What are the most important search engine ranking factors?
Google has stated that there are more than 200 SEO ranking factors that control where your website ranks when people search for what you do or sell. They are not all weighted equally: some are exponentially more important than others. And it helps to know which are the most important so that you can spend your time as wisely as possible improving your website for good search rankings.
SparkToro recently reported on a survey of more than 1,500 SEO professionals to arrive at a consensus about the relative importance of 26 different ranking factors. I’d like to focus on the top dozen factors you should pay attention to. But before we begin, here’s the relative ranking chart from SparkToro, rated on a 10-point scale of importance.
Let’s dive into the top dozen SEO ranking factors from this list.
Relevance of your page content. Clearly, this earns the top spot because if your page isn’t highly related to what was searched for, Google will never want to show it. The focus of your page content needs to be highly relevant to the search. The most common violation of that is when a local service-oriented website has a Services page that lists all the services they offer. Unless each bulleted service links to a page that’s all about that specific service, it’s a wasted page. I often have to explain that a page that’s about everything you do is really not about anything you do.
Quality of your link profile. Your importance or authority on the web is very heavily dependent on your inbound link profile. That’s the number and quality of other websites that have links pointing to yours. Each one of those inbound links is a vote for you. But web pages that have a high authoritative score help you much more than pages with less authority.
Use of query-relevant words and phrases. Google does an excellent job of understanding the semantic relevance of your content. Inclusion of related words and phrases helps Google understand the focus of your page and compare it to the searcher’s intent. For example, a page about New York pizza could be about a restaurant in New York City, or about a recipe for New York-style homemade pizza. The non-keyword phrases and words on the page help Google to understand its relevance to a given query.
Domain E-A-T: Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness.E-A-T is heavily dependent upon both your content (including the author’s expertise) and your link profile. If you’re the author of content on your website and blog, your personal perceived expertise counts in your favor. You can build on that by publishing frequently, thoroughly, and widely about topics related to your business.
Mobile Friendliness. Ever since Mobilegeddon or Mopocalypse in 2015, it’s been essential for your website to be mobile friendly. And it’s important for your website to be responsive rather than having a separate website for mobile. Google’s index which they use for ranking, is now based on the mobile version of your website, not the version people see on a desktop. With more than half of all searches done on phones, not being mobile friendly hurts not only your ranking, but severely affects conversions from anyone who ends up on your website from their phone.
Exact Match Keywords. While Google has gotten much better at understanding related words and keyword phrases that may be in different orders or broken up on your page, having an exact match for the keyword phrase people search for the most is still important.
Quantity and Diversity of Linking Websites. This refers to your inbound link profile. It’s important to have not just a lot of inbound links to your site, but to have them from different domains rather than having many of them come from one website.
Content Accuracy. If the content on your page is at odds with widely accepted facts, it’s unlikely to rank well. While Google is looking for authoritative pages, part of what makes a page authoritative is Google’s assessment of its accuracy.
Link Authority. This is about the Domain Authority of your website. Each page also has an authority value, but this is referring to your overall website’s authority. It’s based on the quality of other websites that link to you.
Page E-A-T. While the domain’s Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness is very important (it’s number four on this list), the E-A-T of the page that’s going to appear in search results is also important.
Page Query-Relevant Content. Is it clear to the searcher why the search engine retrieved your page? If not, it’s time to re-think the content and design of your page.
Load Speed. How fast a page downloads is important for two reasons. First, it’s a ranking factor at Google, so a slow page is unlikely to rank as highly as a fast page, all other things being equal. Second, the likelihood of someone abandoning your page before reading it — and going back to the Google results increases dramatically with how long your page downloads to a user’s browser or phone. That’s called a “bounce” and too many of those will hurt your rankings in the future. Google considers page speed good if it’s under two seconds. I consider it acceptable if it’s under three seconds. But every second extracts more abandonments of your page.
If you’d like to explore any of these search ranking factors with respect to your own website, I’m happy to speak with you. Just give me a call.
