What is a ranking factor on Google?

What is a ranking factor on Google?

Every website wants to be on the first page of Google, which is where most traffic comes from. Those who have a higher ranking will earn more money and grow their business.

Research has shown that Google ranks websites according to a multitude of factors. These factors are what ultimately lead to the success of a website and the amount of traffic it receives. The factors that matter most are your content, authority, and links.

How many Google ranking factors are there?

There are over 200 ranking factors that are generally considered correct (but again, it’s debatable). Since 2006, there have been thousands of algorithm updates.

With each update, SEOs test to see what’s changed. So, some of these factors are proven, but others are just speculation.

All 200 (Known) Ranking Factors

I will try to tell you all the 200 ranking factors which are used by google to rank any keywords in the search engine.

Here are the top categories:

• Domain Factors
• Page-Level Factors
• Site-Level Factors
• Backlink Factors
• User Interaction
• Special Google Algorithm Rules
• Brand Signals
• On-Site Webspam Factors
• Off-Site Webspam Factors

Domain Factors

Domain factors are all ranking factors that connect with your domain (the basic example.com version of your website), including:

1. Your domain age
2. Keyword in your domain
3. Keyword is the first word in your domain
4. Domain registration length
5. Keyword in subdomain
6. Domain history
7. Penalized Whois owner
8. Public WhoIs instead of private Whois

Page-Level Factors

Page-level factors are factors on each page that you can optimize, such as:

1. Presence of the keyword in the title tag
2. Having the keyword at the beginning of your title tag
3. Keyword in your meta description tag
4. Presence of the keyword in the H1 tag
5. Keyword is frequently used in the content
6. Content length
7. Word count rankings
8. Presence of a linked table of contents
9. Keyword density
10. Presence of semantically related keywords
11. Semantically related keyword in meta title and description
12. In-depth quality content
13. Useful content
14. Page loading speed via HTML
15. Page loading speed tested on Chrome
16. Core web vitals
17. No duplicate content on the same site
18. Image optimization through ALT, title, and  file name
19. Content recency (the newer, the better)
20. Page age
21. How many edits were made to the content during updates
22. Historical data on page updates
23. Proper use of rel=canonical
24. Presence of keyword in H2 and H3 tags
25. Presence of keyword in the first 100 words
26. Grammar and spelling
27. Originality of the page’s content
28. Entity match
29. Number of outbound links
30. Mobile useability and optimization
31. Hidden content on mobile (may not be indexed)
32. Page optimized for mobile
33. Presence of multimedia, for example, images and videos
34. Number of outbound links
35. The quality of outbound links
36. Theme of outbound links
37. Presence of helpful supplementary content, like free tools and calculators
38. Content hidden behind tabs (it may not be indexed and wouldn’t show up in search snippets)
39. Number of internal links pointing to the page
40. Quality of the internal links
41. Presence of too many broken links (could lower ranking capabilities)
42. The reading level of the page
43. Presence of many affiliate links
44. Presence of many HTML errors
45. Authority/trust-level of the domain
46. Authority/trust level of the page
47. PageRank
48. Length of URL
49. Closeness of URL to the homepage
50. Presence of keyword in URL
51. Opinion of human editors
52. Relevance of page’s category to page
53. Content formatting for user-friendliness and readability
54. Priority of the page in the sitemap.xml
55. UX signal from pages ranking for the same keyword
56. Citing references and sources
57. Use of a user-friendly layout
58. URL string in Google search engine results
59. Internal link anchor text to the page
60. Use of structured data

Site-level factors

Site-level factors go above the page level and take a look at things on the entire site. They include:

1. Presence of a contact us page or appropriate amount of contact information
2. Content on site provides value or new insights
3. TrustRank (how close your site is to a known and trusted site in terms of linking)
4. Website updates for freshness factor
5. Site architecture
6. Presence of a sitemap
7. Long-term site downtime
8. Location of server
9. HTTPs / use of a valid SSL certificate
10. Presence of legal pages (terms and conditions and privacy policy)
11. Unique metadata
12. Use of breadcrumb markup
13. Site-wide mobile optimization
14. Site-wide user-friendliness (usability and interactiveness)
15. Bounce rate
16. Domain authority
17. User reviews
18. Site reputation

