The Top 8 Factors to Boost Your Website’s Rankings
In the ever-evolving realm of search engine optimization (SEO), understanding the key factors that can impact your website’s rankings is crucial. While Google considers over 200 factors in its algorithms, focusing on the following top 8 factors can set you on the path to SEO success:
1. Quality Content: Content is king in the world of SEO. Google prioritizes high-quality, relevant, and informative content that adds value to users’ search queries.
2. Backlinks: Backlinks from reputable websites act as a vote of confidence for your website. The more quality backlinks you have, the higher your website is likely to rank in search results.
3. Technical SEO: Optimizing the technical aspects of your website, such as site speed, mobile-friendliness, and crawlability, ensures that search engines can easily index and understand your content.
4. Keyword Optimization: Incorporating relevant keywords strategically throughout your website helps search engines decipher the purpose and relevance of your content.
5. User Experience (UX): Providing a seamless and engaging user experience on your website is crucial. Google aims to showcase websites that offer a user-friendly interface and valuable content.
6. Schema Markup: Implementing structured data through Schema Markup helps search engines better interpret and display your content in search results.
7. Social Signals: Engagement on social media platforms, such as likes, shares, and comments, can positively impact your website’s visibility. Encouraging social interactions can boost your website’s reach.
8. Brand Signals: Online reputation and brand recognition play a significant role in SEO. Building a strong brand presence and fostering a positive reputation can enhance your website’s credibility and trustworthiness in the eyes of both users and search engines.
By focusing on these essential SEO ranking factors, you can optimize your website for improved visibility, higher rankings, and increased organic traffic. Incorporating these strategies into your SEO efforts can propel your website towards success.
Domain Factors
1. Domain Age: Some SEO professionals hold the belief that Google has a natural inclination to trust older domains. Nevertheless, John Mueller of Google has explicitly stated that “domain age helps nothing” towards trust or ranking.
2. Keyword Appears in Top Level Domain: A domain name containing a keyword no longer provides the same SEO advantage it once did, but it continues to serve as a signal of relevance.
3. Domain registration length: A Google patent states “Valuable (legitimate) domains are often paid for several years in advance, while doorway (illegitimate) domains rarely are used for more than a year. Therefore, the date when a domain expires in the future can be used as a factor in predicting the legitimacy of a domain.”
4. Keyword in Subdomain: Moz’s expert panel agrees that a keyword appearing in the subdomain can boost rankings.
Figure is from: backlinko.com/google-ranking-factors
5. Domain History: Should a website frequently change ownership or experience multiple instances of being dropped, Google might consider it necessary to essentially start afresh with the site, disregarding any existing links to the domain. Sometimes, a domain that has been penalized could transfer the penalty to its new owner.
6. Exact Match Domain: Exact Match Domains probably have little to no direct SEO benefit. But if your EMD happens to be a low-quality site, it’s vulnerable to the EMD update.
7. Public vs. Private WhoIs: Matt Cutts from Google suggests that having private WhoIs information could indicate a potential desire to conceal something. He states, “…When I checked the whois on them, they all had “whois privacy protection service” on them. That’s relatively unusual. …Having whois privacy turned on isn’t automatically bad, but once you get several of these factors all together, you’re often talking about a very different type of webmaster than the fellow who just has a single site or so.”
8. Penalized WhoIs Owner: It stands to reason that should Google flag someone as a spammer, they would likely intensify their scrutiny over other websites associated with that individual.
9. Country TLD Extension: Owning a Country Code Top Level Domain (such as .cn, .pt, .ca) can potentially boost a website’s visibility within a specific country, however, it may also restrict its chances of achieving global ranking.
Page-Level Factors
10. Keyword in Title Tag: While its significance has diminished over time, the title tag continues to serve as a crucial on-page SEO indicator.
11. Title Tag Starts with Keyword: Commencing title tags with a keyword, as stated by Moz, typically results in higher performance compared to title tags featuring the keyword at the tag’s conclusion.
12. Keyword in Description Tag: While Google does not directly consider the meta description tag for ranking purposes, the description tag can influence the click-through rate, which plays a crucial role in rankings.
13. Keyword Appears in H1 Tag: In a correlation study, it was found that H1 tags serve as a secondary relevancy signal, acting like a second title tag alongside the primary title tag for Google.
