What makes a website rank




















Appearing in the top 3 results is excellent because your click-through rates skyrocket the closer your get to 1, as shown in the image provided by Backlinko below:. Appearing on the first page at all, within the top 10 results, is also useful. Sounds creepy, we know. But all that means is they visit web pages. Google has various and deeply complex algorithms to decide which content gets displayed and in which order. Once your page lands on the SERP, though, you have to rely on your page titles and meta descriptions to get searchers to click your link and visit your site.

The most relevant are shown first, with the rest shown over successive pages. One of the goals of addressing SEO ranking factors is to let Google know when your pages on your site are relevant to particular search queries, so people will click the links and visit your site.

And this is super important to understand. Google realized that most searchers come to their platform for just about everything. This is particularly true for the YMYL sites. We do, however, know that they have a large team of human searchers to make sure E-A-T is being measured as accurately as possible. We have also had the joy of helping businesses to improve their Google E-A-T with resulting traffic increases.

Ok, but what does any of this mean for you, and how can you increase your E-A-T? Here are a few helpful tips:. These are all ways that people can increase their E-A-T for higher rankings. And, honestly, a lot of it boils down to using best practices for managing your online reputation.

On-page SEO refers to factors on your own website that you can optimize, such as the underlying code and the content. Both types are included in the top SEO ranking factors. There are a couple of ways to find this.

First, you could search Google using the terms you think your customers will be using. See where your content appears. But SEMrush is just one of your many options. Check out some other keyword research tools in our guide.

After all, SEO is mostly about getting that 1 spot specifically on Google. In other words, Google has to be able to visit the URL and look at the page content to understand what that page is about. If not, then you can use an online sitemap generator. Page speed has been cited as one of the leading SEO ranking factors for years. Google announced a search engine algorithm update focused on mobile page speed that started to affect sites from July Get more tips on mobile-friendly design to improve Google search ranking in our guide to improving your mobile conversion rate.

If you have the team, the time, and the energy, you may want to explore Google AMP accelerated mobile pages. The upside is that your pages load nearly instantly from mobile devices. There have also been rumors that Google ranks sites built with AMP more highly than others. Then, you need to maintain everything. As you can imagine, this can be a time-intensive project. Data from an Ahrefs study of two million pages suggests that very few sites less than a year old achieve that ranking.

In some cases, the domain name matters. Though Google has penalized exact-match domains those where the target keyword is in the URL , that penalty is generally for spammy sites with thin content. Research from Moz shows that exact-match domains that are deemed to be relevant, valuable, and high-quality can see a ranking boost because of it. The best route for choosing your domain?

Focus on a URL that reflects your business and optimize the heck out of it instead! When it comes to search engine ranking factors, authority matters. Moz has codified this into page authority and domain authority scores, both ranked from 0 to , which tell you how likely a particular page or domain is to rank in search results.

Ideally, those will match up. One negative SEO ranking factor to be aware of is duplicate content. For SEO, fresh, original content is always best. But one of the biggest questions we get at OptinMonster is about how to use LSI keywords to optimize content. These are called LSI latent semantic indexing keywords. They provide a kind of online word association to help Google know which results to show. That means some LSI keywords will be longer because people tend to speak differently than they type.

Using LSI keywords would be one way of making sure your restaurant ranks for both sets of questions. The more help you can give to Google understanding your content, the more likely you are to rank in your niche. Search intent is also important when optimizing content.

If you have a separate mobile website, the URL of your mobile site will be indexed and used for ranking instead of the desktop version. To be clear, there is no separate mobile-first index. Google indexes and ranks your content that comes directly from the mobile version of your site.

Also, the mobile-first index should not be confused with mobile usability. Remember when a mobile version of your website hosted at m. In the age of the mobile-first index , your mobile website is the lifeblood of your existence in the SERPs.

While mobile responsive layouts are not required for mobile-first indexing, you still want to optimize it for better page experience, and in turn, rankings.

Getting this right can bring big benefits. Even if the performance is good, if the song is off, no one will sing along with you. He goes on to discuss a website where he switched the URLs from a tag page to a subcategory page to link higher in the site architecture. Not only does site architecture help users find what they are looking for with better website navigation , but it can also help search engine crawlers find more pages on a website. It should take a user only three to four clicks to find any page on a website.

With the release of the Page Experience update, site architecture will have a bigger impact on your SEO. This metric impacts many other factors related to SEO. For instance, Core Web Vitals impacts your usability. If a searcher goes to a page and converts, your UX, page speed, and content all affect the conversion rate. Pete J. Ad Experience was rolled out in and targeted Chrome users. Chrome could remove all the advertisements from your website if you are in violation of Better Ads Standards.

