The constantly changing Google algorithm is a frightfully complex and well-guarded super-secret formula. On the other hand, is a well-known fact, that a top Google ranking is made up of over 200 ranking signals, and although there isn’t an official list of Google ranking factors, the SEO industry has created and published dozens of “complete” and comprehensive lists with all these important ingredients.
You can find them all over the internet, but you should know, that these full recipes are incredibly time-consuming and unreasonably vague in terms of proportions. In my opinion they are expressly humping or depressing and more than that, they are – God, please forgive me! – quite useless. Why? Because with all those news about another Google update or algorithm change rolling out every other week, it’s extremely hard for me to believe that an average webmaster – or even an experienced SEO expert – can be able to keep up with a such an epic mess.
So, hear me out: forget those huge, boring lists and focus on the most important ranking signals, those with real and big impact on your Google rankings.
Let’s check them out together!
1. Page speed
Some time ago Google has officially confirmed that page speed is an important ranking factor and has been included in the ranking algorithm.
According to Google ...
In 2018 a website should load in 500 milliseconds up to 2 seconds at most.
But, let’s forget Google for a moment. What is much more important for you, the loading time of your website has a massive impact on user experience, too. According to Kissmetrics, 40% of people abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load, and 1 second delay in page response can result in a 7% reduction in conversions! Do you really need any more arguments? No, you don’t.
Fortunately, there are many handy free tools out there that can help you to test the speed of your website. Here are two options for you ...
1.1 GTMetrix
1.2 Pingdom
2. Mobile friendliness
Mobile friendliness. Another buzzword in the SEO industry. And another vital component that can’t be ignored while we are talking about the whole “how to get higher ranking in Google” topic. Not so long ago mobile friendliness was just some sort of good-to-have factor, but today is one of the biggest ranking signals. With over half of searches coming from mobile devices, Google’s continuously increasing focus on improving mobile search results is completely understandable. According to Hubspot …
27% of consumers will leave a site if it is not mobile-optimized.
The best free testing tools are ...
2.1 MobileTest.me
2.2 Varvy
If your site is not mobile friendly, you have a quite big problem, that must be solved ASAP. While there are several different options out there, the responsive design is probably the simplest and most convenient solution and it’s the one Google recommends, too.
As you are using WordPress, the adaptation process is really simple, all you have to do, is to choose a responsive theme, and to follow some pretty straightforward instructions.
If you have a traditional HTML-coded website with no CMS in place, the transition can be quite laborious and time-intensive, but there is a bunch of documentation available on adapting responsive design and it’s an investment that will definitely keep paying off continuously and increasingly.
3. Link quality
The most SEO experts will agree: is still one of the most important ranking factors for Google. According to Neil Patel …
The amount of links to a specific page composes 22.33% of Google's ranking algorithm.
Many experts think that is the single biggest component in the algorithm. Obviously, I don’t know how much the percentage is … What I know: if you really want to learn how to get higher ranking in Google, pay a GREAT attention to this factor!
Prior the Penguin algorithm link-building was dominated by spam, and quantity triumphed over quality. Today, when our beloved and feared Penguin is barely 6 years old, link quality apparently has become one of the biggest algorithm components. High quality links will increase your site’s link score and your rankings. Low quality inbound links will hurt your business. More than that, they can get your site penalized or even removed from the SERPs completely.
This is why you’ll have to perform regular link audits in order to detect and to remove any link that might be dangerous for your website.
First of all, you'll have to analyze your links. My favorite free tool is ...
SEOReviewTools
https://www.seoreviewtools.com/valuable-backlinks-checker/
Will give you a nice overview on your backlinks, referring domains, anchor texts etc. And more importantly, will give you the Ahrefs domain rating for each linking domain (Ahrefs is a popular paid SEO tool). This free report will show you only one link per domain (the most relevant one).
The next obvious question: how to get rid of harmful low quality links? Well, you’ll have to contact the site owner and ask him/her to take down the given link, but if you have to many low quality links or the site owners are not interested in helping you, the best option is to disavow these links.
