Top Google Ranking Factors: What Matters for SEO?

If you are into an online business or are a digital marketer working on search engine optimization, you shall most certainly be versed with the pain and struggle of what it takes to rank high on the SERP. By SERP I mean, the search engine result pages.

You must also be familiar with the significance of SEO and the top Google ranking factors. The reason is that Google is one of the most widely used search engines. It is so popular that it practically synonymizes the internet.

In case you do not, you’ve come to the right blog. Here, we are discussing everything one must know about the top Google ranking factors.

As an online business owner, did you ever wonder, ‘what Google factors do the webmasters take into consideration while formulating an effective SEO strategy?’

Or ‘what Google ranking factors matter the most?’

Whatever is your answer, these are the two questions I shall be answering in the following blog. Rest assured, as you read on, you will discover the top Google ranking factors: what matters for SEO.

The Art of Ranking Online

I heard a colleague say, ‘the art of high SERP ranking lies in the practice of balance and patience,’ the other day. And for a very practical reason, I would dare not contradict his words.

When it comes to search engine optimization, one must be thoroughly balanced in managing every little aspect. Nothing can be too good while the other is pretty complicated. For instance, you are publishing uniquely original and relevant content on your website because the content is the king, right?

But you have cared only little about the core web vitals and the importance of user experience or your site architecture. Your website has quality content, but it lacks a user-friendly interface. The website interface is complicated to navigate. As a result, the users come to your website but move out almost immediately. That’s called the bounce rate.

You might not realize but several small flaws on your side could cost you years of hard work in no time. The easiest way out of this online misery is to seek an SEO specialist. But you can always perform SEO by yourself. All it takes is a little homework unless you are an expert in the field.

Coming next on the queue is being patient. You’ve done everything exactly how it should be done. Now you are eager to see tenable results. But you do not get the desired outcome even after a month, wondering, why?

Keep reading.

Web crawlers indeed update the SERP rankings on Google 500 to 600 times each year. This makes an average of once or twice every day. But the question is if the SERP rankings are updated so frequently and I have done the SEO just right, why is my website still not ranking on top?

That could be due to a variety of factors. Although the SERP indexing is done almost every day, the Google algorithm would need some time to analyze the changes you have made. Also, your rank on the SERP is affected not just by your activities. They are the sum of yours as well as the SEO practices of your competitors. And again, all might seem good on top, but there could be a problem lying underneath. That’s where the Google Search Console and Google Analytics come into play.

The Mistakes We Commit

Sounds baffling, right?

You’ve hardly come to a step into formulating an SEO strategy or putting one into action and I am already talking about the mistakes you have (or could have) committed. Well, that is because that’s the human tendency. We do not want to wait for anything. We want everything served on our platter almost as quickly as we’ve desired them.

The mistake that I am talking about is, ‘serving two masters at once. If you were to Google the top Google Ranking Factor right now, you’d find at least one portal discussing a comprehensive checklist. It would outline hundreds of Google ranking factors. And while an expert would work with only a couple or about ten of the top Google ranking factors, an inexperienced person might not.

To get to witness sustainable growth soon, he would be willing to work on every idea on the checklist. He’d be like, it works?

Cool, I’ll take up the advice. My personal experience as a digital marketer suggests otherwise. I would rather you follow only the top Google ranking factors than work on hundreds of them at once. And once things have started to go north, you can always work on other lesser important factors gradually.

Then again, if it is recommended to work on only a couple of ranking factors at once, what Google ranking factors should I focus on. This one is discussed in the later sections of the blog.  

That being said, let’s move ahead with our discussion.

Understanding SEO: Search Engine Optimization

As unbelievable as it sounds, there are over a 1.8Billion websites online today. For an immensely whopping number that it is, the fact is just as true. Considering reality, you are practically competing against an infinite number (Billion is a big deal, right?). No wonder, SEO is devastating and dauntless.

Fortunately, someone’s got your back here. I mean, the top Google ranking factors. Before we discuss anything about the top Google ranking factors, I would like to throw some light on SEO. You being here means you already have the basic idea about search engine optimization. But it wouldn’t hurt to revise a couple of things, I bet.

SEO is an acronym for Search Engine Optimization. In the simplest words, SEO can be defined as a set of technical practices used to improve a website/webpage for its performance. Search engine optimization enhances the appearance and positioning of a website or webpage(s) in organic SERPs.

P.S.: Organic search is the most common method via which the users discover and access online businesses, websites, and web pages.

