200 Google Ranking Factors Used By Googles Algorithm (2022).
Google treat search as a constant experiment with the goal to provide users with the best, most relevant results after entering a search query.
Often, sometimes twice a year, there are major updates that impact what website pages are shown in search engine result pages (SERP). These significant updates typically target specific categories or industries and are quite publicly announced.
There are however changes made, tweaks to Googles algorithm that occur daily, even several times a day.
The number, 200 Google ranking factors or metrics analysed by Googles algorithm, deciding what website page URL’s, images, snippets and tags should be displayed and their rank has not changed much over the years, but what has and does constantly change is the significance placed on each one. The effect of social media is one such example. When Facebook and Twitter were polarising the Internet, Google placed a high value on the content and links coming from these social media sites, but now their relevance has dropped off significantly.
Read on to discover what the top 200 Google ranking factors are and how significant each one is when determining where to place a website’s page URL for 2022.
Domain Age
When comparing a domain name and website that’s been up for 6 months to one that’s been up for a year or two, Google places little importance to the difference based solely on age.
Websites that have been up for years typically rank higher due to other factors like the amount of content and other benefits coming from a high amount of pages, articles and images.Keyword Appears in Top Level Domain
While a domain name that contains keywords doesn’t give the same boost that it used to, having a keyword within the domain still acts as a relevancy signal. Google still bold keywords that appear in a domain name, so following good SEO practices it will be of benefit, especially if the location is used as well.
Keyword As First Word in Domain
A domain (URL) that starts with a major targeted keyword has an edge over sites that either don’t have the keyword in their domain or have the keyword in the middle or end of their domain.
Domain Registration Expiry Term
A Google patent states: ‘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’.
Domains that have websites and renewed for the maximum term demonstrate longevity and purpose.Keyword in Subdomain Name
A keyword appearing in the subdomain will boost rankings over using the traditional extension format. The set up and maintenance means it’s only useful for websites that have large amounts of content regularly uploaded, not for small business websites.
Domain History
A site with volatile ownership (via ‘Who Is’) or several drops may tell Google to “reset” the site’s history, negating links pointing to the domain.
Exact Match Domain
Exact keyword match domains will still give you an edge, but only if it’s a quality site. This was addressed with the EMD update to counter domain name registration farms from hoarding and on-selling keyword domain names without having a website for them.
Public vs. Private Who Is
Private Who Is information may be a sign of ‘something to hide’. More relevant to a webmaster that has many domains all using the ‘Who Is privacy protection service’ on them.
Penalized Who Is Owner
If Google identifies a particular person/business as a spammer, other sites owned by that person/business will be looked at closer.
Country TLD extension
Having a Country Code Top Level Domain (.com.au, .com, .uk) helps the site rank for that particular country, but limits the website’s ability to rank globally.
For local search, which is typically of most importance to small Adelaide businesses, this is not a problem because most will only service a portion of the state they’re located in. Larger businesses may operate across the country, but few overseas.Keyword in Title Tag
The title tag is a webpage’s second most important piece of content (besides the content of the page) and therefore sends a strong on-page SEO signal.
Title Tag Starts with Keyword
Title tags that starts with a keyword will perform better than title tags with the keyword placed towards the end. This illustrates the importance of choosing the right words for the page or articles title.
Keyword in Description Tag
While not as important to ranking as the Title, it still makes a difference, so it’s worth attending to. Google sometimes ignores the description-tag, using a piece of text from the pages content instead.
Keyword Appears in H1 Tag
H1 tags are a ‘second title tag’ that sends another high relevancy signal to Google. Many websites use these as ‘clickbait’ in an attempt to increase readership but often rank poorly because of that. The H1 should be highly relevant to the webpage’s content.
Keyword is Most Frequently Used Phrase in Document
Having a keyword appear more than any other does act as a relevancy signal. Adelaide search engine optimisation experts should be used for this to avoid ‘keyword-stuffing’ as keyword frequency is one of the more important Google ranking factors to get right.
Content Length
Content with more words cover a wider breadth and therefore are likely preferred to shorter superficial articles. Content length does correlate to SERP position. Typically pages or articles with 1500 to 2000 well written words perform best.
Keyword Density
Not to be confused with keyword frequency, keyword density is still something Google uses to determine the topic of a webpage. As with frequency, a local Adelaide SEO expert with copywriting experience should be used because adding too many keywords can hurt you.