Schema is a common short term for structured data, named after Schema.org, the website for structured data markup. It was created by a collaborative team from Google, Bing, and Yahoo. It’s not too often that competitors come together with a common purpose. But structured coding is important enough for them to do it. It creates an agreed-upon set of rules for structured data that tells the search engines exactly what kind of information is on your website.
Schema code goes into the HTML code that tells a browser what information is on your website and how to display it. According to schema.org:
Most webmasters are familiar with HTML tags on their pages. Usually, HTML tags tell the browser how to display the information included in the tag. For example, <h1>Avatar</h1> tells the browser to display the text string “Avatar” in a heading 1 format. However, the HTML tag doesn’t give any information about what that text string means — “Avatar” could refer to the hugely successful 3D movie, or it could refer to a type of profile picture—and this can make it more difficult for search engines to intelligently display relevant content to a user.
Schema for SEO
We always recommend that our SEO clients include schema structured data markup as an important SEO technique. That’s because giving the search engines structured data helps them understand your webpages better and results in a ranking increase for you. It’s especially critical for local SEO. One study determined that websites with schema coding rank an average of four positions higher in search engine results than those without schema markup.
Schema allows search engines to better understand addresses, dates of events, phone numbers, email addresses, and other information about you. So it helps Google understand:
who you are
what you do
how to reach you,
and (critical for local businesses) where you are.
Since schema is in the HTML code of your website, it’s the responsibility of your web designer to understand how to write that part of the code for your site. The structured code in schema tends to be detailed and complex. Unless you’re acting as your own web designer, the two things you need to know about schema on your website are
Did I say this stuff is complex? True. Above is a small sample of structured code from Google’s Structured data Testing Tool. But that’s why your small business’ competitors are probably not using it. So implementing it on your own site gives you a significant advantage over those competitors who don’t use it. [Update October 19, 2020] For those of you who’d like a more thorough treatment of everything available in schema code, check out FatJoe’s article Everything You Need to Know About Schema Markup in 2020.
Don’t worry!
There is a stupefyingly simple way to implement this stuff on your website. It’s a lifesaver if you’re doing your own coding, but even if your webmaster does it for you, this solution can save significant time, effort, and money.
I have long been a proponent of Yext PowerListings for local businesses. Yext is the leader in local data management, and many of my clients subscribe to their Knowledge Graph service. [Full disclosure: I am a Yext Certified Partner] In a nutshell, PowerListings gives you a single place to enter tons of information about your business which is then published on more than six dozen local search engines, directories, maps, and mobile apps.
Yext Knowledge Tags is an enhancement to their Knowledge Graph PowerListings which provides a simple short snippet of code to add to your web pages that will implement full schema coding throughout. If anything changes in your Knowledge Graph, it’s automatically reflected in the schema code on your website. Immediately.
For existing subscribers, this is a no-brainer in my opinion. But whether or not you currently subscribe to the Yext Knowledge Graph or “PowerListings”, this is worth your serious consideration. I refer you to our explanation of local SEO, citations, and PowerListings.
Colloquially, the term “Google penalty” , usually means anything on your website that is harming your rankings. According to Google, though, a “penalty” is a manual action taken by Google that negatively affects your rankings.
Manual Penalties
These are real “penalties”. If you get hit with a manual penalty, you should see evidence from that in your Google Search Console. Normally Google will identify exactly what you’ve done that they don’t like. So obviously, you should fix whatever that might be.
Once you’ve fixed the offending practice on your site, you can ask Google to re-index your site with the corrective actions implemented. Normally that will restore you to Google’s good graces and eliminate the penalty. This doesn’t happen immediately, though, and you can expect the delay of possibly weeks before you see your rankings improve.
Algorithm penalties
There are a number of things that might happen on your website that can negatively affect your rankings without incurring a manual penalty. I call those algorithm penalties because they’re just a normal result of Google’s algorithms evaluating the content on your site. Here are a few of the most common ones.
If you’re cutting costs by using a free hosting service, there is one common attribute of those that can get you in trouble with Google. That’s when the hosting service compensates for the free service they’re giving you by adding advertising to your web pages. Some of that advertising may be pretty spammy, and Google is not likely to be happy with it.
