And then there was Google! You and me, the algorithm that determines which pages we’re going to see in a day. Somewhere, some geek is manipulating an invisible puppet-toeing box, pulling good ones to the top of the cyber marketplace while letting others slowly drift into digital obscurity. But what sits behind that curtain? What makes Google decide who’s front and center in that virtual marketplace?
Image Source: https://www.seroundtable.com/google-code-to-text-ratio-algorithm-25503.html
Besides, Google search engine ranking factors aren’t some secret potion brewed up in some backroom laboratory. They are structured, measurable, and, dare I say, predictable once you understand the mechanisms. So, let’s break it all down for you. Not just a cold list of rules but as a living, breathing strategy for online success.
Let’s start at the top and see all the search engine ranking factors in play.
1. Content Is King (Quality and Relevance)
We have all heard it: “Content is king.” But for Google, it is not some royal title. It forms the core of everything. Quality content does not refer to stuffing keywords or authoring long paragraphs merely to consume space. It is to provide value to the audience.
And Google’s algorithm is simply becoming smarter day by day. It now can feel when content actually does what it is meant to do and when it’s simply fluff. That therefore means each and every single post you are going to upload for your audience is one that answers the question of that user or solves their problem. Do not pen down those short keyword-stuffed posts anymore.
Today, Google rewards practices such as:
Rich, dense content on your topic. Original.
Good time on page and bad bounce rate generally means that your users give a damn about whatever you are serving up.
What does that mean? Be the best answer to any user’s question. Not the excellent one, the best one.
Keep Your Eye on the Ball: User Intent
Know what the user wants to do with this search query, i.e., know more, buy, or compare. Design your content accordingly, and Google will provide you with those benefits.
2. Links: The Back Office of Authority
I like to think of backlinks as a vote of confidence, of course. It’s like more and more websites are linking to your site and saying, “Hey, this is good; this information is trustworthy and valuable.” Quality does have a much bigger battle against quantity.
Well, let’s break it down. Now you realize that much more important is that you had a link coming from an excellent high authority website, The New York Times or Forbes, instead of a hundred from low-authority spammy sites. It is not only the number but who is linking to you.
It is the higher Authority and Trustworthiness in the linking sites that boost your rank.
Relevance of linking site: an article about cooking linking to your blog about digital marketing won’t help much.
Link variety: incoming links from a number of different types of sites indicate diversified authority.
Google uses a concept known as PageRank in order to decide how important pages are according to incoming backlinks. The original concept has evolved, but backlinks remain one of the very important ranking factors.
Pro Tip: Focus on Earning Backlinks
Forget spammish schemes of links. Do things that are worthy of links: make high-quality content. Guest blogging, publishing research, or simply being mentioned in relevant articles can help in building a healthy backlink profile.
3. Mobile-Friendliness: Prepared for That On-the-Go User
It shouldn’t surprise you: mobile users reign supreme on the internet. Google recently switched to mobile-first indexing, meaning it now uses your site’s mobile variant as a default starting point for ranking. Do you think your site will stay out of harm’s way? Get real- it is if you’re not optimized for mobile.
Mobile-friendliness includes:
Responsive Design: The website scales perfectively across all shifting screen sizes- smartphone, tablet, or desktop.
How can I get my website to play nice with mobile?
Loads Quickly: A mobile customer has a much shorter attention span than their desktop cousins. Google PageSpeed Insights computes that there should not be any lag in your website’s load time.
Navigation: User-friendly menus and buttons for your mobile customer.
Pro Tip: Test Your Mobile Experience
Test your site in Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test. Or, better yet, try navigating your own website on your phone. If it hurts you, it hurts your visitors and Google.
4. Page Speed: Time is of the Essence
Page speed is a huge deal. The attention span of a user today is that of a goldfish, maybe even less. Google is aware of that, so prepare for users to bail from the page that takes eternally longer than you can say “back button”.
But how fast is fast enough?
One second ideal page load time: Lazy loading helps by loading only those parts of the page that the user actually views.
