How do you assess Google's ranking factors?
There's a lot of buzz around Google organic ranking variables. The majority of the disinformation stems from two major issues:
Confusion between correlation and causation
Key Points
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Google's success is determined by its ability to provide users with the desired results. Google ranking criteria come into play.
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Because some SEOs conflate correlation with causation, there are numerous fallacies concerning Google's organic ranking components.
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What is REALLY important to Google? Expertise, authority, trust, and user experience are all important considerations (e.g., page speed and mobile friendliness).
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Other subjective factors, such as bounce rate and content length, are vital for YOUR perception of your site's success, not Google's.
Far too many SEOs do not comprehend Google ranking factors, which is a major issue.
Even well-known members in the SEO community are vulnerable. When you search for SEO Google ranking criteria, you'll come across blog posts, infographics, and studies that all provide partial or incorrect information. Many SEOs conflate correlation with causation, listing criteria like as content length, domain age, and even social media shares as major ranking determinants.
As a result, marketers who set out to learn more about the elusive secret sauce of SEO find themselves entangled in a labyrinth of disinformation. That's not only frustrating; it's also expensive. Marketing directors can spend a disproportionate amount of money on elements they believe would improve organic search results, only to underutilize methods that have been proven to assist.
Rather than adding to the chaos and drowning you with another list of 200 possible signals, I'll describe four points in this piece to assist you better grasp Google ranking variables.
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Why, in the first place, does the Google algorithm include organic ranking factors?
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How to Determine Whether Something Is an SEO Signal
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What we consider to be the most essential Google ranking elements
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Some frequent misconceptions concerning ranking signals
Without a doubt, Google's top ranking variables are important to SEO success. Understanding how to critique the information that others share is also important. As we reverse-engineer Google's search algorithm, the SEO community relies on exchanging information with one another, therefore it's the latter talent that leads to a successful SEO strategy in the long run.
In summary, Google strives to provide the greatest results possible to consumers so that they would return to the search engine again and again. More users means more income from search advertising for Google. More information regarding SEO vs PPC may be found here.
Despite the fact that only a small percentage of search engine users click on paid adverts, such clicks generated more than $134.81 billion for Google in 2019. When it comes to revenue streams, Google is an advertising corporation. Furthermore, ad revenue is tied to the amount of individuals that use and trust search. As a result, they have a vested interest in ensuring that users are satisfied with their results every time.
To recap, search algorithms employ ranking parameters to increase their capacity to produce high-quality results, hence increasing advertising revenue.
Because Google does not disclose all of its ranking factors or how much weight it assigns to any of them. As a result, you'll see a lot of articles discussing studies and tests as SEO strategists strive to figure out:
Is a specific quality a ranking criteria for Google?
If so, how much of an impact does it have on rankings?
It's similar to reverse-engineering a recipe. We have more than enough information from Google to conclude that chocolate chip cookies comprise butter, flour, sugar, and chocolate chips. But how much of each component is required to make the finest cookie, and what are the missing ingredients?
Making assumptions about how Google measures vague variables such as quality content or user experience
Causation vs. correlation
The area of search engine optimization (SEO) suffers from the same mistake that afflicts all sorts of data science: mistaking correlation with causation. When two things appear to be connected, it's natural to think that one leads to the other. However, because most changes do not occur in a vacuum, the truth is much more difficult to unravel. Several events usually occur at the same time.
There is, for example, a high link between social signals and ranking position. That does not imply that social signals are a ranking component; in fact, Google has emphasised numerous times that they are not.
What happens when a website has a high number of social signals?
First and foremost, it indicates that the material was excellent. It definitely resonated with readers, which implies it's being shared on more than just social media; it's also likely to be shared on blogs and websites. And the more social shares it obtains, the more likely it is to pique the interest of further websites and blogs.
Backlinks from high-authority sites are a powerful and obvious ranking factor. A strong social media presence has an impact on the success of that aspect. It is, however, not a ranking element in and of itself.
Conclusions that are incorrect
On the surface, measuring user experience may appear simple, but there is a lot that can go wrong if the wrong optics are used.
Google cares deeply about how useful visitors find the website, which is one of the key concepts of SEO. We also know that Google analyses anonymized user data to decide whether or not a page is valuable. But it's unclear what kind of data is being collected, how much is being collected, and what the other usability considerations are.
Time on page, bounce rate, and page-per-session count appear to be useful metrics to gauge user experience via the lens of Google Analytics. However, as we will see later, those numbers tell nothing about the user's actual experience.
Consider your options.
To determine whether anything is a ranking indicator, consider the following questions:
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Is it making the page more user-friendly?
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In what circumstances might this not be true?
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Can this be manipulated to harm the user experience?
