The Google search engine has become much smarter than before. If you want to take your website or blog to the top of the Google search result, then you have to follow the latest SEO and Google ranking factors.
However, Google uses several ranking factors before ranking a page.
But which?
Here, we have made a complete list of Google’s Ranking Factors.
So, let’s get started what are they…
Google Ranking Factors in 2018
HTTPS
Google announced in August 2014 that HTTPS (SSL Certificate) will be considered a ranking factor.
In August of 2017, Google Chrome started marking those sites as Insecure, which did not use HTTPS.
This indicates that Google is now treating HTTPS as a ranking factor.
Quality content
It is the first and important key in ranking factors that your content should be informative and the king of quality.
If you do not write useful and informative blog posts for visitors, then you are putting garbage on your blog and nothing else.
Always try to write unique and quality content. In addition, your content should be interesting and evergreen
Keyword Research
Without Keyword Research you cannot get top ranking in Google or any search engines. This is an important part of SEO
Keyword research is not a daunting task. There are so many excellent tool and website that you can use to find the best keyword. Always choose a long tail keyword with low competition and high searches.
Content Length
Long content gets a better rank in search engines compared to shorter, superficial content. To better understand you can read this article on Search Engine Land – The SEO And User Science Behind Long-Form Content.
If you write short posts, your content length should be at least 1000 words without nonsense.
Mobile-Friendliness
Today’s era is of smartphones, and more than half of the search comes from smartphones.
Therefore, Google took the first step toward improving mobile-friendly search results. And finally introduced mobile-friendliness as a ranking factor.
To determine whether your site is mobile-friendly or not, Google has also developed a mobile-friendly testing tool.
Domain Age
Google’s Matt Cutts confirmed that in this video.
Matt Cutts states
The difference between a domain that’s six months old versus one year old is really not that big at all.
Domain age is only seen for new websites because they can be spam sites.
Domain registration length
A Google patent states that
Valuable (legitimate) domains are often paid for several years in advance, while doorway (illegitimate) domains rarely are used for more than a year. Therefore, the date when a domain expires in the future can be used as a factor in predicting the legitimacy of a domain
Heading Tags
The H1 tag helps the search engine find out what your page is about.
In fact, Googler John Mueller states about H2, H3 Tags
These heading tags in HTML help us to understand the structure of the page.
Using H1 tags gives a little ranking boost. but it’s important to keep in mind that does not fill your whole content with the H1 tag.
Meta Description
Meta description is not technically a Google ranking factor. But it plays an important role in increasing Click Through Rate (CTR) on your content.
However, Google usually allows 300 characters to write meta descriptions.
Starts Title with Keyword
According to SEO, a title that begins with a keyword gets a better rank in the search engine. Also, make your title attractive with 50–60 characters.
Backlinks
Backlinks is a very old ranking factor that Google uses to rank a content. Backlinks can put a big difference in your Google search ranking. It can take your ranking up to a new height or bring down in an overnight.
It is very important to increase Domain authority, Google website ranking, and website traffic.
If you make bad or low-quality backlinks for your site, it can badly hurt your website ranking. Therefore, always get high-quality backlinks for your website or blog.
100 quality backlinks equal to 1000 low-quality backlinks.
Breadcrumb
Breadcrumb helps users to know where they are on your site and as well as help search engines to know your site structure data. In a previous article, we will share a guide on how to add breadcrumbs in WordPress.
Also, Google states that,
Google Search uses breadcrumb markup in the body of a web page to categorize the information from the page in search results.
Loading speed
Google considers website loading speed as a ranking factor to give a better user experience to users. If your site’s loading speed is very good, then Google will rank your content at the top.
Apart from this, users will also like to visit your site.
Use ALT Tag
Google does not have the ability to read images, it crawls the Alt tag of the images to find out what the image is about. You should use the target keyword in your image.
Alt text works as anchor text for images.
SEO Friendly URLs
Search engine determines the content using your title, meta description and URL. Make your URLs short and meaningful with target keyword.
Always avoid such URLs:
http://justbrightme.com/p=123
And Long URL
http://justbrightme.com/5/10/17/category=SEO/of-page-seo-best-web-optimization
Use always SEO Friendly URLs like
http://justbrightmr.com/page-seo-techniques/
Number of Comments
We can consider the comment as the key to the Google ranking factor. Because lots of comments reflect the quality and user-interaction of your content.
Gary Illyes from Google said on Twitter comments can help “a lot” to boost ranking.
Internal links
Internal liking provides relevant information to both search engines and users about your content.
If you do internal linking, it makes your post more informative. Also, visitors spend more time on your site Which will reduce the bounce rate. As well as Google will consider the quality content.
Grammar and Spelling
Proper grammar and spelling improve the quality of your articles? Matt Cutts has a video answer on this, it is important or not.
Use Media
If you use media in your content (Images, videos, and Infographic), then it makes your content even more useful and attractive.
Simply put, one media can interpret 1000 words.
Regular Post
Regularly publishing a post on a blog can increase both your ranking and the reader. But your content should be informative and useful.
Share it & leave comments on what you think about these Google Ranking Factors.
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