Latent Semantic Indexing Keywords in Content (LSI)
LSI keywords help search engines extract meaning from words with more than one meaning (Apple the technology company vs. the fruit). The presence/absence of LSI also acts as a content quality signal.
LSI Keywords in Title and Description Tags
As with webpage content, LSI keywords in page meta tags help Google discern between synonyms and act as a relevancy signal.
Page Loading Speed via HTML
Both Google and Bing use page loading speed as a significant ranking factor. Search engine spiders can estimate your site speed fairly accurately based on a page’s code and file size.
Page Loading Speed via Chrome
Google may also use Chrome user data to get a better handle on a page’s loading time as this takes into account server speed, content delivery network (CDN) usage and other non HTML-related site speed signals.
Duplicate Content
Identical content on the same site (even slightly modified) can negatively influence a site’s search engine visibility.
Building suburb pages is one of the local SEO practices Thinking IT successfully adopt for Adelaide business websites wanting to be found within certain areas or regions.Rel=Canonical
When used properly, use of this tag may prevent Google from considering pages duplicate content, but if this needs to be considered, more effort should be given to avoiding the issue in the first place.
Image Optimization
Images on-page send search engines important relevancy signals through their file name, alt text, title, description and caption. Google places high importance on images, often including an image section above, or before organic search results.
High quality images are extremely important with regards to user experience. People wont necessarily be reading all of the text on a website page, but they will be looking at great images with interest.
If you’re struggling taking pictures, Thinking IT offer a photography and graphic design service ensuring all images and graphics will engage visitors to your website.Recency of Content Updates
Google Caffeine update favours recently updated content, especially for time-sensitive searches. Highlighting this factor’s importance, Thinking IT instructs Google to show the articles last updated date.
Magnitude of Content Updates
The significance of edits and changes is also a freshness factor. Adding or removing entire sections is a far more significant update than switching around the order of a few words, which could do more harm than good.
Historical Updates Page Updates
How often has the page been updated over time? Daily, weekly, every 5-years? Is there a reason it’s being updated often? Frequency of page updates also play a role in freshness.
Keyword Prominence
Having a keyword appear in the first 100-words of a page’s content is a significant relevancy signal.
Keyword in H2, H3 Tags
Having your keyword appear as a subheading in H2, H3 or H4 format is a weak relevancy signal unless the H1 title refers to say two points that can be broken down for further discussion.
in that case H2 headings containing keywords could be used effectively to title the two sections increasing readability and relevance.
H3 headings containing a keyword can be used in lists to segment and highlight a point.Keyword Word Order
An exact match of a searcher’s keyword in a page’s content will generally rank better than the same keyword phrase in a different order. For example, consider a search for ‘SEO Adelaide’. A page optimised for the phrase will rank better than a page optimised for ‘Adelaide SEO’. This is a good illustration of why keyword research is very important when choosing what keywords a page should include.
Outbound Link Quality
Many search engine optimisation companies think that linking out to authority sites helps send trust signals to Google. It can if done properly. If not you’ll lose customers and page rank as a result.
Page Link Theme
Search engines may use the content of the pages linked to as a relevancy signal. 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, but its significance has been watered down over time due to the overall level of content writing dropping and the loser language the younger generation are adopting, ;D. Having said that, it does depend on the nature of the content. Accuracy and expected grammar using language and terms relevant to the content will have higher importance on technical articles compared to a benign article on say baking a cake that can be written by someone in primary school.
Syndicated Content
Is the content on the page original? If it’s scraped or copied from an already indexed page, it won’t rank as well as the original page URL, and could end up in a ‘Supplemental Index’ or not shown at all.
Helpful Supplementary Content
According to a now-public Google Guidelines Document, helpful supplementary content is an indicator of a page’s quality and therefore, Google ranking. Loan interest calculators and currency converters are examples because there are only so many ways to have these displayed on a website, so duplicate content is expected. The overall page’s content would be analysed to promote those with more relevant, useful content.
Number of Outbound Links
Too many links to other websites will ‘leak’ PageRank, harming that page’s rankings. The days of using ‘nofollow’ to stop this have also gone with search engines looking at where all links go.
Multimedia
Images, videos and other multimedia elements may act as a content quality signal.
Number of Internal Links Pointing to Page
The number of internal links to a page indicates its importance relative to other pages on the site.