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Is this a cause or an effect?
The factors that influence search engine rankings are universal. Their importance, however, may vary depending on the type or location of the search. For example, if a Google search is relevant to a popular topic, the freshness of the content will be prioritised. However, in order for Google's algorithm to work, a combination of characteristics that can be uniformly applied to the searcher's case must be constructed. It cannot be customised for each unique website.
Google has no way of understanding if a page's high bounce rate is a good or bad thing. The answer to such a question is determined by the page's aim.
After all, if someone is looking for a specific piece of information and finds it in your first paragraph and then bounces, they just had a terrific user experience despite the fact that they bounced. It would have been a more frustrating experience if they had to dig and click around your site to find the information.
The most important Google ranking factors (according to Stridec)
Matt Cutts no longer announces Penguin or Panda algorithm changes for keyword stuffing and duplicate content.
Google now employs hundreds of different signals to determine SEO rankings, but only a few of them are important.
It's important to understand the distinction between on-page SEO recommended practises and ranking signals. So, just because something isn't on our list doesn't imply it isn't significant.
For example, having a well-organized website architecture assists Google in better understanding your site. Internal links also aid in the distribution of PageRank from incoming connecting domains. So, while these are important for SEO, they aren't Google ranking factors in the sense that we'll explore later.
Furthermore, there are several posts on sites like Backlinko and Ahrefs that cover the entire spectrum. The purpose of this essay is to discuss the most important aspects, not all of them. So, no discussion of exact match domain names, picture alt tags, or pop-up interstitials in this piece.
However, if you don't have these eight things down down, you'll struggle to rank for competitive search terms. For more information, see our article on the key SEO KPIs to monitor.
Alignment of search intent
Google cannot function as a search engine unless it can provide its users with the finest results available. As a result, indicators of relevance are priority ranking signals. Search engines crawl the on-page content, meta tags, and alt text to comprehend what your page is about in order to assess relevancy.
Google's semantic search skills are always evolving in order to unearth the intent hidden inside text. To grasp context, the search engine now scans beyond exact-match keywords and parses phrase structure and entities. When Bert was released in November 2019, Google's capacity to understand sophisticated language improved much further.
In the end, search intent relates to what a user intends to accomplish when they type a search query. SEOs classify these intentions into three types: navigational, informative, and transactional. We may, however, further simplify them into activities that correspond to the stages of the buying funnel:
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Understand the phase of consciousness
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Execute the consideration phase
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Phase of purchase
If you want to rank high for a search query, your content must fulfil the action that the user intends to take.
More regarding funnel phases can be found in our post about ToFu, MoFu, and BoFu.
Backlinks from reputable, relevant websites (authority)
When a page gains high-quality connections from relevant, credible websites, Google interprets this as a signal that the page also has topic authority. As a result, backlinks remain one of the three most important search engine ranking variables today.
However, the days of link building being solely a numbers game are long gone. Volume is still important; the more people who discuss something in a specific context, the more authority it has.
However, a quick glance at Google's Webmaster Guidelines reveals that quality and relevancy are more important than quantity. Citations from relevant, high-authority sources are critical for increasing the page's authority.
The text that serves as an anchor
Another incredibly valuable indication in Google's ranking algorithm is anchor text. Unfortunately, in the hands of novice SEOs, it's also one of the most harmful. Anchor text gives visitors and search engines extra information about the website to which the link points. In fact, even if they don't pass PageRank, Google now considers nofollow links to be an indication about context.
What is it about anchor text that makes it such a high-risk signal? It is easily influenced by sloppy use of exact match keywords. Exact match anchors frequently appear odd and out of place within a piece of content. Instead, while establishing backlinks, SEOs should employ broad match, long-tail, or remove the target term entirely.
Mentions of the brand (expertise)
The rise of social media presented Google with an intriguing quandary. It didn't want to weight social media links the same way it would website backlinks. It couldn't, however, ignore what it meant when a lot of people were talking about a brand. As a result, they began tracking brand references.
Unlinked brand mentions, along with mood and tone, tell Google a story about your brand's competence and popularity. These are also known as trust signals.
SSL and HTTPS (trust)
It'shugeto Google, when it comes to trust. There are other characteristics that indicate a site's reliability, but HTTPS is the most important. Not every site that employs HTTPS protocol has miraculously good SEO, but any site that does not use it is hurting its SEO.
Title and header tags that are optimised
Title tags are still heavily weighted enough to be considered one of the most important Google search ranking variables. While meta keywords have long since fallen out of favour and meta descriptions are now produced for click-through rate (CTR) rather than ranking, Google's dependence on keyword-rich title tags remains strong. This is due to the fact that titles perform a crucial function: they properly and concisely encapsulate the full contents of the page. As a result, Google relies on them to sort the page quickly.