Disavowing is nothing else, but telling Google to discard the linking domain when evaluating your link profile. In order to do it, you’ll have to create a disavow file that must be uploaded to the Google Search Console.
Uploading the disavow file to the Google Search Console is extremely simple:
go to the disavow links tool page
select your website
click “DISAVOW LINKS”
click “CHOOSE FILE”
4. Link relevance and link diversity
The next very important factor is the relevance. I guess it’s pretty obvious, you need inbound links from pages whose topic is related to that of the page you are optimizing.
This time the logical question is this one: how can Google identify and evaluate the relevance? The answer: from the backlink’s anchor text. Which is displayed in the aforementioned SEOReviewTools report.
Understandably, the concept of relevance is closely connected to that of diversity. What does it mean? In plain English: it’s normal (even expected) to have semantically relevant inbound links, but too many similar anchor texts will awake the Penguin.
Your goal is to get a diverse mix of link types (text links, image links, etc) coming from different kind of sources (blogs, review sites, forums, etc). The truth is, that nobody exactly knows where is the point where you can get a Penguin penalty, therefore there is no such thing as “golden ratio” for different kinds of anchor texts. If you really want a rule of thumb: the best idea is to rely on the link profiles of your most successful competitors …
As I said, there is no such thing as golden ratio … However, you might want to make – more precisely to request – some changes, and guess what, you’ll have to reach out to the webmasters that link to your site and politely ask them to make the change.
5. The number of inbound links and linking domains
Not so long ago the so-called link count was a literally vital ranking factor. A major one. Over time the algorithm has evolved and nowadays quality comes before quantity.
Having said that, the number of your backlinks and linking domains still represents an important factor, one that has a big impact on your final rankings. The only difference: the quantity is not enough anymore … What I am trying to say: more links will result in a higher link score as long as they are not low quality links. And don’t forget the link dilution! To many links coming from the very same domain won’t help you at all. In fact, Google will often only count one of those links …
My favorite rule of thumb is always applicable … Want to know how to get higher ranking in Google? Well, spying on your main competitor’s link profiles is the best possible starting point to discover what link scores you are competing against.
All you have to do, is to use the same tool(s) for your biggest competitors URLs in order to compare the numbers. Those figures will give you a clear idea on how much improvement your link profile may need … Regarding the how: as you have probably figured out already, you’ll have to find quality link prospects in order to build a bunch of new, valuable links.
6. Title tag and meta description
When it comes about relevancy, the title tag of your page is the strongest, most important signal to search engines, therefore your best keywords must be included in your title tag along with other, important, semantically related terms.
The closer the main keywords are to the beginning of your title tag, the better. The second element that can give you an additional – smaller – ranking boost for the targeted terms and keywords is the meta description tag.
There are many free tools out there that can help you to evaluate your title tags and meta descriptions. Two examples ...
6.1 SmallSEOTools
https://smallseotools.com/meta-tags-analyzer/
6.2 Metatags.org
Each one will give you a detailed report with instructions included.
One more important thing about title tags and meta descriptions: using identical titles or descriptions across several different pages will hurt your SEO efforts! In such situations Google can – and will – display only one of those pages in the search results, so make sure, that none of your pages compete against each other in the SERPs.
The solution is obvious: you’ll have to create different, unique titles and descriptions for each page.
7. Keywords in your website copy
In these days there is a lot of buzz out there about the increasing importance of the semantic search. It’s true, Google is rightfully shifting towards it, but that doesn’t mean that keywords are not important anymore. Sadly, many SEO “experts” are insistently buzzing around this topic, trying to convince you that your content keywords have become almost irrelevant for the search engines.
Well, my advice is this: do yourself a favor and forget these fake prophecies! Including your main keywords in the heading tags and in your page’s body text, is still a strong and important ranking signal for the search engines!
With Jaaxy in our hands and so many great WA tutorials on this topic I won't waste your time with further details on this one.