Quality of Internal Links Pointing to Page
Internal links from authoritative pages on a website have a stronger effect than pages with no or low PageRank.
Broken Links
Having broken links on a website is a sign of a neglected or abandoned site. The Google Rater Guidelines Document uses broken links as one of the metrics used to assess the homepage’s quality.
Even after a redirect has been set up, links on pages should also be updated to the new URL.Reading Level
Google does estimate the reading level of webpages. It will depend on the nature of the content and the category as to how much that impacts on PageRank.
Context is King in this situation. A basic reading level used when writing about a complex subject matter can help your PageRank because it will appeal to the masses, if that was the intent, However if the content was written to be read by learned, educated readership, there’s an expectation of a higher reading level.
Typically Google rewards a higher reading level which raises the quality of interaction, seperating it from basic or average, over simplistic content.Affiliate Marketing Links
Affiliate marketing links are paid for articles that typically appear on directory websites. If the relevance of the overall content of those websites is not close to the content on your website’s page you’re wasting your money because they’ll provide no benefit. Too many of this type of link can do harm if they become substantial compared to links from quality sites, even without having a high PageRank themselves.
HTML errors/W3C Validation
HTML errors and lazy coding is a sign of a poor quality site and will not improve a sites standing, so any SEO efforts can be wasted time. WC3 validation is a weaker signal, in part because search engines themselves frequently don’t follow their rules.
Page Host’s Domain Authority
All things being equal a page on an authoritative domain will rank higher than a page on a domain with less authority.
Page’s PageRank
While there is no direct correlation, pages with a higher PageRank will outperform pages with a lower page rank.
URL Length
URL’s with 4 words separated by hyphens are read and readily indexed. Excessively long URL’s can hurt search visibility, especially if hyphens are not used.
URL Path
All other factors equal, a page closer to the homepage will obtain a minor authority boost. All pages in navigation menu’s for example are considered more important than those that aren’t.
Human Editors
Google has filed a patent for a system that allows human editors to influence SERP. Thousands of people are hired to look at websites manually, completing a checklist on their findings. While not impacting a website directly, the findings can impact a category at large.
Page Category
The category the page appears on is a strong relevancy signal. A page that’s part of a closely related category will get a relevancy boost compared to a page that’s placed under an unrelated or less relevant category.
For this reason it’s advised to place articles under one category even if there is some relevancy to another.WordPress Tags
Tags are a WordPress-specific relevancy signal used to group pieces of content. Categories need to be used if search engine optimisation is important.
Keyword in URL
A URL that contains a keyword will be of additional benefit to a quality site.
URL String
The categories in the URL string are read by Google and do provide a thematic signal to what a page is about. Setting up how URLs are formatted is important, especially when using WordPress. The default ‘out of the box’ configuration will hamper any SEO effort.
References and Sources
Citing references and sources, like research papers do, is a sign of quality. The Google Quality Guidelines states reviewers should keep an eye out for sources when writing content where expertise is important. This is also an example where an outbound link could be used.
Bullets and Numbered Lists
Lists help explain and break up slabs of text for readers on a page, increasing user experience. Google likes content that contains lists with bullets and loves lists that are numbered, especially with relevant titles and headings.
Priority of Page in Sitemap
The priority a page is given via the sitemap.xml file has little influence on ranking, especially if set up by a professional SEO expert.
Too Many Outbound Links
Too many links to other pages can be distracting, signalling that the page has little relevancy on on its own.
Quantity of Other Keywords Page Ranks For
If a page ranks for several other keywords it will be given an increase in authority due to its higher quality.
As search engine optimisation experts, Thinking IT often produce multiple pages appearing at the top of SERPs.Page Age
Although Google does prefer fresh content, an older, quality page that’s regularly updated will outperform a newer page.
User Friendly Layout
User experience coming from a good website design is critical to PageRank. High quality pages come from presenting the content in a well laid out manner.
One of the most frequently asked questions asked of Thinking IT is can you optimise my website.
If the existing website layout is poor, the websites design is poor and its coding foundations is sloppy, that needs to be attended to first, before any direct SEO efforts commence.
Yes, often that does mean a new website.Parked Domains
A number of Google updates, starting back in December 2011 decreased search visibility of parked domains.
Useful Content
Google does distinguish between ‘quality’ and ‘useful’ content. Think of the substance over style argument. It should be both. Useful information to readers will be seen by more visitors if the content is also of high quality.
