The Most Crucial Google Ranking Factors LBHQ

Google made intrusive interstitials a negative ranking factor in 2017. Page speed has been a ranking factor on desktop since 2010 and mobile since 2018. Rather than focusing on building millions of backlinks, focus on more relevant and quality backlinks. The total number of your backlinks and referring domains are important, but only when they are from relevant sources. In February 2021, John Mueller commented about the importance of link relevance and that you can build many backlinks, but Google will ignore them if they are not relevant.

Use tools like SEO SpyGlass to assess the authority, relevance, and penalty risk of potential linking websites. I think they are important, but I think people overestimate the importance of links. Focus on creating high-quality, informative content that addresses the user's search query comprehensively. Always back your claims with relevant data, statistics, and research findings. Link to reputable sources and scholarly articles to “show off” the credibility and comprehensiveness of your content. Benchmarks of mobile-friendliness include readability, ease of navigation, and page speed.

Mobile-Friendly / Mobile-First Website

In 2021, Google made big changes to how it ranks this type of content. Plenty of SEO experts, including Search Engine Journal, have reported ranking increases after updating and refreshing old content. For example, the term “Best CRM” contains articles that have mostly been updated within the last month or two. This reflects the fact that CRM products update and change on a relatively slow timeline.

Besides publishing original content and getting backlinks, one of the most well-known ranking factors is the use of keywords on websites. Some digital marketing experts argue that backlinks, also referred to as inbound links, are the most important ranking factor for Google. These are links on other websites that, when clicked, direct users back to your site. Should you incorporate every single one of these factors into your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts?

Google ranker ranking factors leak of January 2023 revealed Yandex uses around 690 ranking factors, give or take. Because while the SEO rumor mill has speculated on what exactly Google’s “200 ranking factors” for nearly two decades, the truth is probably a lot murkier than that. Think that having a .gov or .edu at the end of your domain will make a difference? The age of your domain can help with site authority overall (see below), but Google has confirmed that it is not currently a ranking factor. Manual actions are those that manually adjust a website’s visibility in search results by demoting or removing a site or specific pages from Google Search. These are conducted by Google – and they’re a penalty, not a ranking factor.

The concept is important for all niches, but especially for anyone in YMYL niches, such as finance or health, where the results can really impact the user’s life in a significant way. Google’s Search Quality Raters Guidelines used to be a closely guarded document at Google that was eventually leaked online. Google now openly publishes the document as an example of what its Quality Raters are looking for when they manually review websites. Google is striving to always surface the best results, so machine learning systems have been developed as part of the move towards parsing natural language queries. Google can understand the difference between “cheat” as a disingenuous person and “cheat” as a way to game a system (as in cheat code).

When a website links to your page, this site is saying that you are a trustworthy source. This is why backlinks have been and still is the most crucial ranking factor in SEO. According to Google, if your page loads more than 3 seconds, 50% of users will bounce, and bounce rate is also an important ranking factor. If you want to read more about ranking factors with a focus to prioritize facts and not speculation, then download a copy of Ranking Factors 2023 ebook.

If Google Analytics shows you have a high bounce rate and a low time on page, it could be a sign that you need to improve your content, which could ultimately lead to a better ranking. Keywords have been important to getting content to rank in the past. But the issue is far more complex nowadays and many people consider general topics to be more important than specific keywords.

It makes your content easier to navigate and readers will realize that they don’t have to go to multiple sites to find what they’re looking for. The above technical search engine ranking factors have to do with your website as a whole, while these next ranking factors are more page-specific—hence the term on-page SEO. Ahrefs includes freshness as one of its major ranking factors, assuming it’s relevant for the query.

This one is not a direct ranking factor, but it can still impact the performance of the page, including ranking factors like loading speeds, along with user experience. So not important for ranking, but still good to keep in check. Google itself has confirmed 404 pages do not impact how your other URLs rank, easily dispelling that ranking factor myth. Broken links and pages, however, can provide a poor user experience (so they should be found and updated when possible). Confirmed by Google as ranking factors, these three signals determine the popularity and geographical closeness of a business along with how relevant it is to the specific search.