Google’s Ranking Factors
SEO, as it pertains to your business, is the process of optimizing a webpage for the search engines so that it is seen as relevant more often than other pages so that you show higher in search results – meaning that someone looking for your product/service, whether in the local Kitchener/Waterloo, Guelph, Cambridge area, or elsewhere, will choose to engage with your business and not your competition.
Brian Dean did an infographic in Search Engine Journal breaking down what Google looks at when they are deciding how to rank a specific webpage as it relates to SEO. This simplistic list goes to demonstrate just how in-depth Google’s analysis is of each page they index and goes to show that simply slicing off a few select elements of SEO will not give you the results that you want – especially if you are in a competitive marketplace.
SEO Factor Categories:
Domain
- Domain age
- Keywords in TLD
- Keyword as first word
- Registration length
- KW in subdomain
- History
- Exact match domain
- Public vs. private WHOIS
- Penalized WHOIS owner
- Country TLD extension
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Page-Level
- KW in title tag
- Title tag starts with KW
- KW in description tag
- KW in H1
- KW is most frequent used phrase in document
- Content length
- KW density
- Latent semantic indexing KW in content (LSI)
- LSI KW in title & description tags
- Page loading speed via HTML
- Duplicate content
- Re-canonical
- Page loading speed via chrome
- Image optimization
- Recency of content updates
- Magnitude of content updates
- Historical updates page updates
- KW prominence
- KW in H2, H3 tags
- KW word order
- Outbound link quality
- Outbound link theme
- Grammar and spelling
- Syndicated content
- Helpful supplementary content
- Number of outbound links
- Multimedia
- Number of internal links point to page
- Quality of internal links point to page
- Broken links
- Reading level
- Affiliate links
- HTML errors/WC3 validation
- Page hosts domain authority
- Page’s pagerank
- URL length
- URL path
- Human editors
- Page category
- WordPress tags
- KW in URL
- URL string
- References and sources
- Bullets and number lists
- Priority of page in sitemap
- Too many outbound links
- Quantity of other KW page ranks for
- Page age
- User friendly layout
- Parked domains
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Site-Level
- Content provides value and unique insights
- Contact us page
- Domain trust/trustrank
- Site architecture
- Site updates
- Number of pages
- Presence of sitemap
- Site uptime
- Server location
- SSL certificate (e-comm sites)
- Terms of service
- Duplicate content on site
- Breadcrumb navigation
- Mobile optimized
- YouTube
- Site usability
- Use of GA and WM tools
- User reviews/site reputation
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Backlinks
- Linking domain age
- Number of linking root domains
- Number of llinks from separate C-Class IPS
- Number of linking pages
- ALT tag (for image links)
- Links from .edu or .gov
- PR of linking page
- Authority of linking domain
- Links from competitors
- Social shares of referring page
- Links from bad neighbor hoods
- Guest posts
- Links to homepage domain that page sits on
- No-follow links
- Diversity of links types
- Contextual links
- Sponsored links or other words around link
- Excessive 301 redirects to page
- Backlink anchor text
- Internal link anchor text
- Link title attribution
- Country TLD of referring domain
- Link location in content
- Link location on page
- Linking domain relevancy
- Page level relevancy
- Text around link sentiment
- KW in title
- Positive link velocity
- Negative link velocity
- Links from ‘Hub’ pages
- Link from authority sites
- Linked to as Wikipedia source
- Co-occurrences
- Backlink age
- Links from real sites vs. splogs
- Natural link profile
- Reciprocal links
- User generated content links
- Links from 301
- DMOZ listed
- Yahoo! Directory listed
- Number of outbound links on page
- Forum profile links
- Word count of linking content
- Quality of linking content
- Site-wide links
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User Interaction
- Organic CTR for a KW
- Organic CTR for all KWs
- Bounce rate
- Direct traffic
- Repeat traffic
- Blocked sites
- Chrome bookmarks
- Google toolbar data
- Number of comments
- Time on site
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Special Miscellaneous
- Query deserves freshness
- Query deserves diversity
- User browsing history
- User search history
- Geo targeting
- Safe search
- Google+ circles
- DMCA complaints
- Domain diversity
- Transactional searches
- Local searches
- Google news box
- Big brand preference
- Shopping results
- Image results
- Single site results for brands
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Social
- Number of tweets
- Authority of twitter users accounts
- Number of FB likes
- FB shares
- Authority of FB user accounts
- Pinterest pins
- Votes on social sharing sites
- Number of Google +1’s
- Authority of Google+ user accounts
- Verified Google+ authorship
- Social signal relevancy
- Site level social signals
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Brand
- Brand name anchor text
- Branded searche
- Site has FB page and likes
- Site has Twitter profile with followers
- Official LinkedIn company page
- Employees listed at LinkedIn
- Legitimacy of social media accounts
- Brand mentions on news sites
- Co-citations
- Number of RSS subscribers
- Brick and mortar location with Google+ local listing
- Website is tax paying business
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On-site Webspam
- Panda penalty
- Links to bad neighborhoods
- Redirects
- Popups or distracting ads
- Site over-optimization
- Page over-optimization
- Ads above the fold
- Hiding afflilate links
- Affiliate sites
- Autogenerated content
- Excess PR sculpting
- IP address flagged as spam
- Meta tag spamming
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Off-page Webspam
- Unnatural influx of links
- Penguin penalty
- Link profile with high % of low quality links
- Linking domain relevancy
- Unnatural links warning
- Links from the same class C IP
- ‘poison’ anchor text
- Manual penalty selling links
- Google sandbox
- Google dance
- Disavow tool
- Reconsideration request
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This is by no means a complete list of what Google’s actual SEO ranking factor checklist is, but it is definitely the most thorough attempt to catalogue what elements of SEO the search engines do take into consideration. It also does not offer any sort of weighting for each SEO element. This is where the experience of a true, up-to-date professional SEO service provider, such as Advanced Web Solutions, makes all the difference in the world to your business. As a note, AWS targets these SEO ranking factors but groups them differently in order to simplify the SEO process for our customers.
Please note that Google’s exact list of ranking factors is a closely guarded secret, as are the weightings of each SEO element. I do however ask that you investigate exactly what the SEO company you are using, or about to invest in, will be doing for you. Check it against the above list of SEO ranking factors and see just how in-depth they are willing to go for your business.
If you are in the Kitchener/Waterloo, Cambridge or Guelph areas, please do not hesitate to contact Advanced Web Solutions to see exactly what we offer in regards to SEO services. As a Waterloo SEO company, we know what it takes to push you to the top, as is evident by our successes.
Please take this opportunity to contact AWS using the form below with your questions. If you aren’t ready to contact us, we encourage you to educate yourself further on SEO by visiting our blog or simply perusing our website more. To help get you started, check out the following links on what makes SEO important and what to expect from your SEO company/service provider:
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