Content Provides Value and Unique Insights
Targeting affiliate marketing sites, Google looks to weed out websites that don’t bring anything new or useful to the web. If there’s no substance to a webpage, why consider it at all.
Contact Us Page
The Google Quality Document states they prefer sites with an ‘appropriate amount of contact information’. All contact details should match exactly across all sites including and especially social media sites and ‘Who Is’ info.
Domain Trust/TrustRank
Site trust, a measure of how many links away your site is from highly-trusted seed sites is a major, highly significant ranking factor.
When devising a SEO plan for customers, Thinking IT place high importance on TrustRank and is rewarded by having all customers achieve, often multiple ‘authority status’ appearance for their websites pages.Site Architecture
A well planned out and put-together website architecture (menu structure) helps Google thematically organise your content. Thought put into what pages are important and therefore appear where should be considered carefully.
Website Updates
How often a website is updated, the regularity and how updates appear is important with Google looking at the overall sites freshness factor.
Number of Pages
The number of pages a site has is considered important, especially if it effectively covers all aspects of a topic and distinguishes itself from affiliate marketing sites that cover many topics ‘thinly’.
Presence of Sitemap
A sitemap helps search engines index your pages easier and more thoroughly, improving visibility of pages and content that can not be immediately seen on the home page or within the navigational menu.
Site Uptime
Downtime from site maintenance or server issues can hurt your ranking (and will result in deindexing if not corrected). A more significant consequence of not having your website up is potential customers will go elsewhere.
Website hosting does play a significant part in the overall performance of your website and its PageRank in SERP. Uptime, speed and core coding effect results.
This is why Thinking IT only offers one option. There are no compromises on quality.Server Location
Server location used to have a small influence on where your site ranks in different geographical regions, especially important for geo-specific searches but not any more. Quality is by far the over-riding consideration.
SSL Certificate
Google has confirmed that they index SSL certificates and that they use HTTPS as an important ranking signal.
Terms of Service and Privacy Pages
These two pages help tell Google that a site is a trustworthy member of the internet. Depending on the laws of a country this can be more significant than others.
Duplicate Meta Information On-Site
Duplicate meta information across your site can cause problems especially on large commerce websites with large number of products. While not considered as bad as it used to be, it should be avoided and any notification should be addressed.
Breadcrumb Navigation
This is a style of user friendly site-architecture that helps users and search engines know where they are on a site in relation to other pages or category. As it assists the user experience, it is worth setting up, at least with articles places within categories.
Mobile Optimised
Google’s official stance on mobile is to create a responsive site. Responsive sites catering to small screen devices do receive an edge in searches from a mobile device. Google also started penalizing websites in Mobile search that weren’t mobile friendly.
YouTube
After the ‘Panda’ update, YouTube videos are given preferential treatment in the SERPs because Google owns it. However self-hosted video content that is not subjected to Google ads will win if it offers quality content that becomes popular.
Site Usability
A site that’s difficult to use or to navigate will hurt ranking by reducing time on site, pages viewed and bounce rate. User experience is an independent algorithmic factor gleaned from massive amounts of user data collected over time that can strengthen or weaken your position.
Use of Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools
These products make it easier and faster for Google to measure many attributes and performance factors, so while they don’t have any direct effect, they speed up the decision making process of where a page ranks.
User reviews/Site reputation
A site’s reviews used to play an important role in the algorithm. Google have their own 5 star rating system and then there are reviews that can be left on a website. The significance has dropped over the years because Goggle has realised the rants of people on a computer at night don’t always reflect the facts. Due to the high number of complaints coming from businesses being victimised by false reviews, the importance of reviews was re-evaluated.
Reviews do still have some importance, with a trend or theme playing more of a role for visitors looking at reviews to help them make a decision.Linking Domain Age
All other factors equal, backlinks from more established domains are considered better than those coming from newer domains.
Number of Linking Root Domains
The number of referring domains is one of the more important ranking factors in Googles algorithm, and one of the contributing factors in becoming an authority site.
Number of Links from Separate C-Class IPs
Links from separate class-c IP addresses show a wider breadth of sites linking to you.
Number of Linking Pages
The total number of linking pages, even if they’re coming from the same domain is also a ranking factor.
Alt Tag (for Image Links)
Alt text is an image’s version of anchor text. All images tagged stand a better chance of being included in Google’s image gallery.
