Each search engine, such as Google, has over 300 ranking factors by which they give pages in search results.
While some of the factors and the weight of each factor in the final formula are kept secret, the basic ranking factors are the same across all search engines and carry the most weight.
Google reports that they make about 3,000 changes in ranking factors per year. This means that every day at Google there are several dozen changes in the rules of search results.
It can be quite difficult to keep track of changes in search engine rules, so you can focus on a few basic ones that will always work and which are of the greatest importance.
In this article, there are the most important search engine ranking factors that will improve your content’s ranking in search results.
The main ranking factors of Google
Which SEO company, especially those who want every page to make it to the Top 3, strive to follow all the ranking factors.
It will take a long time, but it will definitely bring positive results.
1. Quality content
Content quality is the most important thing.Search engines prioritize content quality over technical SEO. It doesn’t matter how optimized the site is, if the content is not interesting to readers and is not useful, then such a site will not receive high positions in the search results.
Original, unique and valuable content
Search engines give preference to sites with new and unique content. Create your own original content that answers visitors’ questions and delivers value.
If your content is copied or similar to content from other sites, then search engines will lower your site in the search results. If this or similar content already exists on the Internet, then why should search engines serve this content again, especially at higher positions?
New sites with duplicate content may not be indexed by search engines and will not start showing them in search results.
If you regularly post duplicate content, search engines will reduce the frequency of crawling your site. As a result, this content will appear less frequently in search results.
Try to make your content unique and better than other sites that rank for the same search terms.
Relevant and fresh content
Another condition for promoting your content to the top in search results is to keep it fresh and up-to-date. Keeping your content up to date and adding new information will signal the search engines that there is good content here.
Fresh content matters a lot if you’re working on news and trends. For this kind of content, search engines prefer pages that offer the freshest information.
Content structure
Your content should be well organized and structured so that users can easily navigate and find answers to their questions.
Use headings ( H2 , H3 , H4, and so on) to structure and group your content according to meaning:
2. Backlinks
The second major ranking factor after content quality is backlinks. This is an important part of the search engine ranking formula and is one of the ways search bots can find your site to index.
Backlinks (or inbound links) work as proof of trust in your site.
Links from highly ranked sites give search engines a signal that those sites can vouch for the content published on your site.
Search engines collect all the links to your site and, together with other factors, calculate where in the SERP your content can be placed.
Having backlinks to your site from sites with high authority increases your chances of getting a higher ranking in search results.
3. Purpose of the search
The next ranking factor is the relevance of the content to the visitor’s search goal. The search target is what the visitor is looking for.
Try to create content exactly for users’ search queries.
4. Site loading speed
The next ranking factor is page loading speed. Starting in May 2021, Google has added download speed to Core Web Vitals .
In short, this is an estimate of loading speed, responsiveness, and how quickly various page elements like fonts and images load.
The point is not that your site loads faster than your competitors.
5. Mobile version
The next technical thing that affects a site’s position in search results is responsiveness.
Starting in 2019, Google has been downgrading sites without responsive layout.
Previously, Google only evaluated the desktop version for indexing. But as the number of mobile users is growing, and now exceeds 4 billion, Google has decided to evaluate the mobile version for indexing and ranking separately.
6. Domain Authority
Domain authority is the next important ranking factor to work on. Different search engines have their own analogues of this parameter, but the essence is the same for all.
This is a parameter that shows the site’s expertise in a particular topic, and its ability to occupy some position in the search results.
Domain Authority ( DA ) was originally implemented by Moz, and it assigns a score of 1 to 100 to each site. The higher the authority of the domain, the more likely it is to take a higher position in the search results.
To get high domain authority – use the first 5 recommendations, create good content first.
Use analytics services to find out which pages are most popular with your visitors and create content on these topics.