Here, improving a website performance refers to the optimized online visibility, organic traffic, quality leads, engagements, and conversions. The purpose of resorting to SEO techniques is to enhance the quality as well as the quantity of the website traffic generated.

Search engine optimization includes several techniques aimed to improve the visibility of a website or webpage. Whether it is to formulate a new content strategy or revamp the site architecture, at the end of the day, you want to be visible and rank high. This way you are more likely to attract target prospects and receive attention from the existing ones, i.e., customers.

• Take a brief look at how SEO works –

Think of the search engine, here Google, like a vast library while the search engine algorithm is a librarian. The websites are kind of books. The web crawler is a sort of book directory that keeps a tab on all the websites for their content and indexes them according to their performance.

When a user searches for a query, the web crawler seeks the relevant websites and indexes them in a certain order. It is to help the user find what he is looking for. But we have no intention to discuss a user’s search intent. Our concern is to understand the order in which the web crawler indexes the websites.

To begin with, the web crawler does only the indexing part. It is the algorithm that analyses the websites. The search engine algorithm takes into consideration hundreds of ranking factors or the ranking signals. These factors determine which website should appear at what rank for a given query.

Up until here is the part of the back end, we have no say in what a web crawler or an algorithm does. But a website owner can always optimize his business as per the top Google ranking factors. Rest assured, if you have done things right, you will rank high, without a doubt.

SEO or search engine optimization has been an integral part of digital marketing campaigns ever since. The SEO methodologies are focused on improving your online visibility, i.e., SERP rankings. They work following the Google ranking factors to deliver the best results and boost your business’ growth.  

What is Google Ranking Factors?

It is of utmost importance to understand the Google ranking factors for sustainable SEO. The Google ranking factors can be understood as the criteria considered by Google and its algorithm while analyzing and evaluating the websites. Every search engine has its ranking factors. The ranking factors help Google determine the best indexing sequence for the websites for a relevant query.

These factors can be efficiently helpful in creating a website that performs well. A well-performing website offers a good user experience. It leads to good positioning and appearance in the search results. Also, the events generate organic website traffic, quality leads, conversions, and sales. If you are seeking a chance to boost your online presence, that’s your queue to invest time in the Google ranking factors.

As a digital marketer, I would strongly recommend you to do things per the top Google ranking factors.

How Do Google Ranking Factors Work?

To secure high Google rankings, one must be careful with a keyword strategy. The content published on the website should include the competitive keywords in a decent frequency. But that is not all. It takes more than just a good keyword strategy and quality content to rank #1 on Google. Here’s what Google checks while indexing a website or webpage for search results–

• Content quality (keywords, originality, quality)
• Metadata descriptions
• Site architecture
• Website reputation (link building)
• User interaction/engagements (time spent on the page, bounce rate, CTA, conversions, etc.)
• Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness

The factors mentioned above go into Google’s algorithm and form an extensive list of Google ranking factors. Thereafter, they determine the SEO rankings. Following the top Google ranking factors, the web crawler indexes the website/webpage(s) to show the most relevant and quality results for any query.

How to Monitor Search Engine Rankings?

Better is a man who is prepared for the journey ahead of him before setting his feet out, they say. And I think they are not wrong.

Before you start formulating an optimization strategy for your business, you must know where you stand. There are a couple of ways in which you can get a brief idea about how well your website is performing. One of them is to go incognito and hit the search engine with relevant terms or KWs.

Using a private window would ensure that the SERP results on your device are not influenced by personalized settings. Run a search and see where you rank. Then again, as you read above this method would only give you a brief idea of your performance.

I would rather you choose an efficient SEO tool. The best SEO tool that I can think of is Google Search Console Tools. It is a web service offered by Google that lets webmasters and digital marketers check the indexing status of a website. You can go to the Search Console Tools to look at the search queries, crawl errors and optimize the visibility of your website.

The Google Search Console Tools has comprehensive tools and reports to measure a website’s performance. It assists you in fixing the issues in concern.

Some other highly-efficient SEO tools you can resort to are:

• Ahrefs
• SEMRush
• Search Metrics
• WebCEO
• Tap into Trends

How Many Google Ranking Factors Exist?

It might come as a surprise but there exists an immensely large number of Google ranking factors. I can count up to 200 and there’s no guarantee that there are not any more of them remaining. Several of them on my list are proven and legit, others are controversial.

Some of the ranking factors that you might ever read about could be mere speculations too. Google never shared any checklist outlining its ranking factors.

