Google declared in 2006 that it is using over 200 ranking factors. This blog article listed those 200 Google Ranking Factors & explains a few important Google ranking factors. 

Google Ranking Factors : Definition 

First of all, what is SEO?

If you aren’t aware of SEO, you will not understand Google’s ranking factors. SEO or search engine optimization is optimizing your website to get a higher ranking on organic search results. 

Simply it is the things you do to rank higher on Google Search Engine Results Pages. So, why should you get a higher ranking on search results? Why is it necessary for your business?

When we search for something on Google, it gives a bunch of results related to our search term. 90% of people only use the first search engine results page. 

That is why many companies try to come on to the 1st SERP. Staying at the top of the organic search results is the dream of many companies because people trust organic results more than paid results. 

If you like to know more about SEO, our blog post on Ultimate Guide to SEO will give you good knowledge. 

What are ranking factors?

When someone searches for something on Google, it tries to give the most relevant & best results for the search term. To filter the most relevant & best web pages, Google uses some standards. Those are ranking factors. 

You should know about the ranking factors to get maximum results from your SEO efforts. It will bring more leads & conversions & create a better user experience.

In this blog post, you will see the top Google ranking factors.  

200 Known Google Ranking Factors

There are over 200 Google ranking factors. After every algorithm update, Google introduces new ranking factors.  I will list down those 200 Google ranking factors for your reference. Those 200 important ranking factors fall under categories such as, 

• Page-level factors.
• Site-level factors.
• Domain factors.
• Backlink factors.
• User Interaction.
• Brand Signals.
• On-site webspam factors.
• Off-site webspam factors.
• Special Google Algorithm rules.

Domain ranking factors

These ranking factors connect with your domain. 

1.Keyword in Your domain

2.Domain age

3.Keyword in the 1st word in the domain

4.Domain history

5.Domain registration length

6.Domain history

7.Penalized whois owner

8.Keyword in subdomain

9.Public WhoIs instead of Private WhoIs

Page-level ranking factors.

These are ranking factors on each page you can optimize. 

1. Content-Length
2. Word count rankings
3. Keyword density
4. Presence of the keyword in the title tag
5. The target keyword at the beginning of the title tag
6. The target keyword is in the meta descriptions
7. The target keyword in the H1 tag (header tags)
8. The target keyword is frequently used in the content
9. Table of content
10. Semantically related keywords
11. Semantically related keywords in the title tag & meta description
12. Quality content
13. Useful content
14. Page loading speed via HTML
15. Page speed tested on Chrome
16. No duplicate content on the same website
17. Core web vitals
18. Image optimization with alt text, titles & file names
19. Content recency
20. Page age
21. Number of content edits during updates
22. Historical data of page updates
23. The target keyword in H2 & H3 tags 
24. The target keyword is in the 1st 100 words

25.Grammar & spelling

26. The originality of the content
27. Use of rel=canonical
28. Number of outbound links
29. Quality of the outbound links
30. The theme of outbound links
31. Entity match
32. Mobile-friendliness & optimization
33. Hidden content on mobile
34. Optimized for mobile devices
35. Having multimedia like images & videos
36. Having supplementary content such as free tools
37. Content hidden behind tabs
38. The number of internal links to the page
39. Quality of the internal links
40. Less broken links 
41. Reading level of the page
42. Having affiliate links
43. Less HTML errors
44. PageRank
45. Length of the URL
46. Domain authority
47. Authority level of the page
48. URL is close to the homepage
49. Target keywords in the URL
50. Opinion of human editors
51. The page category is relevant to the page
52. User-friendly & readable content format
53. Priority of the page in XML sitemap
54. Citation of references & sources
55. User-friendly layout
56. Internal link anchor text to the page
57. Using structured data
58. URL string in Google Search Engine results
59. Signals from pages ranking for the same keyword

Site-level factors

These Google ranking factors consider the entire website. 

1. Site architecture
2. Presence of a sitemap for the website
3. Content with new & valuable insights
4. Contact us page & contact information
5. Updating website for freshness factor
6. Long-term site downtime
7. Location of server
8. Unique metadata
9. TrustRank
10. Using a valid SSL certificate
11. Having terms & conditions & privacy policy pages
12. Using breadcrumb markup
13. Site-wide mobile optimization
14. Usability & interactiveness
15. Bounce rate
16. Domain authority
17. User reviews
18. Site reputation

Backlink ranking factors

Backlink factors Look at the sites that are linking to you to evaluate where to rank your page. Sites with higher quality links are likely to rate higher when they have quality content.

Following are backlink Google ranking factors.

1. Age of the linking domain
2. Number of referring pages & domains
3. Alt tags of image links
4. Number of links from separate c-class IPs
5. Anchor text of backlinks
6. Trust factor of linking page
7. Trust factor of linking domain
8. Links from competitors
9. Number of links from sites in your industry
10. Domain authority
11. No-follow links
12. Diversity of link profile
13. Links that are not from ads
14. Country TLD of referring domains
15. Context of the content of the linking page
16. Backlinks to URL with 301 redirects
17. Follow links that are sponsored or UGC
18. Link location on the page
19. Location of link in content
20. Links from relevant domains
21. Links from relevant pages
22. Linked as a source of Wikipedia article
23. Natural growth rate in the number of links
24. Links from top resources for a specific topic
25. Number of links from authority sites
26. Words around backlinks
27. Backlink age
28. Links from real sites vs fake sites
29. Natural link profile
30. Excessive reciprocal links
31. Links on real content vs UGC
32. TrustRank of the linking site
33. Quality of linking content
34. Word count of linking content
35. Few outbound links on the linking page

User Interaction ranking factors

Google always emphasizes the importance of providing a great user experience to website visitors in their update announcements. These factors evaluate user interaction to rank your page appropriately.

