Google uses around 200 ranking factors to determine search results. The document discusses 8 of the most important factors: website architecture, domain security, incoming links, topic choice, keyword objectives, structured content, meta tags, and page speed. It provides details on each factor and their level of importance, with incoming links, topic choice and keywords being described as "super important". Domain security, meta tags, and page speed are also highlighted as important factors.
1. Ranking factors in SEO
A few days ago, Hub spot published "The Ultimate Guide to
Google's Ranking Factors in 2019", which we have translated for
you.
More than 3.5 billion searches are performed every day by
Google, a company that holds more than 85% of the internet
search engine market.
Needless to say, Google is very popular. Therefore, marketers
need to be aware of the factors that Google takes into account
when ranking websites on the search page to succeed in organic
search.
In terms of long-term inbound marketing strategies, white-listing
remains an important ingredient for success.
2. Google uses about 200 ranking factors to
sort websites in the search engine.
You might think that after all the research and articles written about search engine
optimization, we already know exactly what Google's ranking algorithm takes into account
when crawling web pages. But no - we don't and can't know, mainly because Google has never
published all the factors it takes into account when ranking content.
Google uses about 200 ranking factors to sort websites in the search engine. These are the
main factors related to the domain, the page itself, the location, and many technical SEO
factors that affect your website's placement on the Google search engine results page (SERP)
for various search terms in your area.
Two hundred ranking factors are a long list. So how do you take them all into account?
Fortunately, Single Grain and Backlinko have scoured the internet to find every known Google
ranking factor and created a comprehensive infographic that ranks the factors according to
their role in the Google ranking algorithm.
But this begs the question: are all ranking factors equally important? Not at all. While all of
these factors have an impact on your final ranking in Google, there are a few universal
practices that you should consider first.
To help you promote your Best SEO Agency over the next year, we've highlighted the eight
most important ranking factors.
3. GOOGLE RANKING FACTORS
We know about 200 Google ranking factors. The most important of these
relate to URL, inbound links, meta tags, keyword mapping, your content
structure, page load speed, and many technical SEO specifications that vary
in importance from topic to topic.
4. 1. WEBSITE ARCHITECTURE
Importance: important
Although other factors also have a major impact on your Google ranking, it is
the website architecture that you should pay particular attention to from the
outset, especially when launching (or relaunching) your website.
By dividing your website into subdirectories and including plain text strings
(slugs) at the end of each URL, you help Google know who you are and what
topics are important to you. (We'll come back to this in a minute).
For example, if you want to create a blog about gardening and plan to publish
content about plants, watering, and pests, it's in your best interest to
organize your site's content into these three subdirectories. A good URL for
such a blog might look like this:
https://www.yourwebsite.com/produce/how-to-grow-tomatoes
5. 2. DOMAIN SECURITY
Importance: very important
Note the "HTTPS" at the beginning of our example URL. This is how Google
distinguishes between secure and non-secure websites. Note: you want your
website to be secure.
HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol) stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol and
is a virtual process of transferring information from a website to a visitor's
browser. The "S", as you may have guessed, stands for "secure".
To secure your site's domain, you need what is called an SSL certificate. To
learn more about how to get one, read this blog post.
6. 3. INCOMING LINKS
Importance: super important
Inbound links, also known as backlinks, are any hyperlinks that lead to your site
from other sources on the Internet. They have a significant impact on your
ranking, right down to the page number you land on. Why are these links
important to your Google ranking? You don't rely heavily on external links for all
your traffic, so why does Google care so much about who links to you? Inbound
links from other websites tell Google that the information on your website is
trustworthy enough for others to link to it from their sites. This is the trust factor
that Google values so highly. The more trustworthy the source that links to you,
the greater the impact their inbound link will have on your ranking.
However, if you simply link to your article from another article, that inbound link
will not contribute to your ranking. Backlinks should primarily come from external
domains to increase the credibility factor.
This is why link building has become an important (and somewhat diplomatic)
aspect of getting inbound links from other sites. Some publishers of peer sites
agree to exchange backlinks with each other. Others post comments on different
sites to link to their site from them. For more information on link building, see
this blog.