Links from .edu or .gov Domains
While some people think there’s more significance placed on links coming from education or government websites, it it not true. Much non-factual information is known to come from government websites with biased content acting like a brochure for the current governments narrative.
Authority of Linking Page
The authority (PageRank) of the referring page is an extremely important ranking factor. The more authority a website page has, the higher the importance given to its links.
Authority of Linking Domain
The referring domains authority also factors to the links value. If the homepage has a high PageRank, that will affect the overall value of a link coming from an inner page.
Links From Competitor Websites
Links from other pages ranking within the same SERP will be beneficial for that particular keyword, but unlikely to happen for obvious reasons.
Social Shares of Referring Page
The amount of page-level social shares used to influence the link’s value, but these days the value of social media sites interaction is small to the point of being insignificant.
Links from Bad Neighbourhoods
Links from ‘bad neighbourhoods’ can hurt your site. Spam links and links coming from casino and offshore businesses that have a poor reputation will hurt your PageRank.
Guest Posts
Although guest posting can be part of a ‘white hat’ SEO campaign, links coming from guest posts are not be as valuable as a contextual link on the same page. It’s well known and accepted that guest posts are done to promote the author, often with little regard to the website they’re writing for. They’re also paid for, so in the scheme of everything is a paid link worth as much as a link given because of receiving quality service, products or information? The answer is no!
Links to Homepage Domain that Page Sits On
Links to a referring page’s homepage does carry importance and therefore a link’s.
Nofollow Links
Google follow ‘nofollow’ links. A high number of these links demonstrate an unnatural link profile which can reduce their value.
Diversity of Link Types
Having an unnaturally large percentage of your links come from a single source, such as a forum or blog can be a sign of spam, however links from diverse sources is a sign of a natural link profile.
‘Sponsored Links’ Or Other Words Around Link
Words like ‘link partners’ and ‘sponsored links’ can decrease a link’s value because it’s position is bought not won.
Contextual Links
Links embedded within the content on a page are considered better than all other types of links, especially if they are explained and tagged well.
Excessive 301 Redirects to Page
Links coming from 301 redirects can dilute PageRank, so if they are required, and there are many good reasons why they are needed, fixing up all links on a domain to those redirected pages is something that should be done.
Backlink Anchor Text
Written well, anchor text is still important, but less than what it used to be. Relevancy is a considering factor as to how it’s measured and valued.
Internal Link Anchor Text
Internal link anchor text is more important and weighed differently than backlink anchor text. Using text that explains what the link is being used for is a good idea.
Link Title Attribution
The link title is also used as a relevancy signal and can be used to enhance user experience.
Country TLD of Referring Domain
Getting links from country-specific top level domain extensions (.com.au, .com, .co.uk) will help you rank better in that country. This will also depend on the nature of the content. A wider country based link attribution can give you a boost.
Link Location In Content
Links placed close to the beginning of a piece of content carry more weight than links placed at the end of the content, however this is minor. A link close to the end, or in the summary section is better than not having a link.
Link Location on Page
Where a link appears on a page is important. While links embedded in a page’s content are more powerful than links appearing in a sidebar and those found in the footer of the page, user experience is important, so if those links are used to keep a visitor on the site for longer. they’re valuable, especially if they result in a goal being met.
Linking Domain Relevancy
A link from a website in a similar niche is significantly more valuable than a link from a completely unrelated site. That’s why any effective SEO plan or strategy today focuses on obtaining relevant links.
Page Level Relevancy
A link from a page that’s closely relevant to the page’s content is more powerful than a link from an unrelated page, even if the website’s domain is relevant.
Text Around Link Sentiment
Links with positive sentiments around them do carry more weight.
Keyword in Title
Google gives value to links on pages that contain your page’s keyword in the title.
Positive Link Velocity
A site with positive link velocity will get a SERP boost because it’s being discovered as valuable by more people.
Negative Link Velocity
Negative link velocity will significantly reduce rankings as it’s a signal of decreasing popularity. This often happens to websites that have not uploaded any new content or displays outdated content.
Links from ‘Hub’ Pages
Pages that are considered top resources (or hubs) on a certain topic are given special treatment and often appear above and before organic search results.
Link from Authority Sites
A link from a site considered an ‘authority site’ is valued more significantly than from a small micro niche site with just a handful of pages.
Linked to as Wikipedia Source
Although all the links coming from Wikipedia are nofollow, receiving a link from Wikipedia will be viewed positively from a trust and authority perspective in the eyes of search engines.
