It’s been more than 16 years since Sirazul, at the time in charge of the Search Quality team at Google, stated in passing that there were more than 200 Google SEO ranking factors in 2023 that search engine.
However, that hasty comment was later taken out of context and has become one of the main myths and sleeplessness of SEO’s.
In fact, from the main managers of Google it has been emphasized that not even they themselves know how many they are for sure, and that for each of these Google SEO ranking factors there are many possible variations.
Google’s algorithm or neural network is so complex and immense that trying to reduce it to a list of 200 factors seems to me quite useless for those who need to learn SEO, or at least this particular search engine.
My proposal is to tell you, based on my experience, what are those Google SEO Sanking factors that most affect and why.
Let’s get right into it.
How many Google SEO Ranking Factors affect SEO Positioning?
As I mentioned above, it is difficult to know how many are these factors in total.
Not even Google knows it and the algorithm is something that is constantly changing.
Undoubtedly, when I launch the article today there may be some, but surely in a few months there will be new ones and some will no longer be taken into account.
That being said, Sirazul, who worked in the Search Quality Department at Google and was Director of the team against SPAM on Google’s web, in 2010 stated that there were more than 200 factors, but at the same time each factor counted. with dozens of viable variations.
This makes it clear how difficult it is to understand Google SEO Ranking Factors processes.
Are they a myth or a reality?
They have a bit of myth and a bit of reality.
All SEO’s know that there are certain Google SEO Ranking factors that are undeniable when it comes to positioning a site.
While it is true that many will give higher priority to some than others, but all agree, or the vast majority, that there are key factors in SEO positioning.
In 2006 is when the myth arises, from the hand of Sirazul himself, when I affirm before a question from the interviewer, the famous myth of the more than 200 Google Seo Ranking Factors.
In fact, in 2013 Brian Dean, one of the most recognized SEO’s in the world, created the list of 200 Google SEO Ranking factors on his blog Backlinko.
A list based not only on his experience, but also on what was said from Google and on the knowledge of other SEO’s, however this list brought a lot of applause but also a lot of noise.
Moz, went out to the junction and denied several of the factors that Dean put on the list, and they weren’t the only ones.
However, they highlighted Backlinko’s ability to attract links in droves thanks to very well-conceived content.
From then until today, SEO’s keep asking ourselves what they really are.
It is certainly an answer that may never come to us.
The 22 Best Google SEO Ranking Factors According To My Experience
There are for me a series of Google Seo ranking factors that influence SEO predominantly over the rest.
These factors that I mention below are surely equivalent to more than 95% of the positioning in the Google SERPs .
This does not mean that there are not 200 more, with their respective variations.
In this post the idea is to help you understand which are the components that do have the strength to move the needle when it comes to SEO.
Some may not be Google Seo Ranking factors as such or with the same name, but they do help you position and it is something that I have more than verified.
Let’s get started!
1.EAT
Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness, or what is to say Experience, authority and trust.
Nowadays for me, everything is conceived based on this acronym.
What Google is looking for is that your website reflects experience in the field of the niche in question, that you are an authority site, that is, that the people who enter your website trust you, and that you convey trust with your content.
The EAT is achieved over time, it is not from one day to the next.
The frequency of publication, quality external links and a good user experience will be very useful to give those signals to Google.
Imagine entering a health niche and not seeing that it is from a doctor or a recognized medical institution. Would you trust the information it has?
That is why Google implemented YMYL (Your Money or Your Life), niches in which EAT becomes preponderant.
The same thing starts to happen with all the other fields. Prepare to give everything and more.
2. Respond to the Search Intent
It is another of the Google Seo Ranking factors that, in my opinion, most affect positioning.
Think that a user when typing in the search engine “Web Development Agency”, possibly has a navigational or commercial search intention and is not interested at all in knowing what an Web Development agency is.
Surely you already know what it is and then you indicate in the search engine the keyword “Web Development Agency” with the purpose of possibly hiring one or knowing which ones are or are the best in your area.
The same happens the other way around, if a user puts in the search box “What is an Web Development agency?”, then what the user wants to find is information about what an Web Development agency really is and what it does.
Understanding the search intent or search intention of the user is something of total incidence when it comes to ranking.
3. Correct Header Hierarchy
When it comes to writing content, if we are not able to create a good content structure, then it becomes more difficult to rank.
I am not saying that it is impossible, in fact, in SEO things have been seen much more amazing than that.
But, for me, the layout of content, based on a good hierarchy of headers, is a more than important factor.
An H1 at the beginning with the keyword as far to the left as possible, H2’s that complement the content, H3’s that complement the H2’s and so on.
It is also important that there are no spelling mistakes and that the keywords chosen are correct.
