Top 33 google ranking factors

Google Ranking Factors to make your website rank higher!

Ranking high on a Google Search Page can be really difficult if you’re not aware of the factors that come into play that help your website rank.

Here are 33 Google Ranking Factors to help you rank your website higher up on relevant Search Results!

1. Domain Age – A ton of SEO Specialists believe that Google trusts website domains that have been longer in play, and hence ranks them higher.

2. Keyword Appears in Top Level Domain – The presence of a keyword in the domain name might not directly boost your ranking, but it does act as a relevant factor for users. 

3. Keyword in subdomain – Adding a keyword to your subdomain can help boost your ranking.

4. Domain History – A website with several drops may be alarming for Google’s Algorithm. It’s important to make sure your domain is clean and has never been penalized before by any previous owner. 

5. Country TLD Extension – Having a Country extension (.ae, .in, .cn) can make your website rank quite high in that country but no promises can be made where its ranking is concerned in other countries. 

6. Keyword at the beginning of a Title Tag – It is proven that Titles with keywords at the beginning tend to do better than the ones where the keyword appears at the end of a title.

7. Keywords in descriptions – Google doesn’t necessarily use this as a direct ranking factor, however Keywords in Description can positively influence the click through rate which is an important Search Engine Ranking Factor. 

8. Keyword Appears in H1 Tag – H1 tags are considered to be a second title tag which can work in correlation with your title tag and help you rank higher.

9. Content Length – Content that is lengthy is preferable by the algorithm, compared to shorter articles. Lengthier and descriptive content is not only more appealing to read, but it also allows you to incorporate more keywords without making them too prominent.

10. TF-IDF – Term frequency-inverse document frequency is considered to be an important factor for SEO ranking. Google uses this information retrieval method to determine the relevance of content. 

11. Table of Contents – Adding Table of Contents tab to your website or article improves the readability and enhances your user experience. It plays a key role in boosting your SEO and increasing organic Reach in search results. 

12. Page Loading Speed – Try not to bulk up on creative graphics and banners that make your page loading speed slower as it is a major ranking factor for most search engines, including Google. 

Google now uses actual Chrome user data to evaluate loading speed.

13. Duplicate Content – Duplicate Content on the same website can negatively impact a website’s ranking.

14. Page update time-stamps – How often is your website updated? Daily, Weekly? Monthly? The algorithm always pays more attention to fresher content and hence, it is an important factor.

15. Rel=Canonical – Correct usage of this tag can prevent Google from penalizing your website for duplicate/identical content. 

16. Keyword Prominence – One of the easiest ways to increase your ranking is to add major keywords to the first 100 words of every article that goes up on your website. 

17. Keyword in H2, H3 Tags – Heading Tags help not just the viewer but also helps Google’s algorithm to understand the structure of your page. Adding keywords to H2 and H3 Tags will definitely help increase your web page ranking. 

18. The Broken Link Commendrum – Having too many broken links on your website may seem to make the site look neglected or abandoned, this is not a good front if you’re looking to rank higher.

19. Keyword in your URL – Even though it’s a pretty small ranking factor, it’s relevant nonetheless. If you manage to incorporate a keyword in your website URL, your chances of a better ranking are in play. 

20. Outbound Link Quality – It is widely believed that linking out to authority sites helps send trust signals to Google, thus increasing your chances of a better ranking. 

21. Number of Internal Links Pointing to Page – Number of Internal Links Pointing to a Page may help indicate the relevance and importance of other web pages on your website, a core ranking factor.

22. Broken Links – Having way too many broken links on your page may indicate a neglected and/ or abandoned website which may harm your ranking. Make sure your links are in check to ensure better ranking.

23. Mobile-Friendly Update – Implementing mobile friendly updates to add new features or implement a better user experience, is often seen as a positive factor for ranking on the search engines. 

24. Mobile Optimized – Google prefers web sites that are well optimized for mobile users as it is more accessible and widely used. To rank higher, make sure all your content from blogs to elements to the write ups, as well as all the technicalities are in check for the mobile version.

25. HTML errors/W3C validation – HTML errors/W3C validation is the process of checking the code of a web site to see if it follows the formatting standards. When this is in check, so is your probability of ranking higher. 

26. URL Length – 50-60 characters is a good number to aim for when creating your URL. Shorter URLs have a better chance of ranking higher up on the search engines. 

27. Site Architecture – A good site architecture should group topically related content together, which can work towards increasing the rank on Google. 

28. Presence of Sitemap – Presence of a site map provides food for the search engine spiders. It helps get more of your site crawled, which increases your visibility on the search engine. 

29. SSL Certificate – A good and secure website with an SSL Certificate will always have a higher Search Engine Ranking advantage as compared to other websites that are not as secure or encrypted. 

30. E-A-T – E-A-T is code for Expertise, Authority and Trust: three things that Google uses to measure a website’s authenticity and ranking factors.

31. Breadcrumb Navigation – Breadcrumbs not only help provide a better user experience, but also help build more internal links, thus increasing the page’s ranking on search engines. 

32. Contact Us Page – Google finds it thoroughly pleasing and tends to rank websites that have an up-to-date and appropriate contact information higher up, compared to ones that are not as accessible. 

33. Image Optimization – Alt Text acts as an anchor for images and is an important factor that helps rank websites. 

To sum up, your website’s ranking factors may be decided by the algorithm, but its ranking is completely in your hands. If you’re looking for an (SEO) Search Engine Optimization Specialists agency in UAE to up your website’s ranking, get in touch with us today!