The majority of what we know and work by are the ones suggested by webmasters. And, the most prominent ones are pretty effective. So, why bother about counting hundreds of them when you can derive just as efficient results via the top Google ranking factors.

But the idea to explore the different types of Google ranking factors would surely not hurt. All the Google ranking factors known so far can be categorized under the three types. They have been discussed in the next section.

Do read on. 

Types of Google Ranking Factors

In the following piece, I have enlisted the top Google ranking factors: what matters for SEO. The ten ranking factors on my list are the most prominently used ones. However, there’s this one thing that you must always be mindful of. And that is:

A single ranking factor can neither break nor build your online reputation and SEO. But it can, most certainly, damage the same. It is a well-blended combination of several ranking factors that makes your SEO, which eventually builds a good website/webpage.

Just as you read above, more than 200 ranking factors are known so far. And one might not find the idea to memorize all the 200 of them appealing. Luckily, all the known Google ranking factors can be categorized under three types. They are –

• Technical Ranking Factors – 

These include the factors that affect the performance of a website as a whole instead of as a web page. Them being:

• Website structure
• Core web vitals
• User-friendliness
• Device-friendliness
• Crawlability
• Indexability
• Loading speed
• Duplicate content
• Broken pages, etc.

• On-Page Ranking Factors – 

The on-page ranking factors are primarily associated with content published.

• Content quality
• Originality
• User Engagement
• Research
• Keyword analysis
• Content strategy

• Off-Page Ranking Factors – 

The off-page ranking factors evaluate your website because fall outside your website. They are:

• Backlinks
• Guest Posting
• Reviews and recommendations
• Off-site references
• Business listings
• Social media

What are the Top Google Ranking Factors?

Having read so far, you have the foundational knowledge on Google ranking factors. Now is the time when we start diving deeper into the topic –

Top Google Ranking Factors: What Matters for SEO.

To begin with, Google and other search engines evaluate the websites on the grounds of hundreds of ranking factors. This extensive list makes it practically impossible to know which technique one should aim at to get robust results.

Fortunately, Google will continue to make changes in its algorithm to serve every user with the best search results. And there’s no way every website owner can keep up with every update rolling out. But the SEO trends will always be walking together with the ranking factors. And something tells us, they will always have our back.

So, as long as you are following the latest SEO trends just right, are creative, and are a bit tech-savvy, there’s no stopping your online growth. Read about the top Google ranking factors in the next section.

Also, be mindful that this blog enlists only the top Google ranking factors. There’s an extensive list out there. It is just about which factors are more impactful.  

Our Pick

I have picked the top 10 Google ranking factors that I think need immediate attention on your part.

1. Quality Content

2. Mobile Friendliness

3. Page Experience

4. Page Speed

5. On-Page Optimization

6. Internal Links

7. External Links

8. Secure Website

9. Social Signals

10. Business Information

As you scroll up, you shall read about each of the top Google ranking factors in detail. So, let’s get started right away.

1. Quality Content

The website architecture and technical SEO are extremely important for a website to rank high. But nothing compares to the importance of publishing quality content. I might sound repetitive, but content still rules the world wide web as the king.

The content published on your website should have an informative value. Thanks to Google’s Panda and Fred, the search engine can easily pinpoint the web pages with no informative value. And while we are at it, might I add, the content has to be creative and original as well.

High-quality content translates into reduced bounce rates, increased traffic, and engagements. It optimizes your website presence (visibility) on the SERP. SERP stands for search engine result pages. Quality content is well-laid and written in long formats. Take the following checklist into account while creating your content –

• Search Intent

When you are to create content for your website, knowing about the users’ search intent is quite essential. RankBrain keeps a tab on the users’ search intent.

For the unversed, RankBrain is a component of Google’s algorithm. It uses machine learning to understand the user’s search intent. Thereafter, it guides the web crawler into indexing only the web pages that serve the purpose.

Revamping your SEO content strategy to cater to the users’ search intent can boost your website traffic drastically. Resort to Google Analytics to understand the target users’ intent behind the search query. The performance report on the Google Search Console can give you an insight into what queries people click to visit your website.

• Keyword Usage

Keyword research is not needed to rank high on the SERP!

Can you believe that’s what I read on one website the other day?

And somebody please give that writer a piece of mind because that is most certainly not true. About a decade ago, when online businesses worked differently, it could have been true, but not today.

A detailed keyword research and strategy serves as a guideline for creating quality content. Performing keyword research can boost the traffic on your website several folds. So, do not forget to identify the right keywords and insert them in the topics suited.