Co-Occurrences
The words that surround backlinks lets Google know what that page is about. Again it comes back to relevancy. Text within the sentence and paragraph help identify what the link is for and about.
Backlink Age
Google states older links have more ranking significance to newer ones.
Links from Real Sites vs. Blogs
Due to the increased number of blog networks, often from affiliate marketing efforts, Google gives more weight to links coming from ‘real sites’ than those coming from made-up blogs. Brand identification can help separate these, as well as having their own content, not just offering articles for the sake of linking.
Natural Link Profile
A site with a ‘natural’ link profile is going to rank higher.
Reciprocal Links
Google’s Link Schemes page lists ‘Excessive link exchanging’ as a link scheme to avoid. Quid pro quo has no value to the visitor.
User Generated Content Links
Google can identify links generated from visitors to a website compared to inks from content the site writes itself. Content written by the site is more valuable, hence the link is considered more valuable than areas of the site given to visitors to write their content in.
Links from 301
Links from 301 redirects are not as strong as a direct link.
Schema.org Microformats
Pages that support microformats, all other factors being equal will rank above pages without it.
DMOZ.org Listed
Google used to give DMOZ listed sites a little extra trust, but that significance is now negligible.
TrustRank of Linking Site
The trustworthiness of the site linking to you determines how much ‘TrustRank’ gets passed onto you.
Number of Outbound Links on Page
PageRank is finite. A link on a page with hundreds of other outbound links will pass on less PageRank compared to a page that has only a few links.
Forum Profile Links
Many forums are prone to and set up to spam. Google will not value these links.
Word Count of Linking Content
A link from a 2,000 word articles is more valuable than a link inside of a 25 word snippet.
Sitewide Links
Sitewide links, such as those that appear on every page in a websites footer count as a single link.
Organic Click Through Rate for a Keyword
Pages that get clicked more, have a higher CTR, will receive a SERP boost for that particular keyword.
Bounce Rate
High amounts of people bouncing quickly is not good and needs to be investigated as to why its occurring. While a metric, it’s of little real value to SERP position.
Direct Traffic
Websites with lots of direct organic traffic are considered higher quality than sites that get very little direct traffic.
Repeat Traffic
Websites with repeat visitors receive a Google ranking boost.
Chrome Bookmarks
Google collects Chrome browser usage data. Pages that get bookmarked in Chrome do get a boost, however it’s insignificant.
Number of Comments
Some websites allow, in fact encourage visitor comments. Pages with lots of comments demonstrate high user-interaction and quality, especially if productive so will be given a boost in SERP.
Dwell Time
Google pays very close attention to how long people spend on your page when coming from a Google search and how long they spend on the website, with the number of pages visited also monitored. Typically you’re after 2 pages or more and 2 minutes as a minimum. If people spend a lot of time on your site, you will receive a SERP boost.
Query Deserves Freshness
Google gives newer pages a boost for certain searches.
Query Deserves Diversity
Google adds diversity to a SERP for ambiguous keywords, typically for one word searches. Visitors over the years however have trained themselves to be more specific when searching, to see more relevant, helpful results.
User Browsing History
Sites that you frequently visit while signed into Google get a SERP bump for your searches, but that will not affect organic results when you’re not and after clearing your browser history.
User Search History
Search chain influence search results for later searches. For example, if you search for ‘reviews’ then search for ‘landscapers’, Google is more likely to show landscaper review sites higher in the SERPs.
Geo Targeting
Google gives some preference to sites with a local server IP and country-specific domain name extension. In other words if you’re searching on a mobile phone and in Adelaide, the search results for cafes will show local cafes to you, even though some in Melbourne may have a higher PageRank etc.
Safe Search
Search results with curse words or adult content won’t appear for people with Safe Search turned on.
Google Business Page
Google shows higher results for matching information that you’ve added to your Google Profile Business Page. you can also benefit by having your business page shown in SERP too.
DMCA Complaints
Google ‘downranks’ pages with Digital Millennium Copyright Act complaints. This is often caused by including news content and images that are not yours to use.
Domain Diversity
The so-called ‘Bigfoot Update’ supposedly added more domains to each SERP page reducing the number of URLs from the same domain to 2.
Transactional Searches
Google often displays different results for shopping-related keywords, causing anti-trust litigation as it promotes advertising from its own services.