Malware
If your website has been infected by any viruses, trojans, or spyware, you’ll get hit with one of these penalties. Make sure your website is malware-free. The GlobalSign blog has some excellent suggestions on how to find malware on your site and how to protect against it. You can check that out here.
Thin content
Many websites for visually oriented businesses overly rely on images on their pages and have very little text. Those photos or graphics could be pictures of your pet cat as far as Google can tell. Google can read the alternate text behind your images (you do have that, right?), but other than that images do little to help Google understand what your page is about.
Aside from that, if you’re overly concerned about brevity on your pages, you can run into the same problem. If there’s too little text content on your pages, regardless of why, you may be penalized for thin content.
You can also run into those pages being considered “duplicate content” if the actual body content of the page pales in size with other elements on the page that are common to all pages on your website (think footers, sidebars, and so forth). In this caseyou may be facing the plagiarism penalty (see below).
Keyword stuffing
This is an ancient SEO technique to make sure your targeted keyword phrase appears many times on the page. This used to work with some early search engines. But it provides a very poor user experience for those trying to read your content. Google is smart enough to identify that and consider it a negative ranking factor. I still see this from time to time.
Plagiarism
If you copied significant amounts of content from another website (even if you own that other website) Google considers it to be duplicate content. Google is excellent at identifying duplicate content and will usually try to show only the oldest of those duplicate pages. If you think about it, it’s pretty obvious that there is little benefit to the user if Google shows a bunch of pages that all say the same thing. So Google doesn’t do that. If the content on your page is not original, it may never show up in Google search results.
I see this sometimes on websites designed by vertical web services. These are companies that specialize in a particular kind of businesses like handyman services, dental practices, plumbers, etc. The often have lots of excellent pre-written content about the kinds of services these businesses provide. One problem with this is that many other businesses in your niche may use the same pre-written content that ends up on your website. Bingo: you have duplicate content! If you use such a company, please ensure that the content they put on your pages is unique to you.
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I’ll be presenting at Fairleigh Dickinson University on Wednesday, May 8 at 6:30 PM.
The presentation is focused on small businesses and startups, and will explain the essentials of search engine optimization, focusing on things you can do yourself. If you have more time than money in your startup or small business, invest some time in making sure that you show up in Google when potential customers are looking for someone who does what you do.
“Alexa, tell me about voice search” “I found this information on: Boy George”
Virtual assistants may be far from perfect – just search #AlexaFail on Twitter – but they sure are popular.
A 2018 survey of over 90,000 internet users found that 17% currently own a smart speaker (such as a Google Home, or an Amazon Echo), with a further 34% planning to purchase one in the near future. 20% of mobile Google searches are also carried out using a virtual assistant such as Siri.
Voice search is clearly here to stay, and businesses need to pay attention. Why? Because while the Alexas and Siris of the world may be saving lives, they could be killing your SEO.
We’ll take a quick look at four foolproof ways to stay on their good side.
1. Siri Loves Structured Data
It’s true, she really does.
But first, what exactly is structured data? Structured data helps the Google bots to better understand your website, and the content you write. While humans can easily identify tables, lists and reviews by sight, robots need a little more help. When you add structured data to your pages, you’ll need to use what’s known as ‘schema markup’. This is a specific type of HTML code that lets Google recognize the format of the data you’ve added, and – crucially – pull this data through for search result snippets. Think of it like speaking to the Google bots in a language they can understand. And the better they understand you, the better chance your site will have of ranking.
That said, adding elements like ‘review schema’ benefits users, as well as robots. By pulling through a review’s star rating to the results page, users have a far clearer idea of the type of content they’ll be viewing, which in turn should boost your click-through rate. Plus, by adding a variety of types of content to your pages you’ll also improve the experience of those viewing your site online (nobody likes to be faced with a huge wall of text!), so it really is a win-win.
So why does voice search favor structured data so much? By adding schema markup in the right places, you’re spelling out to Google exactly where it can find the content it needs to answer a voice search query. The easier you can make its job, the better!