Chrome could now impact website owners for running aggressive ads. Glenn Gabe gave a breakdown of examples of Chrome ad filtering in action. Ad Experience is tied to page experience and Core Web Vitals because it is impacted by the user experience and how the user interacts with your website. After being a desktop-only ranking factor, page speed became a Google mobile ranking factor in The Telegraph, a British publication, found that a four-second delay reduced page views by Lighthouse is your friend.

Many fixes are relatively easy if they are done by someone who knows what they are doing not everyone knows how to minify JavaScript, for example. Optimizing your website can help your existing high-quality content get found faster by search engines and users.

These are just a few of the ways that on-page optimization will still make a major impact for years to come:. This information includes your title tag and page descriptions — the information about your sites that users see in the SERPs. There are plenty more meta tags to know in SEO. Created in , there are now almost different types of information you can include.

Schema markup is what helps Google display rich snippets in search results, making it an important part of SEO. Use a generator like this one from Hall Analysis for basic markup needs. If your content provides more value to the intent behind the search query, search engines will serve your content in the featured snippet.

Himani Kankaria shares her advice and tactics on how to optimize for featured snippets. If so, that page may get a rankings boost for that keyword. Thanks to Hummingbird, Google can now better understand the topic of a webpage.

Image Optimization: Images send search engines important relevancy signals through their file name, alt text, title, description and caption. Content Recency: Google Caffeine update favors recently published or updated content, especially for time-sensitive searches. Magnitude of Content Updates : The significance of edits and changes also serves as a freshness factor. Adding or removing entire sections is more significant than switching around the order of a few words or fixing a typo.

Historical Page Updates: How often has the page been updated over time? Daily, weekly, every 5 years? Frequency of page updates also play a role in freshness. Keyword in H2, H3 Tags : Having your keyword appear as a subheading in H2 or H3 format may be another weak relevancy signal.

In fact, Googler John Mueller states :. And this is backed up by a recent industry study. For example, if you have a page about cars that links to movie-related pages, this may tell Google that your page is about the movie Cars, not the automobile. Grammar and Spelling: Proper grammar and spelling is a quality signal, although Cutts gave mixed messages a few years back on whether or not this was important.

Syndicated Content: Is the content on the page original? However, a Googler recently stated that hidden content is OK. Examples include currency converters, loan interest calculators and interactive recipes. Content Hidden Behind Tabs: Do users need to click on a tab to reveal some of the content on your page? Multimedia: Images, videos and other multimedia elements may act as a content quality signal.

Quality of Internal Links Pointing to Page : Internal links from authoritative pages on domain have a stronger effect than pages with no or low PageRank. Broken Links: Having too many broken links on a page may be a sign of a neglected or abandoned site. In fact, Google used to give you reading level stats:.

But what they do with that information is up for debate. Some say that a basic reading level will help you rank better because it will appeal to the masses. But others associate a basic reading level with content mills like Ezine Articles. While controversial, many in SEO think that a well-coded page is used as a quality signal.

Domain Authority : All things being equal, a page on an authoritative domain will rank higher than a page on a domain with less authority. But pages with lots of authority tend to outrank pages without much link authority.

URL Path : A page closer to the homepage may get a slight authority boost vs. Page Category: The category the page appears on is a relevancy signal. Keyword in URL : Another relevancy signal.

But a ranking factor nontheless. References and Sources: Citing references and sources, like research papers do, may be a sign of quality. However, Google has denied that they use external links as a ranking signal. Bullets and Numbered Lists: Bullets and numbered lists help break up your content for readers, making them more user friendly. Google likely agrees and may prefer content with bullets and numbers. Priority of Page in Sitemap: The priority a page is given via the sitemap.

Parked Domains : A Google update in December of decreased search visibility of parked domains. Make sure that your contact information matches your whois info. Site Architecture: A well put-together site architecture for example, a silo structure helps Google thematically organize your content. Site Updates: Many SEOs believe that website updates — and especially when new content is added to the site — works a site-wide freshness factor.

Presence of Sitemap: A sitemap helps search engines index your pages easier and more thoroughly, improving visibility. Site Uptime : Lots of downtime from site maintenance or server issues may hurt your rankings and can even result in deindexing if not corrected. Server Location : Server location influences where your site ranks in different geographical regions source.