Local Searches
Google often places Google Local results above the organic SERPs. In fact this has become more prevalent across a wider range of categories.
Google News Box
Certain keywords trigger a Google News box.
Big Brand Preference
After the Vince Update, Google began giving big brands a boost for certain short-tail searches.
Shopping Results
Google sometimes displays Google Shopping results in organic SERPs:
Image Results
Google often places images above organic search results when image results for searches are commonly used on Google Image Search.
Many keyword searches, such as those including ‘ideas’ come from people wanting to look at pictures.Easter Egg Results
Google has a dozen or so Easter Egg results. For example, when you search for “Atari Breakout” in Google image search, the search results turn into a playable game.
Single Site Results for Brands
Domain or brand-oriented keywords, including business names will bring up many results from the same site.
Number of Tweets
Like links, the tweets a page has, is measured but the influence it has on rank in Google is negligible.
Authority of Twitter Users Accounts
Tweets coming from aged, authority Twitter profiles with millions of followers (like Donald Trump had) have more of an effect than tweets from new, no-influence accounts, but again the effect that has on a page’s ranking is small.
Number of Facebook Likes
Google can’t see most Facebook accounts. The number of Facebook likes a page receives has a very weak ranking effect.
Facebook Shares
Similar to a backlink, the effect is considered more relevant than Facebook likes.
Authority of Facebook User Accounts
As with Twitter, Facebook shares and likes coming from highly popular Facebook pages would carry more weight than those that are small.
Pinterest Pins
Pinterest pages used to rank high for many search terms, but has dropped off significantly. Pins, carry little value.
Votes on Social Sharing Sites
The vote counts on sites like Reddit, Stumble upon and Digg have little to no effect on influencing a pages overall position in SERP.
Known Authorship
Back in 2013, Google had a huge push on verifying authors of web content. The program was ultimately shut down with authorship having very negligible effect on a pages standing.
Social Signal Relevancy
Google uses relevancy information from the account sharing the content and the text surrounding the link, but the power that has to change PageRank is negligible.
Site Level Social Signals
Site wide social signals has an effect on a website’s overall authority, which increases search visibility for all of its pages.
Business Name Anchor Text
Incorporating the business name within anchor text is a simple, but strong brand signal.
Branded Searches
People search for brands and businesses. The name has to be known to the person searching first. If people search for your website by using your name, Google will factor this in when determining a brand.
It’s important therefore when speaking to people you use your correct business name.Site Has Facebook Page and Likes
Brands have Facebook pages with lots of likes.
Site has Twitter Profile with Followers
Twitter profiles with a lot of followers signals a popular brand.
Official Instagram Profile Company Page
Many large businesses publish images relating to the company, promotional corporate sponsored events etc. on their official Instagram account page.
Official LinkedIn Company Page
Many businesses have company LinkedIn page.
Employees Listed at LinkedIn
Employee LinkedIn profiles mentioning the business name they work for is a brand signal.
Legitimacy of Social Media Accounts
A social media account with 20,000 followers and 5 posts is considered differently than another 20,000 follower strong account with hundreds of interactions.
Brand Mentions on News Sites
Big name brands get mentioned on Google News sites all the time. Some brands even have their own Google News feed on the first page.
Co-Citations
Large national and multinational Brands often get mentioned within text without getting linked to. Google looks at non-hyperlinked brand mentions as a brand signal.
Number of RSS Subscribers
Considering that Google, since 2007, owns the popular Feedburner RSS service that can read RSS feeds, it follows they look at RSS Subscriber data as a popularity/brand signal.
Since most people don’t know what a RSS Feed is, let alone subscribing to one, the relevance is next to zero.Bricks and Mortar Location With Google Local Listing
Real businesses have offices. Big businesses have many, often with warehouses and other real estate holdings. Google looks at location-data to determine whether or not a website is a big brand.
Registered Business
Google examines whether the website is associated with a registered business name, or names.
Panda Penalty
Sites with low-quality content, including content farms are less visible in search after getting hit after the ‘Panda Update’.
Links to Bad Neighbourhoods
Linking out to ‘bad neighbourhoods’ for the sake of reciprocal backlinks will impact search visibility.
Redirects
Sneaky redirects, there are a number of different versions of these will get a site penalized, or even de-indexed from SERP.
Popups or Distracting Ads
The official Google Guidelines Document says that popups and distracting ads is a sign of a low quality site. Given the extremely high number of sites that have pop-ups, the relevancy of this is negligible.