• Relevancy

Relevancy and users’ intent behind the search query walk hand in hand. You have to not only understand the search intent but also, provide content that suffices the same. In short, the content that you publish should be relevant.

• Freshness

In 2011, Google announced something about content freshness. And the same sparked lots of confusion and debates. The webmasters wanted an accurate definition of fresh content.

Fresh content generally refers to the newly added content on a website or a webpage that has been updated for its content. The newly published content is fresh, so there’s nothing to be worried about. But you might have to work a bit into updating the old content. You wouldn’t want to recreate the entire thing. Your best bet could be to perform quarterly content audits. Once you know which content needs to be refreshed.

• Originality

There’s no way that you can recreate and publish someone else’s content as your own. The Google algorithms know when content is plagiarized. And something tells, a website owner would dare not get a Google penalty.

So, let’s keep things original.

• E-A-T

The medic update introduced by Google in 2018 emphasized a lot E-A-T. E-A-T stands for expertise, authority, and trustworthiness. The update transformed the ranking factor ‘ high-quality content’ to ‘high E-A-T content’.

The purpose was to serve the users the content that passes not just as high-quality content. The content must also be informative. There’s no way the search engine should provide wrong content and affect the users’ lives for the worst. Because users visit the search engines for almost everything. So, the medic update was rolled out to focus on things beyond the content. It was to provide content by the experts instead of by the anonymous portals.   

What is E-A-T and Why Does it Matter?

Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness or E-A-T is Google’s formula to analyze a website’s expertise in the niche market. Take a look at each of the E-A-T elements in detail –

• Expertise – does the author or content creator have adequate knowledge and skills in the relevant field?
• Authority – is the website/author the best source of the required information?
• Trustworthiness – is the author unbiased and honest with the topic?

Now the concern in line is ‘how does Google measure a website for E-A-T?’

An honest answer is that no one knows it. All we know is that there’s a big knot working to ensure the E-A-T of the website is measured accurately.

2. Mobile Friendliness

For over a decade, people have been using mobile phones to search for any query on the search engines. But it wasn’t until 2017 that mobile indexing started paving its way into the top Google ranking factors. It was officially introduced in 2021.

Mobile indexing is Google’s way to index your website for mobile searches. If you have a different website URL for the mobile version of your website, then Google will index that URL in the SERP. When a user searches for a query via mobile, Google indexes/ranks the content coming from the mobile version of your website.

• Usability on Mobile

Do you remember the times when the website owners would host the mobile versions of their website at m.URL.com? It was a great recommendation in the days back then. Luckily, we do not do that anymore.

Today, the need is to create a responsive website. While there’s no specified benchmark, the search engines still prioritize responsive websites.

According to Google, responsive websites help the algorithms a lot in evaluating and indexing the websites on the SERP. In the contemporary era where mobile is essential, Google suggests those website owners ensure that their content remains identical on mobile and desktop versions.

3. Page Experience

No one factor creates or impacts the user’s page experience on your website. There comes a comprehensive list that makes up the page experience. Keep reading to discover the factors that influence the page experience of a user.

• Improve UX

UX stands for user experience. And user experience is a core element of an effective SEO strategy. If you ignore UX, you might have to compensate with your rankings on the search result pages. A study suggests that up to 40% of people will stop engaging or visiting your website if the layout and content are unattractive and unattended.

Optimizing the web pages for CTA and updating the content can boost the page views/traffic drastically. I suggest you compliment your SEO strategy with a good UX.  

• Site Architecture

Site architecture is a part of technical SEO while page experience is related to on-page optimization. However, they are practically inseparable. Site architecture is associated with page experience and impacts your SEO plan significantly.

Site architecture makes up the website user interface. The easy navigation can help users find what they seek. It also helps the web crawlers find web pages on the site. To sum it all up, the website should be extremely easy to use. The user interface must be laid out in a pretty simple arrangement.

• Core Web Vitals

Next in line are the core web vitals. This factor affects every other factor of the search engine optimization plan. For instance, it influences the website’s usability. If a user visits your website and goes to a certain webpage for conversion, the following elements will affect the conversion rate –

• User experience
• Page loading speed
• Responsiveness
• Visual stability and
• Performance

• Secure Website

In 2017, Google announced that it would flag the websites as ‘not secure,’ if they lack HTTPS protocol. Deciding to go against the transition to HTTPS will lead to increased bounce rates.