Figure is from: backlinko.com/google-ranking-factors
14. TF-IDF: A more elegant expression of the concept would be: “What is the frequency of a specific term in a document?” The greater the frequency of a word on a page, the higher the probability that the page is centered around that word. Google probably employs a refined iteration of TF-IDF for this purpose.
15. Content Length: Articles containing a greater number of words have the capacity to encompass a broader scope and are generally favored by algorithms over concise, superficial content. A recent study on ranking factors within the industry revealed that the typical content appearing on the first page of Google search results spans approximately 1400 words.
16. Table of Contents: Employing a interconnected table of contents can enhance Google’s comprehension of your page’s material and potentially lead to the display of sitelinks.
Figure is from: backlinko.com/google-ranking-factors
17. Latent Semantic Indexing Keywords in Content (LSI): LSI keywords play a significant role in assisting search engines in deciphering the intended meaning behind words that might have multiple interpretations (e.g., Apple as the tech company vs. Apple as the fruit). Moreover, the utilization or non-utilization of LSI likely serves as a signal of content quality.
18. LSI Keywords in Title and Description Tags: LSI keywords within page meta tags might aid Google in distinguishing between words that have various interpretations, much like webpage content. They could also serve as an indicator of relevance.
19. Page Covers Topic In-Depth: The extent to which a subject is thoroughly explored has a direct impact on its ranking on Google. Pages that delve deeply into every aspect are more likely to outperform those that provide only a partial coverage of the topic.
20. Page Loading Speed via HTML: Page speed serves as a ranking parameter for both Google and Bing. Google has shifted to assessing loading speed by employing real Chrome user data.
21. Use of AMP: Although AMP is not a direct determinant of Google ranking, it could be essential for securing a position in the mobile segment of the Google News Carousel.
22. Entity Match: If the content on a webpage aligns with the “entity” being sought by a user, the likelihood of that page receiving a ranking advantage for the corresponding keyword increases.
23. Google Hummingbird: Google’s advancement with the implementation of the Hummingbird algorithm has enabled the search engine to transcend the limitations of keywords. This upgrade equips Google with the ability to comprehensively grasp the essence and theme of a webpage, marking a significant evolution in its search capabilities.
24. Duplicate Content: Having content that is exactly the same or even slightly altered on the same website can have adverse effects on the visibility of the site on search engines.
25. Rel=Canonical: Proper utilization of this tag can potentially shield your website from Google penalization due to duplicate content.
26. Image Optimization: Optimizing images is crucial for search engine indexing as they convey significant relevance signals through various elements like file names, alt texts, titles, descriptions, and captions.
27. Content Recency: The preference of Google’s Caffeine update leans towards freshly published or revised content, particularly for searches that are time-sensitive. To stress the significance of this aspect, Google displays the latest update date of a page for specific pages.
Figure is from: backlinko.com/google-ranking-factors
Site-Level Factors
28. Content Provides Value and Unique Insights: Google has indicated its willingness to penalize websites that fail to offer anything novel or valuable, with a particular focus on thin affiliate sites.
29. Contact Us Page: The Google Quality Document emphasizes the importance of having the right balance of contact details on websites. It is crucial to ensure that the provided contact information aligns with the whois information.
30. Domain Trust/TrustRank: Numerous SEO experts consider “TrustRank” to be a highly significant factor in determining rankings. Supporting this notion is a Google Patent named “Search result ranking based on trust”.
Figure is from: backlinko.com/google-ranking-factors
31. Site Architecture: When it comes to enhancing your website’s organization, such as implementing a silo structure, you’re essentially aiding Google in categorizing your content thematically. This approach not only assists Googlebot in efficiently reaching and indexing all your web pages.
32. Site Updates: According to a common belief among SEO experts, making updates to a website, particularly when incorporating new content, influences the overall freshness factor of the site. Despite recent claims by Google refuting the use of “publishing frequency” as a factor in their algorithm.
33. Presence of Sitemap: Google has recently expressed that HTML sitemaps are not considered beneficial for SEO, despite the fact that a sitemap can facilitate search engine indexing of your web pages, thereby enhancing their visibility.
34. Site Uptime: Experiencing extended periods of inactivity due to website upkeep or server problems could potentially impact your search engine rankings negatively, and if left unaddressed, may lead to your website being removed from search engine indexes.
35. Server Location: The geographical location of your server plays a significant role in determining the ranking of your website in various geographic areas (source). This aspect is particularly crucial for searches specific to certain locations.
36. SSL Certificate: Google has officially verified that utilizing HTTPS serves as a ranking factor.