Site Over-Optimization
Often referred to as ‘Black Hat’ methods, on-page factors like keyword stuffing, header tag stuffing, excessive keyword decoration will all be penalised.
Page Over-Optimization
Unlike the Panda Update, ‘Penguin’ targeted individual pages and certain keywords.
Ads Above the Fold
The ‘Page Layout Algorithm’ penalises sites with lots of ads and little content ‘above the fold’, which is an old newspaper term, translating to screen height these days.
Hiding Affiliate Links
Going too far when trying to hide affiliate links or ‘cloaking’ will be penalised.
Affiliate Sites
The fact that Google isn’t the biggest fan of affiliates is no secret. Websites that monetise with affiliate links are put under extra scrutiny, except the ones paying Google.
Autogenerated Content
Google will penalise autogenerated content or de-index the website.
Excess PageRank Sculpting
Excessive ‘no following’ all outbound links and most internal links can be a sign of gaming the system.
IP Address Flagged as Spam
If your server’s IP address is flagged for spam, it can in extreme circumstances hurt all the sites on that server.
Meta Tag Spamming
Keyword stuffing can also happen in meta tags. If Google thinks you’re adding keywords to your meta tags to game the algorithm, they can hit your site with a penalty.
Unnatural Influx of Links
A sudden and unnatural influx of links is a sign of phony links.
Penguin Penalty
Sites that were hit by Google’s ‘Penguin’ update are significantly less visible in search.
Link Profile with High Percentage of Low Quality Links
Lots of links coming from blog comments and forum profiles, are a sign of people attempting to manipulate of ‘game’ the system.
Linking Domain Relevancy
Websites with an unnaturally high amount of links from unrelated sites were penalised by ‘Penguin’.
Unnatural Links Warning
Google sends out thousands of ‘Google Webmaster Tools notice of detected unnatural links’ messages. This often precedes a ranking drop if not addressed quickly.
Links from the Same Class C IP
Getting an unnatural amount of links from sites on the same server IP can be a sign of blog network link building.
‘Poison’ Anchor Text
Having ‘poison’ anchor text (such as pharmacy or payday loan keywords) pointed to your site is a sign of spam or a hacked site. Either way, this will hurt your website’s SERP ranking.
Manual Penalty
Google has hand out manual penalties. The whole Interflora fiasco is proof that buying links can inflate your rankings in the short term, and proof that it isn’t worth if for brands to take the risk.
Ironically, it’s actually more costly to buy links than to attract them naturally.Selling Links
Selling links can definitely impact PageRank and can hurt your search visibility.
Google Sandbox
New sites that get a sudden, unexpected influx of links are sometimes put in the Google Sandbox, temporarily limiting search visibility until the reason has been worked out.
Disavow Tool
Use of Google’s Disavow Tool can remove a manual or algorithmic penalty for sites that were the victims of negative SEO.
The tool allows for the removal of links from websites you don’t want to be associated with.Reconsideration Request
After launching a reconsideration request, successful applicants will have a penalty lifted.
Temporary Link Schemes
Google can catch people that create, then quickly remove spammy links with the intent of boosting inbound links. This trick is also known as a temporary link scheme.
Google Dance
The Google Dance can temporarily shake up rankings. According to a Google Patent, this can be a way for them to determine whether or not a site is trying to game the algorithm by unnaturally clicking on a URL.
Domain Factors
Page-Level Factors
Site-Level Factors
Backlink Factors
User Interaction
Creating funnels is critical in turning visitors into customers.
Special Algorithm Rules
Social Signals
Social media has next to no influence on where a URL will be placed so time and money spent on social site pages especially for a small business on a tight budget should be relatively small.
Brand Signals
Using the above techniques, Thinking IT can associate search terms to your business name and website URL.
This in turn can make your business name appear in the related search section, located at the base of SERP pages.
While many, if not most online marketing companies across Adelaide and Australia will push for you to spend a lot of money in promoting your business socially, the resultant ROI will be extremely poor.
By all means have a Facebook and Twitter, even Instagram profile, but be mindful of the time and money spent with what you ultimately gain from it.
On-Site Web Spam Factors
20 years, even 10 years ago unscrupulous SEO practitioners used many of the above practices and got away with it.
This is no longer possible. After ‘caching’ a website, before indexing, Googles Algorithm checks before deciding where to place a URL for a given search term.
