptive and include the keyword. This also makes your website accessible to visually-impaired readers who rely on screen readers to browse the internet, and will show if the image fails to load.

• Compress and resize: Use an image compressor (tinypng is my favorite) to keep your image file sizes to 70-100KB or less if you can. Often, saving as JPG instead of PNG helps. Also, images rarely need to be more than 1,000px wide. Though a responsive website will resize the images automatically, the less requests your site needs to make to the server, the better for page speed.

• Add value: If you can, avoid using empty stock images and graphics in your blog posts and instead use screenshots, examples, charts, and illustrations that depict concepts. This improves the quality of the content and keeps users engaged longer.

• Include the keyword: Not just in the alt text, but the file name. And replace spaces with dashes in the file name, otherwise your CMS will replace them with “%20” which creates an untrustworthy-looking image link.

A properly saved, tagged, sized, and compressed image.

4. Niche expertise

Indicators of knowledge in your niche include the quantity of high-quality content as well as its quality. For instance, WordStream has long been a reliable supplier of high-quality PPC content, and as a result, Google has learned to regard us as such. However, the chances of us ranking for a term like robotic process automation if we published a content of extremely high quality are small.

Using the hub and spoke technique, you can expand your area of competence (also known as pillar page and cluster content). By using this technique, you develop a hub/pillar page on a specific subject, typically a broad, popular keyword. Your many H2s cover various child keywords inside that topic, and this acts as the primary reference for it.

The supplementary pages that delve deeper into each of the topics (child keywords) addressed in the pillar page are known as spokes, also known as cluster content.

This strategy not only helps with your site structure, which we'll discuss later, but it also shows that you are a specialist in this field. All of your links are kept tightly structured around the same subject because the cluster pages link to and from the pillar material as well as to one another.

Technical Google ranking factors

5. Page speed

Page speed is a crucial ranking element since users expect a painless surfing experience. Your bounce rate will rise and your ranking will drop if your pages take too long to load. With GTmetrix or Google PageSpeed Insights, you may examine yours.

6. Mobile-friendliness

Google promised to use mobile-first indexing on all new sites back in 2019. This indicates that rather than using the desktop version of a site, it bases its ranking evaluation on the mobile version. Then, in 2020, it informed us of plans to make this the case for all websites, and as of 2021, mobile-first indexing is now required for all websites.

In other words, if your site isn't mobile-optimized, even if the desktop version is excellent, your search engine rating could suffer significantly. Most content management systems let you preview and modify for smaller screens and mobile devices. Google's Mobile-Friendly Test is another option.

There are some things that code simply can't pick up on, therefore in addition to these tests, you should always preview and test your web pages on actual mobile devices.

7. Core Web Vitals

Ranking criteria rarely vary, despite the fact that SEO trends come and go. However, as part of the page experience improvement in 2021, Google did create a new ranking element called Core Web Vitals. The experience a visitor has on your page determines if and how they interact with it, and Core Web Vitals measure that experience. They consist of:

• LCP (Largest Contentful Paint): how long it takes for the visible elements on a page to load.
• FID (First Input Delay): How long it takes for your page to register the first click or tap on the page.
• CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift): whether there are unexpected movements or disruptive popups

By using lazy loading, code minification, picture compression, and other techniques, you can raise your Core Web Vitals.

8. Website architecture

As was previously said, search engines operate by indexing and crawling various content on your website. Any link that leads to another page on the same website is referred to as an internal link. The more points of access you add to any given page and the more points of organization you establish, the simpler it will be for search engines (and people) to find what they're looking for.

In reality, it should only take three clicks to visit any given page on your website.

To accomplish this, you must be aware of the pages you link to whenever you add a new page or piece of content.

It makes the text simple for search engines to comprehend and index. The user experience is another advantage of topic clusters. Readers will see that they don't need to visit several websites in order to discover what they're looking for because it makes your material easier to navigate.

Your website probably already receives routine maintenance to look for issues like bugs or server faults. Every few months, you should perform a technical SEO audit of your website for SEO purposes to look for issues like broken links, redirect loops, and 404 errors.

9. Site security

Ever wonder what the s in https (instead of just plain old http) stands for? It stands for secure, I suppose. And obtaining an SSL (secure sockets layer) certificate is how you convert your website from a http site to a https one. There are several ways to obtain an SSL, and the price is based on the level of protection you require as well as your hosting configuration. For instance, HubSpot provides free SSL through their CMS.

Off-page Google ranking factors

Off-page ranking criteria relate to things that are not your website, like social media platforms, influencers, and other websites, but every off-page SEO plan has one main goal:

10. Backlinks

How do you then obtain backlinks? These four link-building techniques are listed.

• Original, quality content: If your content is high-quality, unique, and provides value to your audience, it will generate backlinks on its own. Go for the irreplicable content like thought leadership content and original data-driven pieces.
• Cold outreach: It takes years to build this kind of authority, so you’ll also want to build backlinks by finding related content and pitching your pieces to the author for a link.
• Guest posts: Another method for building backlinks is by guest blogging. Rather than just asking for a link, offer to write a post for that site. You can include a backlink to your site in the post or in yoru author bio.

The top 10 things that affect Google rankings

You can increase your visibility by having a strong presence in both paid and organic search engine results. Regardless of the type of business you run, search engine visibility is essential if you want to gain credibility, raise brand awareness, increase traffic to your website, entice customers, and generate revenue. among the top 10 Google ranking elements are:

1. Quality content
2. Keyword placement
3. Image optimization
4. URL structure
5. Page speed
6. Mobile-friendliness
7. Core Web Vitals
8. Site architecture
9. Site security
10. Backlinks

Just keep in mind that there is no magic solution for effective SEO. The most crucial thing to remember is that it takes time to get up the search results pages. Even if you improve your website today for multiple ranking variables, it won't suddenly jump to the top of the search engine results tomorrow.

In order to maintain your site as current and pertinent for your audience as feasible, SEO calls for continual work. You'll begin to notice organic growth as long as your website is useful and optimized with your target customer in mind.

Follow our simple 10-step SEO audit for extra chances to optimize for Google's ranking factors, or use our free Website Grader tool to have it done for you.