Compress all images and minify the code enough that you can compress your CSS and JavaScript files significantly, which will make a huge difference in your load time.
Pro Tip: Google’s Lighthouse Tool
Audit the speed of your site natively inside Google Chrome through Lighthouse to receive actionable recommendations on how to improve it.
5. UX: Think Like Your Visitor
Consider a visit to a physical store whose aisles are unkempt, with awful signs, and a clerk unwilling to be bothered. You wouldn’t personally want to spend more time there, right? Not so much in the material world, however. Websites are no exception. Google made UX-first design paramount, and so should your site: clean, simple, attractive, and even cool, too.
Core UX elements
- Clean design with clear calls to action.
- Logical structure: the user will easily find what he is looking for.
- Interface elements, such as buttons and forms on multiscreen types.
Google also considers an experience a user has with the site through metrics used to measure a bounce rate, time on-site, and pages per session. The better these are, the more likely you are to rank.
Pro Tip: Conduct a UX Audit
Conduct a UX audit on the website. Get actual users to test the usability of your website and identify where frustration lies.
6. On-page SEO: Dot the I’s and Cross the T’s
It is that geek-out moment where we talk about on-page SEO, or basically, things that happen on your website. Tweak every little thing and every element of your page to make it as Google-friendly as possible.
Some basics:
Title Tags: Interesting title, a primary word (focus keyword) you are trying to rank
Meta Descriptions. It will have no impact on rankings but will have an influence on CTR.
Headings: H1, H2, H3. Headings improve the structure of your content for the users and, therefore, also for the search engine to read.
Alt text for images: In order to make Google understand what’s in your images, increase image visibility.
Internal linking: It definitely boosts rankings. You may add links to other relevant pages on your site that help visitors find more interesting stuff for which you and Google would be interested.
Pro Tip: Optimize for Featured Snippets
Featured snippets are those little highlighted answers on top of Google’s search results. To steal this sweet spot, format your content in question-answer style or include tables and lists.
7. Security: HTTPS is a Must
But you really don’t want to get pounced on by Google as a site that’s insecure, right? This means if your site isn’t holding up an SSL certificate-that is, it is not a HTTPS site- then you are essentially telling Google and anyone else coming to your site, that this is not a secure site.
Even Google said that HTTPS is a ranking factor. But aside from trust, and integrity of data, especially that must be transferred between your website and the visitors, there are so much more.
8. Core Web Vitals: The New Kids on the Block
You’ve probably heard of “Core Web Vitals,” but you don’t quite know what it is or was yet. Let me break it down for you. It’s a new way that Google measures and grades sites on their overall user experience. Here’s really what they’re taking a look at:
- 1. Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): How long does it take to load the most important content of the page?
- 2. First Input Delay (FID): When does interaction on your site happen?
- 3. Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): Does your page jump around while it’s loading and, therefore, disrupt users from actually interacting?
So, literally, here are most of the metrics one has to learn inside the SEO landscape- the game is to improve the user experience.
Social signals are not ranking factors, so always says Google, but there do exist lines and dots that get a little blurred. Such content that would go heavy on shares on social platforms will actually rank better just because they would be getting more visibility and a chance of earning much more backlinks.
Where likes, shares, and comments aren’t being “leveraged” directly in the Google algorithm, they feed into an enormous game: content exposure and authority building.
Pro Tip: Add Social Sharing Buttons
Make your readers’ job of sharing your content so easy. When your content is shared throughout social networks, you stand a better chance of eventually getting that elusive backlink we mentioned above.
The Ongoing Evolution of the Algorithm
And here, from the horse’s mouth, are Google’s most major ranking factors, stripped down and laid out for you. But here’s the kicker: Google’s algorithm changes by the minute. What works today may not work as well tomorrow, and keeping ahead of those changes will determine how long you hold your rank.
The cost of gaming is that the SEO people get captured and think it’s gaming and forget all the other stuff. The quality of the content, quality of the user experience, all that, is what Google really wants and wants your users to focus on. That, I mean, is the ball of the deal. So start implementing search engine ranking factors at the earliest possible.