4. Use of keywords
Another of the Google Seo Ranking factors most revered by SEO’s and most useful of course are the keywords.
Keywords are the searches that users make in search engines, and there are usually 1, 2, 3, up to 10 words.
The more words those keywords generally have, the longer tail they are (long tail, more specific, fewer searches) and the fewer words the shorter or head tail they are (short tail, less specific, many more searches).
To start a niche on the right foot, you have to carry out a good keyword research and choose and separate the categories and content by similar keywords.
When writing a perfect blog article you will need the greatest precision in terms of their selection.
In fact, good filtering is essential to avoid cannibalization or duplicate content.
5.TF*IDF and number of words
I can say that I don’t know if this is really a positioning factor for Google per , however I can say from my experience that it is one of the Google Seo Ranking factors that most affect the rise of positions in Google.
I tell you why…
I have optimized countless posts from bonsaiall and other sites and by doing it through Surfer SEO , thanks to the TF*IDF function, I have always, but always, gone up positions.
Adding the words that appear the most in the Top 10 and including them as frequently in your text takes you up the ladder.
Of course, optimizing content also goes far beyond adding words and in the right amount…
Note: In this Blogging-Guides post I tell you all about the TF*IDF function, what it is for and how to improve content creation and optimization with the tool in question.
6. External links
We are entering a very controversial area…the Link Building.
In fact, if there is something that is not discussed by any SEO in the world (unless it is reliable), it is that backlinks are one of the preponderant and most important Off Page SEO factors when it comes to ranking content and sites. Web.
Although, today no link is worth any more.
There are external links that subtract more than add, and there are also others that give a huge leap in quality to your web page.
There are cheap tools to know the reality of the backlinks that your website receives, SE Ranking is one of them.
7. Web Architecture and Internal Linking
The architecture of the website, as well as the internal linking or interlinking, is also for many SEOs, not only for me, another of the most relevant On Page Google Seo Ranking factors.
A good web architecture not only guarantees correct crawling and indexing by Google, but also helps the classification of the URL’s of your website.
In other words, through internal links you will “notify” the search engine which are those most important URLs on your website.
If you want to improve the positioning of a content, add more internal links to it and see how it climbs some positions.
It is also very important not to have orphaned URLs throughout the website or niche.
In both cases, whether we are talking about external links or internal links, the anchor text is also an extremely important Google Seo Ranking factors.
8. Titles and Descriptions
Google takes into account the meta tags (meta tags), but does not take into account the meta keyword, nor the meta description . Although of the latter he affirms that he does keep it in mind to show it as a summary under the title in the SERP’s, something that as SEO’s we already know.
However, the title tag or SEO title is a factor that Google takes into account to position.
It is also extremely important when the first page is reached, since a well-optimized title, added to an attractive description, will attract more traffic and steal “users” from the competition.
9. Charge speed and CWV
Following by a factor corresponding to the technical part related to a website, the loading speed and the 3 Core Web Vitals are also an increasingly preponderant factor for Google.
In fact, a picture is worth a thousand words, and this image from a report from Google itself will shed more light on the matter.
Therefore, a good loading speed is essential and for this, understanding and attending to the Core Web Vitals is extremely important for the getting of your website.
10. Domain History
Many times I hear stories of people who are about to buy a domain, they do it, and when they check in Google Search Console, they realize that that domain is more spammed than viagra.
Having said this and making a parenthesis, it is essential that if you buy a domain you first go through Google, then Archive.org and finally Ahrefs in search of knowing the history of that domain.
A domain that has been around for years is more likely to get penalized by Google, although I’m not so sure that it benefits content positioning by itself that much.
11.Domain Authority
The authority of the domain is related to many of the factors that I named above, the EAT, the external links, the contents and the history of the domain.
The reality is that when content is equal, the domain with the most authority wins. There also influences the number of outgoing links you have (OBL) and the quality of the links you receive, the number of different domains and IPs that link to you, the number of keywords limping high and the frequency and recurrence of the links.
12. Mobile Responsive
I must say that I did not find a clear word to translate the title and I left it in English, but the concept is the same.
Mobile responsiveness, if there is such a word, or rather a website design that adapts to mobile or mobile is one of the best SEO factors taken into account today by Google.
The famous Mobile First Indexing, is nothing more than the preponderance of the American search engine to crawl and index sites taking into account the mobile version more than the desktop version.
If you have a wonderful website on your desktop but it falls apart on your cell phone, you will have a very difficult time conquering Google.
If it happens the other way around too, but maybe it’s a little more generous.
13. Robots and Canonical
When I talk about meta robots and the rel=canonical tag, I’m talking about two factors that will strongly affect the indexing and positioning of our pages in Google’s SERPs.