Backlink factors

Backlink factors look at the sites that are linking to you to determine where to rank your page. Sites with better quality sites linking to them tend to be higher in rankings when they have quality content. The backlink factors are as follows:

1. Age of linking domain
2. Number of referring domains
3. Number of links from separate c-class IPs
4. Number of referring pages
5. Anchor text of backlinks
6. ALT tag of image links
7. Number of links from .edu and .gov domains
8. Trust factor of linking page
9. Trust factor of linking domain
10. Presence of links from competitors
11. Number of links from expected sites in your industry
12. Links from bad neighborhoods
13. Number of links that are not from ads
14. Country TLD of referring domains
15. Domain authority
16. Presence of some nofollow links
17. Diversity of link profile
18. Context of content the content of linking page
19. Presence of more follow links that sponsored or UGC
20. Lots of backlinks to URL with 301 redirects
21. The text that appears when you hover over a link
22. Link location on page
23. Location of link in content
24. Links from relevant domains
25. Links from relevant pages
26. Presence of your page’s keyword in the title of the linking page
27. Natural rate of growth in number of links
28. Spiky and unnatural rate of growth in number of links
29. Links from top resources on a certain topic or hubs
30. Number of links from sites that are considered authority sites
31. Linked as a source in a Wikipedia article
32. Words around your backlinks
33. Backlink age
34. Links from real sites vs fake blogs
35. Natural link profile
36. Excessive reciprocal links
37. Links in real content vs. UGC
38. Backlinks from a page with a 301 redirect
39. TrustRank of linking site
40. Fewer outbound links on linking page
41. Links in real content vs links in forums
42. Word count of linking content
43. Quality of linking content
44. Sitewide links = one link

User Interaction

Google  always emphasizes in their update announcements how important it is to provide an excellent user experience to website visitors. These factors measure user interaction to rank your page accordingly, including:

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

Special Google Algorithm Rules

Some Google Algorithm rules are not directly connected to your page or domain. They include factors that look at personalizing search results for the user or better search results as a whole. Here are some of them:

1. Need for diversity in the SERP
2. Need for freshness in the SERP
3. Browsing history of user
4. Search history of user
5. Succinct answers, formatting, page authority and HTTPS for featured snippets
6. Geo-targeting
7. Adult content or curse words (excluded from safe search results)
8. High content quality standards for YMYL keywords
9. Legitimate DMCA complaints
10. Need for domain diversity in SERP
11. Transactional searches
12. Local search results
13. Presence of news stories related to keyword for Top Stories box
14. Search intent
15. Presence of big brands with relevant content (they are often ranked higher)
16. Presence of results optimized for Google Shopping
17. Image results
18. Branded search
19. Easter eggs and April Fools’ Day jokes and hoaxes from Google (this one makes me laugh)
20. Spammy queries
21. Spammy sites

Brand Signals

How great is your branding strategy in terms of SEO? If you haven’t taken care of your brand mentions and brand all over the internet, you need to start now. Because there are some serious ranking factors related to your brand:

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

On-site Web

To rank high on search engine results, you need to ensure your site isn’t spammy and doesn’t look spammy – as with many things in life, looks play a role in how we’re perceived. Here are some factors around that:

1. Low-quality content
2. Links to bad neighborhoods
3. Multiple and sneaky redirects
4. Flagged server IP address
5. Distracting ads and popups
6. Popups that are spammy and difficult to close
7. Over-optimizing the site
8. Gibberish content
9. Use of doorway pages
10. Lots of ads above the fold and not much content
11. Hiding affiliate links
12. Low-value content sites
13. Affiliate sites
14. Keyword stuffing in meta tags
15. Compute generated content
16. Nofollowing all outbound links

Off-site Webspam Factors

The Off-site webspam factors affect spam based on what’s done outside your website that connects with your website. They include:

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

Resource links:

https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/google-ranking-algorithm-infographic