7. 4. CHOICE OF TOPIC
Importance: very important
Topics are the backbone of your Google ranking. They help lay the foundation
for page authority, which is necessary to stay on top for as long as possible.
Remember our garden example of the first ranking factor? Let's say such a site
has 20 articles about garden pests. Google now knows that this site is the best
on the subject of pest control. Therefore, such a site is much more likely to
rank well for a blog post about organic pesticides than for a post about, say,
Google's ranking factors, even if that post is keyword optimized and well
written.
For more on topic creation, see this article.
8. 5. KEYWORD OBJECTIVE
Importance: super important
Although topics play a more important role than individual keywords, in the long run, this does not mean
that keywords are no longer a ranking factor. In fact, keyword optimization, when done properly, is one of
the most important factors to consider in your website's SEO strategy.
The very first version of Google simply looked for the highest number of literal keyword matches on a web
page or blog. This was called an "exact match".
Today, the term "exact match" has a completely different meaning, and the website with the most keywords
no longer gets the highest ranking for those keywords. It is no longer the site that simply has a keyword that
appears at the top, but the one that best matches the target audience behind that keyword.
Let's go back to our garden example of the first factor. If this website wants to rank well for the keyword
"best organic pesticides", it will not rise to the top simply by including this three-word phrase throughout
the article. In addition to the fact that the keyword must appear at least once, the article must present
concrete examples of organic pesticides, their ingredients, where to buy them, why they are so popular, or
what makes them organic, for example.
As this is the information that readers are looking for when they enter their search query, websites that
cover this topic in the most comprehensive way will attract visitors. This increase in traffic will be seen by
Google as a good answer to the visitor's search query and the URL of that page will rank higher than others.
9. 6. STRUCTURED CONTENT
Importance: important.
It is not enough to provide your website visitors with information on a given
topic. The more web pages that provide good answers to visitors, the more
important the structure of those answers becomes. This can be a determining
factor in content ranking for popular keywords.
A good content structure on a website includes various headings and
subheadings so that visitors can see and understand the answer quickly and
easily. It also includes markers, numbered lists, explanatory images, and
clearly cited searches to help readers engage with the information you
provide.
10. 7. METAGES
Importance: important.
A meta tag seems like something best left to a programmer. In fact, meta tags
are simple and often underused aspects of your content management system
(CMS). They are also one of the most important SEO tactics for ranking high in
Google results.
Meta tags help Google determine the specific purpose of a page and the
relevance of each of its elements to the topic and purpose of the keyword
being searched. There are several types of meta tags that must be filled in
with the target keyword or related phrases:
Title
The title is usually the main topic of your article, placed in the title tag of
the page code. This allows Google to create a clickable blue title that appears
in the output box itself.
11. Alternative image text
Google cannot read or scan images in the same way as text (although it is
getting better every year). And that's a shame because images can help blog
posts and web pages rank well in search results. To help Google read images,
content creators are advised to tag published images with explanatory text
(also known as "alt tags") that best describes the image in the context of the
overall web page.
Meta description
The meta description of a URL is a short line of text that appears below each
blue link in the Google results and summarises the content of the link. The
meta description does not have to contain specific keywords, but completing
it is an important consideration for Google when assigning rankings. Most
content management systems (CMS) have a special field where you can write
your meta description.
12. 8. PAGE SPEED
Importance: important.
Page speed is determined by how quickly your web page loads when a user clicks
on it from the Google search results. There are several factors that affect page
load speed, but in general, the faster a page loads, the higher it ranks in Google.
Pages that load in less than three seconds are considered reasonably fast.
However, this can vary depending on the purpose of the website and the type of
visitor. For example, Google encourages e-commerce sites to load slightly faster -
a full load in just two seconds.
Different fonts and sizes may slow your site down a little, but one of the main
reasons for slow page speeds is the presence of uncompressed images.
Websites with a lot of heavy and complex media types on the page can lead to
longer loading times and therefore slower page speeds. This is not always easy to
predict, but one thing you can control is the size of each image on the page. You
can use sites like compressor.io or tinypng.com for bulk image compression.