1. Dwell time
2. Bounce rate
3. Organic click-through rate for the target keyword
4. Organic click-through rate for the ranking keywords
5. Measurement of how users interact on your website
6. Total direct traffic
7. Blocked sites
8. Number of comments on a certain page
9. Percentage of repeat visitors
10. Page frequently bookmarked by Chrome users
11. Percentage of people that click on other pages on SERP after visiting your page.

Special Google Algorithm rules 

Some Google Algorithm rules are not directly related to your page or domain. They include factors that consider personalizing search results for the user or improving overall search results.

1. Browsing history of the user
2. Search history of the user
3. Diversity in the SERP
4. Freshness in the SERP
5. Geo-targeting
6. For featured snippets, concise responses, layout, page authority, and HTTPS are all necessary
7. Adult content & curse words are excluded from safe search results
8. High-quality content standards 
9. Need for domain diversity in SERP
10. Transactional searches
11. Search intent
12. Local search results
13. News stories related to keywords for the top stories box
14. Big brands with relevant content
15. Image results
16. Branded search
17. Results optimized for Google shopping
18. Spammy queries
19. Spammy sites

Brand Signals ranking factors

There are some important ranking factors related to your brand.

1. Brand + keyword searches (for example, DigiFix blogs)
2. Official LinkedIn page
3. Facebook page with many likes
4. Twitter profile with followers
5. Branded anchor text
6. Branded searches
7. Known author or verified online profile
8. Real social media accounts
9. Physical location of the company
10. Top stories with brand mentions
11. Brand mentions without links

On-site Google ranking factors 

If you want your website to appear high in search engine results, you must make sure it isn’t spammy and doesn’t look spammy. As with many other aspects of life, appearances affect how people view us.

1. Over-optimized website
2. Multiple redirects
3. Low-quality content
4. Links to bad neighborhoods
5. Flagged server IP address
6. Unnecessary pop ups & ads
7. Gibberish content
8. Spam & difficult to close popups
9. Using doorway pages
10. Ads above the fold & not much content
11. Hiding affiliate links
12. Keyword stuffing in meta tags
13. Low-value content sites
14. Affiliate sites
15. Compute generated content
16. No following outbound links

Off-site webspam ranking factors

Depending on what is done outside of your website that connects to your website, off-site webspam factors impact spam.

1. Hacked site
2. Low-quality backlinks
3. High percentage of links from unrelated websites
4. Unnatural increase in backlinks
5. Using “Poison” in your anchor text
6. Selling links
7. Automatic links in widgets
8. Low-quality directory links
9. Temporary link schemes
10. Ignored manual actions in the search console
11. Links from sites with the same IP addresses. 

Even though the list is pretty long, these Google ranking factors are essential for your SEO efforts. To be honest, you can’t focus on all of these Google ranking signals at once. We have to select the most relevant ones & consider those. Following are some top-ranking factors & their explanations. 

Top Google Ranking Factors

1. Number of backlinks from relevant sources. 

The amount of your referring websites and backlinks is significant, but only if they come from relevant sources. Google will ignore the links if they are not relevant. So, focus on building relevant & quality backlinks for your website. 

2. Page Speed.

Page speed has been one of the main Google ranking factors for years. Google always wants to enhance user experience. So, a fast-loading webpage will provide a good user experience. 

Google has introduced an algorithm update that started in July 2018. If your website doesn’t load fast on mobile devices, it has a risk of getting penalized.

3. Mobile-friendliness.

Mobile-friendliness is also a major Google ranking factor. Many people use mobile devices to access the web. 

Google now uses a mobile-first index, which means that rather than sites designed for desktop computers, it draws its results first from sites that are optimized for mobile devices.

4. Relevancy.

The relevance of your page to the search query is possibly the single most important ranking factor. The search queries are the words entered by the user into the search bar to generate the SERP.

Keywords are the words and phrases that comprise this query. If you want to rank higher on Google, you must conduct keyword research to determine what your target audience is searching for online.

5. Content Freshness.

Google’s Freshness Algorithm is a game-changer. The algorithm was first released in June 2010 and has had a significant impact over the years.

If you’re a big publisher with a lot of old content that no longer ranks, updating old articles could be extremely beneficial.

Google appears to be biased toward new content. It prioritizes new materials and ensures that at least some SERP features are current.

Conclusion

Finally, we came to the end of our blog article. I hope you have a sound understanding of the Google Ranking Factors now. You should focus on these factors if you want to get maximum outcomes.

If you would like to get assistance for your Search Engine Optimization or to rank higher on SERP, our team at DigiFix is more than happy to help you. We have worked with many well-known companies to bring them to the next level. 

You may like the following articles as well,

Ultimate Guide to SEO 

Ultimate SEO checklist 

What are keywords & how to use Keywords: A-Z guide