8. The content itself
If you want to crack the “how to get higher ranking in Google” mystery, you’ll have to pay a great attention to another crucial factor: the content itself. We need to analyze three content-related issues: length, relevance and uniqueness. Let’s take a closer look at each factor:
8.1 The length of your content
The SEO industry is overwhelmed with endless debates regarding the ideal content length. I’ll accept, each and every concept or argument may have its ground, but in my opinion the whole issue is ridiculously overcomplicated and overemphasized. Why? Well, first of all, in my opinion the optimal length should vary from niche to niche, from communication channel to communication channel, from content type to content type, etc. Second: in its guidelines, Google has stated clearly the fact, that the length of the content is an important ranking factor. According to QuickSprout …
The top 10 results for any keyword on Google are occupied with articles that are, at least, 2,000 words long. More is simply better.
In other words: Google doesn’t like short content. This is why Kyle suggested at least 1,000 words ...
And it’s perfectly understandable. Search engines need more and more new content to deliver better and more relevant answers. Of course, the value is much more important than the length, but a value-packed long content is much more valuable for Google than a value-packed short content. This is the only rock solid golden rule, so focus on creating long, value-packed content for your target audience (not for search engines!), without literally counting your words just because you have seen another “the ideal length is 3,000 words” article …
Finally, if you really want a somehow “realistic” reference, you can always use my usual rule of thumb: check out your biggest competitors or some other well-ranked pages for the keywords you are targeting!
8.2 The relevance of your content
The term “relevant content” is often misinterpreted, so let’s get everything straight … Doesn’t even matter what your page or website is about, what really matters is to create in-depth content (length matters again!) that carries real, unique vale.
In plain English: if you only scratch the surface instead of fully covering a topic – no matter what the topic is – Google will consider your page less relevant.
8.3 The uniqueness of your content
I guess is pretty straightforward: you need to be original! It may sound as a cliche, but we are talking about a cliche which can literally and completely eliminate your website from the search engine results.
The not so beloved Google Panda bear is always watching, and believe me, you’ll be penalized for every single piece of duplicate content or plagiarized copy.
So, keep in mind: if you have any doubts, you should perform a reliable plagiarism check for any piece of new content before you are hitting the “Publish” button!
The already mentioned SmallSEOTools has a handy plagiarism checker tool too ...
9. Sitemap(s)
Literally speaking the sitemap itself has no ranking value at all. Still, it’s an important factor that – indirectly – will influence your results helping the search engines to crawl and index your website quickly and easily.
This is also a topic which has been already covered by several great WA tutorials, so I won't go in details here.
10. Social signals
The impact of the social signals is another highly debated issue in the SEO industry. As far as I know, Google never confirmed it officially, but whether if it’s included in the algorithm or not, but I can tell you this: pages with more social share will rank better.
According to a QuickSprout case study …
When a site got 100 Google+ followers, its rankings jumped by 14.63%. When another site got 70 shares and 50 likes on Facebook, their ranking went up by 6.9%.
So yes, social is important. If you are not satisfied with your social exposure, you’ll have to re-evaluate your social media marketing strategy to find the weak points and to make the necessary improvements.
11. CTR
Here is another fact for you: the SERP click-through rates will have a massive impact on your future rankings.
In case of every search query Google “expects” an assumed CTR in a certain range for each of the listings. Let me give you two examples: for branded keywords the #1 result usually gets 50% of clicks, and for non-branded searches the expected CTR is around 35% for the #1 result. Now, if a given listing gets a very different and “unexpected” CTR, Google will usually re-rank the results accordingly.
Again, these average values can vary from query type to query type, from keyword type to keyword type, etc, but you should have around 30-50% for the #1 result, 15-30% for the #2 result and at least 10-15% for the #3 result. Of course, obtaining these much-coveted positions is one thing, and earning actual clicks from real users with appealing, click-worthy links, is a horse of another color.
The first thing you need to do, is to check out your actual CTR averages. To do that, log in to Google Search Console, go to the “Search Analytics” report and select CTR:
If you are not satisfied with your average CTR rate, you’ll have to craft a more appealing title and a better description for the given webpage.
Wrapping it up
These 11 factors are the most important ranking signals for your website.
If you want to learn how to get a higher Google ranking, you’ll have to watch them carefully in order to understand which of the above signals are making the biggest impact on your results. It also means, that you’ll have to track these factors and you’ll have to analyze your progress periodically.
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