Although not as powerful as title tags, H1 tags send a significant signal to Google about the topic of your page. Furthermore, they inform consumers that they have arrived at the correct page after clicking through from the SERP.
The page loads quickly.
Google places a high value on usability, which generates a lot of noise. People hear this information and generate incorrect judgments about how the search engine decides usability, resulting in a handful of myths that we'll examine later. The final line is that few factors have as much of an impact on usability as site speed.
Almost half of your users anticipate a website to load in less than two seconds. As a result, it is clear that site speed is a crucial usability parameter. Your website may have the highest content quality in the globe. However, if it does not load, it will not rank.
Mobile compatibility
Mobile friendliness, like site performance, is a non-negotiable usability signal. Google began rolling out mobile-first indexing in 2016. They had expanded the implementation by 2018. Sites that haven't yet switched to mobile-first indexing can expect to do so soon. The performance of your site on mobile devices has a significant impact on its rankings, therefore pay attention to your mobile reports in Google Analytics and optimise underperforming pages.
What are some of the most typical ranking signal misconceptions?
Google's emphasis on relevance, authority, and usability can lead to some extreme extrapolations. These hunches can eventually be supported by anecdotal evidence or uncontrolled site tests, resulting in widespread disinformation. Here are some of the most commonly misunderstood SEO ranking factors:
Bounce rate isn't a factor in ranking.
Bounce rate is a valuable measure in Google Analytics that can tell you whether a page is achieving its aim. A low bounce rate, for example, is ideal if the goal is to entice people to browse other pages on your site.
However, this does not imply that a high bounce rate is always a bad sign. Sites with high bounce rates, such as Wikipedia or major content centres, have this because users find the information they're seeking for and then depart. That is the best user experience for those visitors; they do not want to have to keep digging on the site for answers.
Similarly, if you publish a top-of-funnel page designed to raise brand knowledge and trust, a high bounce rate is to be expected.
Because Google cannot make universal conclusions regarding low or high bounce rates, bounce rate is not a ranking consideration. It's simply too loud for algorithms to work with. That data is only useful to you because you, the human, are the only one who can give it subjective context.
Even if it isn't a signal, you should still understand how to lower your bounce rate wherever possible.
Time spent on the page/site
Time on page, like bounce rate, is a Google Analytics indicator that has been misinterpreted as a ranking signal. The same as with bounce rate, Google does not pay attention to time on site because there is no way to apply the information generally.
Assuming that both posts are read, a blog post with 500 words will have a lower time on page than a blog post with 5000 words. That does not imply that the post with the shorter time on page is any less useful.
Similarly, dwell time is another metric that has been bandied about. Simply because someone spends more time on your website does not imply that they are having a positive experience. In reality, the inverse could be true.
Content length
The length of a piece of content has a high association with its SEO success. This is due to the fact that longer information is more likely to be in-depth and valuable, leaving the consumer satisfied. It's not because Google cares about word count.
Misconceptions about this can lead to a conclusion that completely misses the issue. If it takes 500 words to cover a topic thoroughly, increasing the copy to 2000 words degrades your content. Worthless fluff is just that: useless fluff. You will win if you build your content strategy around value rather than volume.
Number of pageviews
Previously, we suggested asking the following inquiry to determine whether anything could be a ranking signal: is this a cause or a result?
This question is commonly used in the context of page visits. Excellent SEO results in higher visibility in the SERPs, which leads to more page views. Page views are the byproduct of good SEO, not the reason. If you do things backwards, you'll get to the incorrect conclusion that page visits are a ranking signal.
Domain Authority Moz
Moz DA is still used as a ranking signal by some SEOs. It isn't. Domain Authority, in reality, is a technique for comparing rival websites in the same sector. It predicts a site's ability to rank for related keywords, but Google ignores it.
Shares on social media
Last but not least, we have social media shares, which are often misunderstood. As previously noted, social media shares entice people to fall into the correlation vs. causation trap because pages with high SEO performance typically have strong social media performance as well.
There is no evidence that social media linkages influence ranking. We still regard social media shares to be a type of trust indicator, but it is about brand mentions rather than connections. It's a good sign if people are talking about your brand.
Links to the outside world
Some SEOs, believe it or not, still believe that outbound links to reputable websites would propel them to the top page of Google. Obviously, something that can be easily manipulated would not be a viable signal for Google. Although linking to reliable sites may improve user experience, this is only true if the connection adds contextual value.
If something isn't a ranking factor, it isn't a waste of time. However, if you begin with the most important adjustments, the effects will ripple out and improve other aspects of your plan. Don't let large lists of ranking factors divert your attention away from the most important adjustments.