Especially important for geo-specific searches. Google may give an edge to sites with high levels of E-A-T especially sites that publish health-related content. Breadcrumb Navigation: This is a style of user-friendly site-architecture that helps users and search engines know where they are on a site:. Mobile Optimized: With more than half of all searches done from mobile devices, Google wants to see that your site is optimized for mobile users.

They may also directly influence rankings by giving Google more data to work with ie. That said, Google has denied this as a myth. Google even posted a rarely candid outline of how they use online reviews after one site was caught ripping off customers in an effort to get press and links.

Linking Domain Age: Backlinks from aged domains may be more powerful than from new domains. Obviously, anchor text is less important than before and, when over-optimized, work as a webspam signal. But keyword-rich anchor text still sends a strong relevancy signal in small doses. Links from.

Which suggests that they do… at least in certain cases. Diversity of Link Types: Having an unnaturally large percentage of your links coming from a single source ie.

On the other hand, links from diverse sources is a sign of a natural link profile. Internal Link Anchor Text : Internal link anchor text is another relevancy signal. That said, internal links likely have much less weight than anchor text coming from external sites. Link Title Attribution : The link title the text that appears when you hover over a link may also be used as a weak relevancy signal.

Link Location In Content: Links in the beginning of a piece of content may carry slightly more weight than links placed at the end of the content. Link Location on Page: Where a link appears on a page is important. Linking Domain Relevancy: A link from a site in a similar niche is significantly more powerful than a link from a completely unrelated site. Page-Level Relevancy: A link from a relevant page also passes more value.

Positive Link Velocity: A site with positive link velocity usually gets a SERP boost as it shows your site is increasing in popularity. Linked to as Wikipedia Source: Although the links are nofollow, many think that getting a link from Wikipedia gives you a little added trust and authority in the eyes of search engines. Google has denied this. Co-Occurrences: The words that tend to appear around your backlinks helps tell Google what that page is about. Backlink Age: According to a Google patent , older links have more ranking power than newly minted backlinks.

Links from Real Sites vs. They likely use brand and user-interaction signals to distinguish between the two. For example, they know that a link from the official WordPress. Links from Links from redirects may lose a little bit of juice compared to a direct link.

However, Matt Cutts says that a s are similar to direct links. A link on a page with hundreds of external links passes less PageRank than a page with a handful of outbound links. Forum Links: Because of industrial-level spamming, Google may significantly devalue links from forums. Word Count of Linking Content: A link from a word post is usually more valuable than a link inside of a word snippet.

Many believe that its main purpose is to measure how users interact with the search results and rank the results accordingly. Sites with lots of direct traffic are likely higher quality sites vs. Repeat Traffic : Sites with repeat visitors may get a Google ranking boost. In this case, the user clicks on other search results in an attempt to find the answer to their query.

Results that people Pogostick from may get a significantly rankings drop. Blocked Sites : Google has discontinued this feature in Chrome. However, Panda used this feature as a quality signal. So Google may still use a variation of it. Chrome Bookmarks: We know that Google collects Chrome browser usage data. Pages that get bookmarked in Chrome might get a boost. Number of Comments: Pages with lots of comments may be a signal of user-interaction and quality.

In short: Google measures how long Google searchers spend on your page. The longer time spent, the better. Query Deserves Freshness: Google gives newer pages a boost for certain searches.

User Search History: Search chain influence search results for later searches. Geo Targeting: Google gives preference to sites with a local server IP and country-specific domain name extension. Transactional Searches : Google sometimes displays different results for shopping-related keywords, like flight searches.

Top Stories box: Certain keywords trigger a Top Stories box:. Image Results: Google images sometimes appear in the normal, organic search results. Shout out to Victor Pan for this one. Single Site Results for Brands: Domain or brand-oriented keywords bring up several results from the same site.

Brand Name Anchor Text: Branded anchor text is a simple — but strong — brand signal. Branded Searches: People search for brands. If people search for your brand in Google, this shows Google that your site is a real brand. If so, Google may give you a rankings boost when people search for the non-branded version of that keyword in Google. Site has Twitter Profile with Followers: Twitter profiles with a lot of followers signals a popular brand.

Legitimacy of Social Media Accounts: A social media account with 10, followers and 2 posts is probably interpreted a lot differently than another 10,follower strong account with lots of interaction. In fact, Google filed a patent for determining whether or not social media accounts were real or fake. In fact, some brands even have a feed of news from their own website, on the first page:. Unlinked Brand Mentions: Brands get mentioned without getting linked to.

Google likely looks at non-hyperlinked brand mentions as a brand signal. Brick and Mortar Location: Real businesses have offices.



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