• Ad Experience

Ad experience targets chrome users. Ad experience can be defined as a combination of several elements including the ads on your website. It was introduced to control the advertisements the users are exposed to.

Google can remove ads from your site if they are violating the Better Ads Standards. Therefore, a website owner is prohibited from running an aggressive and offensive advertisement on his site. Ad experience is connected to page experience and Core Web Vitals.

4. Page Speed

Page speed had been one of the top Google ranking factors long before mobile-first indexing came. However, it gained even more attention when mobile usability became a ranking factor.

As blunt as this sounds, the fact remains the same. The users do not adore websites with slow loading speeds. One second delay in page loading can cost you a lot of visitors and eventually, revenue. The fast-loading web pages translate into a better website experience. Several tools can be used to test your website’s average loading speed.

Consulting and partnering with an SEO expert will help you optimize your website page speed.

5. On-Page Optimization

On-page optimization is all about enhancing a user’s page experience. So, it is closely related to page experience. It deals with all the components of your content and elements on the webpage from the back end.

On-page optimization is not a newcomer in SEO. It has been in town for a very long time. And it influences your site’s visibility and ranking on the search result page. Efforts like updating H1 tags or publishing new content, and cleaning metadata or internal linking structure can boost the organic traffic quickly. On-page optimization assists a website in getting found by the search engines for relevant queries.

Take a look at the methodologies via which on-page optimization can impact your website/page positively –

• Metadata

Metadata has information like title tags and page descriptions. In simple words, Metadata can be defined as the information that a user sees about the webpage/website on the SERP. At times, Google and other search engines randomly pull content from the web page and insert it into the SERP. But that happens only when the content matches the search query.

Therefore, pay special attention to writing the title tags and page descriptions for your web pages. Chances are that Google can publish the metadata penned by you on the SERP. Also, be mindful that Google does not always use your metadata. It can choose a line or two from the content and use the same.   

• Schema

Schema markup is best defined as yet another hidden component of a website. It informs more about the webpage content of the search engine. You can include about 600 types of information in the schema markup of your site.

The schema was created to help the search engines identify crucial information on the site. Using schema markup can derive up to 25 to 30% more traffic and CTR. It is the schema markup that helps Google display rich snippets in the SERP.

• Featured Snippets

Did you ever search for a query online and the SERP served you with a snippet of the content on the SERP itself? Having found the needed results on the SERP, you didn’t have to scroll through several websites seeking the right content.

Those snippets on the SERP are called the featured snippets.

The featured snippets are referred to the content that the search engine extracts from the webpage and avails in on the result page directly. Working on featured snippets requires a bit of knowledge about the BrainRank and the search intent of a user.

If your content provides valuable information and caters to the user’s search intent, Google will serve your content in the snippets. Rest assured, it will boost your website traffic like nothing else.

• Google Discover

Google Discover is one of the content-related SEO factors. It has significant potential to boost your website traffic. At times, the traffic generated via Google discover can be more than the one via direct searches.

You can check the detailed report on Google Search Console to see if you are ranking on Discover.  

6. Internal Linking

Webmasters have always emphasized the importance of the internal link structure. It helps the users and the search engines find the web pages within the website. Your internal link building strategy should revolve around the following criteria –

• Helping users
• Link flow
• Roadmap to specific topics
• Canonicals
• Indexing of web pages

The summarized concept of internal linking is to make the website user-centered. It has to be easy enough to be navigated and derive conversions or CTAs.

7. External Links

If your objective is to rank well on the search result pages, you might have no other option but to include external link building as a key component of your SEO strategy. It might come as a surprise but external links are one of the significant components of SEO. There’s no way you can get to #1 on SERP without inbound links.

I would suggest you invest some of your time in formulating a powerful link-building strategy for your business. For the next several years to come, link building would remain one of the top Google ranking factors.

8. Secure Website

The right SEO methodology starts with ensuring that you have the right kind of URL. The objective is to ensure that Google and its web crawler can find and index the same. 

To ensure things move smoothly in your favor, you should –

• Have a website that is created using a secure website builder
• Create a robots.txt file that can guide the search engine on where to look for your more site information
• Have a sitemap listing all the web pages from the site

You can either resort to an online sitemap generator tool or set one up via the All-in-One SEO. However, the latter is only possible if you are running a WordPress website.

• HTTPS

HTTPS stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure. It is the secure version of HTTP. It is a protocol that creates secure communication between the two systems, i.e., the browser/user’s device and the web. It was not until 2011, that Google entitled HTTPS as a secure benchmark.