A correct use of the noindex tags will allow (Google through) not to place that URL in the search engine index, for all those that we do want to appear they must have the index attribute.
Also, mainly in SEO for Ecommerce , the use of the canonical tag is very important so as not to have exact duplicates of content and so that Google knows exactly which URL to rank.
14. Redirects and 404 Errors
3XX redirects, typically 301 and 308, should be avoided as much as possible.
This is why having links pointing to 301s dilutes their link juice more quickly. Therefore, excessive redirects or long redirect chains must be avoided.
Not to mention the ones that are in a loop!
404 errors as well, since sometimes there can be very good links to 404s that are losing all their potential.
15. Optimized URLs
The shorter and more optimized URLs in terms of keywords produce a better opening rate by users in search engines.
Longer URL’s sometimes will not be fully visible in the SERP’s and that decreases the CTR.
It is also recommended to include the keyword in the URL for greater success.
16. Indexability and crawling
An easily crawlable URL will be more indexable by Google than if it were, for example, 10 clicks away from the home page.
Although the distance to the home page is not the only factor that allows you to reach those URL’s, it is one of the most useful routes traveled by crawlers.
In addition to the fact that to rank and do it better, the content must be seen perfectly in the eyes of Google and not incur code errors or lack or excess of it.
Let me cite a real example: an SEO client arrived at my agency in which the product categories in the eyes of the user were very useful and beautiful, however there was no type of content in the eyes of Google.
There were no headings, there were no paragraphs, there were no images, there was nothing. Pure thin content .
This was due to issues in the programming languages used in the creation of the site.
Several weeks were lost solving this issue, something that could have been anticipated with a little more focus on SEO.
17.SSL Certificate
The SSL certificate is the little padlock shown on the site’s URL.
Entering a page and not having it is sometimes super annoying.
We have to click extra to be able to read the content, and that requires patience, something that is less and less on the internet.
According to Google, HTTPS is a ranking factor, but they actually use it more as a tiebreaker between two similar pages.
Other things being equal, if one web page has it and the other doesn’t, then the one that does have it will position itself above.
18.Sitemaps
Sitemaps are very important when it comes to crawling, indexing and subsequent classification of a URL.
Those that are included in the sitemap.xml file of the site have priority over others that are not.
In addition, this can cause them to be visited more frequently by Google spiders and have a greater predominance in the ranking.
Beyond that, sitemaps are essential at the SEO level to index a website and for the googlebot to pass regularly.
19. SEO Optimized Images
Google often looks for certain signals included in the images on a website. Among the most important is ALT, which also serves in terms of accessibility for blind people and the title of the image.
In addition to this, having images with a reduced size and good quality help the loading speed and the user experience respectively.
20.User experience
User experience is a very broad concept.
In this sense, I included it taking into account various elements that also make up the UX.
For example, if a significant group of users read your content carefully and spend time in each session, added to the fact that they visit more pages after the initial one, these are very important signals that tell Google that your site responds to the search intent . and it ain’t shit
If the content is attractive, well-designed, has interesting links, and annoying pop-ups do not appear everywhere, then the user experience will be very favorable for them and also for your website in terms of the search engine.
21. Bounce Rate and Pogosticking
The bounce rate is usually negative.
By this I mean that a user enters your website and without interacting with it, it returns in seconds or a few minutes.
This type of bouncing is generally not a good thing, although there are exceptions.
In fact, if you respond to the search intent and the user does not return to the SERPs, then you have done well for the person.
However, if a person enters the site and immediately leaves and reopens different results in the SERPs, we are talking about pogosticking and it is the most damaging for your website.
In effect, it means that your site is crap and that he realized right away that he wouldn’t find what he was looking for.
22. Local SEO
Finally, another factor that I believe has an important influence on SEO rankings, although not directly, is Local SEO in Google My Business .
A company that wants to have a powerful EAT and that has a physical headquarters should be on Google My Business, without a doubt.
Also from there you can derive traffic to your website and get customers.
More traffic will eventually result in better signals for Google, as long as the content within is of quality.
Conclusion
In this post I was telling you what are for me the Best 22 Google Seo ranking factors that most influence SEO positioning.
Undoubtedly, I could have made a list of 200 points, almost without quality and like flying over the subject, but I don’t think it’s something as useful as explaining the SEO factors that do matter.
Much is said about the 200 factors that Google has to position content, but there is a lot of myth in it and it must be kept in mind that it is one of the largest companies worldwide and that it is continually updating more.
This also includes Google’s algorithm or neural network , which is why a factor today may not be so in 3 months and vice versa.
In fact, I do believe that these factors that I told you will continue to be important in SEO for many more years.
Do you think I forgot some SEO positioning factor that is key? Tell me in the comments.
