Top 12 Google Ranking Factors 

What methods do customers use to find you?

The easy answer for today’s business: online. Mainly using a search engine like Google.

While paid search advertising is the best way to rank directly on Google, you also need to increase your organic rankings. You can increase your visibility with the presence of paid and organic search engine results - and having visibility on search engines is essential to attracting customers and generating revenue, no matter what type of business you do.

Even if you have no control over how a search engine thinks or operates, there are a few things you can do to increase the chances of your website appearing in search results. Thus inbound SEO, is the process of aligning a website with various Google ranking factors. I’ll do things in this post:

• Define technical, on-page, and off-page ranking elements.

• Get an overview of the top 10 Google ranking factors that can optimize your site.

• Make suggestions to help improve your ranking along with all the ranking factors.

First, let's review the basic elements of the ranking elements to build a solid foundation.

What are ranking factors?

The process of optimizing your website so that it can rank highest in organic search engine results is known as search engine optimization (SEO). When talking about search, we use the word “organic” to refer to unpaid search results. This is different from pay-per-click (or PPC) advertising, which is a paid traffic generation strategy.

In the image below, see the difference between organic and paid search results:

Google's organic and paid rankings are determined with an algorithm that considers a number of characteristics and metrics that Google considers important - these are your ranking factors. We don't know all of Google's ranking factors, but many know why Google told us and what they discovered through experimentation and empirical training. We also know that factors and algorithms can change, quality, reliability and performance are characteristics that Google is trying to understand.

Types of Google ranking factors

We look at the different types of Google ranking factors before we go into the top 10 Google ranking factors that can optimize your website pages. Marketing usually refers to on-page and off-page ranking factors, but in reality there are three categories:

Off-page ranking factors These are being measured by Google elsewhere from your site, and primarily involve backlinks.

On-page ranking factors These are mainly related to the keywords and informational quality of your pages.

Technical ranking factors These are also measured on your site, but have more to do with it's overall performance as a whole, as opposed to individual pages.

Top SEO Ranking Factors

Here are the top 12 SEO ranking factors (not ranked in order of importance).

·         Site Security

·         Crawlability

·         Mobile-Friendliness

·         Page Load Speed

·         User Engagement

·         High-Quality Content

·         The Right Target Keywords

·         Optimized Content

·         Structured Data

·         Consistent Business Listings

·         Backlink Profile

·         Domain Age

1. Site Security

Google has been talking about site security as a ranking factor since 2014. It is currently considered one of Google's most important ranking factors. Using HTTPS encryption is called site security. An SSL certificate creates a secure connection between a website and its users on a site that uses HTTPS encryption. This adds a level of security to the information exchanged by users and sites.

HTTPS encryption tells search engines that your site is safe. This will direct you to the most trusted site. If your website URL starts with HTTP instead of HTTPS, your site is not secure and you need to add an SSL certificate.

2. Crawlability

If a site is not found, search engines cannot rank it. That’s why site crawling is an important SEO ranking factor. Crawlability is the ability of a search engine to crawl a website and examine its content to determine what a page is called and how it ranks.

Allow search engines to crawl your site correctly if you want Google to rank it.

• Create a sitemap and submit it to major search engines.

• Check the number of pages Google has indexed on your site by checking the index status in the Google Search Console.

• Use a valid robots.txt file to tell search engines which pages to access and which pages to forget.

3. Mobile-Friendliness

The term “mobile compatibility” refers to how a website is displayed and functions when viewed on a mobile device. Mobile -friendly websites offer a positive user experience by using a responsive design that adapts content to fit any screen size. Compatibility for mobile is important for search engines and users because more searches are done on mobile devices than on desktops (52.2 percent of internet traffic comes from mobile devices, and my number is growing).