Presently, not using the HTTPS protocol can lead Google to flag your website as insecure. This factor alone can cost you lots of website traffic.

9. Social Signals

Social signals may not be a direct way to boost your website rank, but it surely helps. But when a user shares your webpage link or the content on social media, Google evaluates it to be valuable. And you can never deny the fact that the highest-ranking websites/web pages are usually the ones with lots of shares. It could be due to the following reasons –

• Social media shares are directly proportional to organic website traffic
• Social media shares translate into quality backlinks

• User Interaction

When you or any user shares your website/webpage or online via social media, the users at the receiving end offer a great possibility to click on the same. Once they have reached the landing page, chances are they will continue to engage with the page. Chances are, if they find your content satisfying, it can translate into a conversion or a sale.

Whatever the scenario, the social media signals benefit your website business without a doubt.  

10. Business Information

This ranking factor is prominently helpful for the businesses that target local customers. The business information available about your business online is a crucial factor that can influence your online optimization. Lack of information would lead to a loss of significant traffic and eventually, revenues. Therefore, you must be mindful to provide all the important information about your business –

• NAP(E) – Name, Address, Phone Number, and E-mail.
• Business Listing – List your business on Google My Business, other business listings, Facebook, etc.
• Reviews – Review management is just as crucial. Encourage your clients and customers to write reviews. Address the negative reviews about your business intellectually.
• Keyword Analysis – Pay attention to the right local search terms.

Technical Strategies to Improve Organic Ranking

Google and every other search engine work by indexing all the information (on various websites) across the web. It attempts to provide the best closest result to every search query. To ensure you appear for all the relevant searches in the SERP, you must work on the technical strategies. 

The following technical factors can assist you in building strong visibility online –

·        Page Speed

·        Device friendliness

·        Core Web Vitals

·        Internal Linking

·        Relevancy to Searches

·        Meta Description

·        URL Structure

·        Title and Tags

·        Image Alt-Text

Takeaway

Now that we are at the end of our discussion, I would like to highlight just one thing that I have already mentioned above.

Working on the top Google ranking factors is essential to rank high on the search result pages. But be strategic to get the best results. Do not focus on hundreds of things at once. Rather, work on the important ones in the beginning and gradually include the lesser important factors in the plan.

Working with an SEO specialist is highly recommended. But if you want to do SEO by yourself, consider doing thorough homework.

Frequently Asked Questions | Top Google Ranking Factors

1. What are Google Ranking Factors?

The Google ranking factors are primarily the factors and criteria that Google and its algorithm take into consideration while indexing the websites/webpages on the SERP for any query. The prominent Google factors influencing the ranking of your website include –

• Content
• Backlinks
• Core web vitals
• Metadata
• And SEO citations

2. What Google Ranking Factors Impact my SERP Rankings?

There are about two hundred ranking factors that can impact a website’s search engine rankings. The top Google ranking factors are –

• High-quality content
• User experience
• Core web vitals
• Device-friendliness
• On-page optimization
• Link building

3. What are the top three ranking factors on Google?

There’s no particular order to list the top Google ranking factors. In a lot of over two hundred ranking factors, each one has a unique role to play. And it can influence your SERP ranking pretty well. According to the webmasters, 3 top Google ranking factors are –

• Quality content
• User-experience
• Device-friendliness (mobile first)

4. How many Google ranking factors are there?

There are more than 200 Google ranking factors known so far.

While several of these lots are proven methodologies to rank high on SERP, the others are controversial or speculations by digital marketers. In the end, the top is still debatable.

Google rolls out new updates every once in a while. And each update introduces new ranking criteria or eliminates some of the previous ones. So, no one can enlist them all because no one knows them.

5. How Do I Rank #1 on Google?

Ranking #1 on Google is easier said than done. But with the right practices, it can always be achieved. Here’s a brief guide to ranking on the first search result page.

• Improve on-site SEO
• Smart keyword research and LSI
• Monitor technical SEO
• SEO optimized content
• Link building
• Reduce bounce rates
• Tracking and analysis

6. Does Website Traffic Increase Google Ranking?

Direct or organic website traffic is the key to good Google ranking. Amongst all the top Google ranking factors, direct website traffic is still the most crucial one.

So, yes!

Website traffic can increase your Google ranking without a doubt.

7. Why are Google ranking factors important?

The Google ranking factors are the criteria applied by the search engine to evaluate the websites/webpages for any search query. As a result, they are important. They help you boost your website ranking by enhancing the overall performance of the website.