4. Page Load Speed

Another SEO ranking factor is the page loading speed that is related to the user experience. Sites that take a long time to load offer a bad user experience. Because search engines understand that people need answers as quickly as possible, they want to load sites quickly. This is especially true for mobile sites, as Google recently announced that load speeds for mobile searches are a ranking factor as part of its speed update.

5. User Engagement

Users are used by search engines to help select pages that will be promoted in search rankings. To determine which page is best and most useful for a user, they think about how the user might interact with the results. RankBrain, an artificial intelligence tool from Google, was used to accomplish this. Factors that affect user engagement include:

CTR (clickthrough rate): If given the results the search engine, what percentage of people are clicking?

Time on site: The last person to stay here after finding through search engines.

Bounce rate: The percentage of visitors who left after viewing only one page of a website found through a search engine.

6. High-Quality Content

Another way to increase user engagement and attract search engines is to post high quality content on a regular basis. One of the most important SEO ranking factors is content. Search engines want to provide the best possible results, so they prefer sites with well-researched, detailed, and well-crafted content.

The new content will attract search crawlers, improve search visibility, and at the same time provide something to help you share with your audience, making it a mutually beneficial situation for all marketing activities.

7. The Right Target Keywords

Don’t even create content blindly. Do keyword research to determine which keywords to target and which topics to cover when creating content. The process of identifying popular keywords that can bring traffic to your website is called keyword research.

To help you choose the best keywords for your content, think about how Google processes your keywords.

Long tail keywords should be targeted. More people use voice search to find phrases and questions that have long since become popular. Find long tail keywords (keywords with three or more words) and shorter general keywords to target in your content to attract this type of search.

Understand the purpose of keyword search. The purpose of the search is why someone searches (that is, because they want to learn, buy, or navigate something) (that is, because they want to learn, buy, or navigate something). Google provides pages with content that matches your target keywords to improve your ranking, so different types of keywords can be mapped to different types of content at different stages of your purchase goal-achieving process. Please Confirm.

8. Optimized Content

When attracting search engines to your content, it's important to consider the SEO factors of your page. The process of optimizing individual pages for your target keywords is called page SEO. It tells search engines what the page is and how it ranks by optimizing only for specific keywords.

9. Structured Data

Structured data is another way to tell search engines about a web page (in order to rank it accurately). Structured data, also known as Schema Markup, is a type of microdata that tells search engines how to classify and interpret content on a web page (such as identifying business addresses, book titles, recipes, or other types of information).

10. Consistent Business Listings

The most trusted, authoritative and trusted search engine brands rank first. The more popular brands are on the internet, the more search engines can also increase their search visibility. A consistent business listing is an important ranking factor because of this.

Business listings, also known as citations, are primarily used as a ranking factor for local SEO. However, all brands must create and manage basic citations, including:

• Create a Google My Business page for your company.

• Create a profile for your company on industry -related directory sites.

11. Backlink Profile

Backlinks are another sign that a website is trustworthy and authoritative for search engines. On -page SEO factors such as the number and quality of links directed to your site have a significant influence on search rankings.

Back links are often considered to be the second most important SEO ranking factor after content. If you want to rank your site, you need strategies for getting high quality backlinks, such as guest posting, link acquisition, digital PR, and other link building packages.

12. Domain Age

While the final ranking factor is out of your control, you better mention it. The age of your domain, or the age of your website, is often used as a ranking factor. While Google does not explicitly mention that age is a ranking factor, research shows that older domains rank higher.

So, if you are launching a new website, it should be understood that it will take some time to produce your SEO efforts. Search rankings of your site will increase over time with consistent SEO work, but it will not happen overnight.

Optimizing for these Google ranking factors takes time

There is no silver bullet when it comes to true SEO. The important thing to remember is that getting to the top of the search results page takes time. If you optimize your website today for a number of ranking factors, the site will magically appear at the top of tomorrow’s search results. The optimization process requires constant effort to keep your site active and relevant to your target audience. You will see organic growth as long as your website is functional and optimized with your target audience.