And keep your eyes peeled for the launch of ‘speakable structured data’. It’s still in its BETA phase at the moment, but if introduced it will let you wrap certain parts of your copy in a specific markup code to signpost it as the perfect voice search result for Google.
2. Conversation is Key
The way we type a search query is different from the way we search by speaking aloud.
Instead of typing ‘what is SEO’, or even ‘SEO what is’, we’re more likely to say ‘what’s SEO?’. This might seem like semantics (and technically, it is!), but bringing a conversational feel to your content is a surefire way to set you up for voice search success.
Here are three easy ways to nail conversational content:
Use contractions, such as what’s, it’s, and here’s. This is simply more reflective of how we speak. E.g. ‘You might be wondering exactly what SEO is. Here’s a quick breakdown…’
Use questions and answers. Why? Because it makes your content more engaging, and it signposts snappy answers to be picked up as voice search snippets. E.g. ‘So what is SEO? SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It’s all about…’
Use natural language. It can be tempting to drift into complicated language in your copy, which can be off-putting to both robots and humans alike. Follow the easy rule: ‘If you can say it in a simpler way, do’.
3. Revel in Mobile Responsiveness
Mobile responsiveness is no longer the secret of clued-up web designers; all the best website builders in the business now offer completely mobile-responsive templates as standard. In SEO terms, having a mobile responsive website is an essential, not a preference.
But how does mobile responsiveness help with voice search optimization? With the vast majority of voice searches still carried out on mobile, your site needs to offer the best mobile user experience in order to compete for voice search snippets. That means a site that’s fast, and easy to navigate from your phone. Again, this is something that will benefit all your mobile users, not just those using voice search.
4. Fish for Long-Tail Keywords
When it comes to targeting keywords, voice search presents an opportunity rather than a challenge.
People are lazy when they type. They rely on search engine intelligence to decipher the meaning behind their two or three word queries: think ‘best restaurant Washington’, ‘website cost’, or ‘find gas station’.
With voice search, people are a lot more talkative. You’re far more likely to see queries such as ‘where’s the best restaurant in Washington?’, ‘how much does a website cost?’ or ‘how far away is the nearest gas station?’. You can harness the power of these long-tail keywords in two key ways: First, the gift of extra information and a question word in these queries gives a much clearer idea of the user intent behind the search. By targeting these long-tail keywords, you’ll create more precise content that gives users the answers they’re really searching for. Second, you can (almost) say goodbye to shoehorning awkwardly worded keywords into your articles. Voice search queries are generally fully formed sentences that will easily double up as engaging H2s and H3s. Get ready for your content to (almost) write itself!
So there you have it: four simple ways to set your site up for voice search success.
But the best part? As we’ve mentioned throughout, these optimizations will improve the quality of your site for all users, not just those finding you through voice search. That means happy customers, happy search engines, and a website that’s ready to face future Google algorithm updates head on.
About the Author
Hannah Whitfield writes for Website Builder Expert, the number one resource for getting people online. Behind every successful online business is a sound knowledge of SEO, and Hannah wants to bring you the latest developments that’ll keep you one step ahead of the competition.
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Relevance of your page content. Clearly, this earns the top spot because if your page isn’t highly related to what was searched for, Google will never want to show it. The focus of your page content needs to be highly relevant to the search. The most common violation of that is when a local service-oriented website has a Services page that lists all the services they offer. Unless each bulleted service links to a page that’s all about that specific service, it’s a wasted page. I often have to explain that a page that’s about everything you do is really not about anything you do.
Quality of your link profile. Your importance or authority on the web is very heavily dependent on your inbound link profile. That’s the number and quality of other websites that have links pointing to yours. Each one of those inbound links is a vote for you. But web pages that have a high authoritative score help you much more than pages with less authority.
Mobile Friendliness. Ever since Mobilegeddon or Mopocalypse in 2015, it’s been essential for your website to be mobile friendly. And it’s important for your website to be responsive rather than having a separate website for mobile. Google’s index which they use for ranking, is now based on the mobile version of your website, not the version people see on a desktop. With more than half of all searches done on phones, not being mobile friendly hurts not only your ranking, but severely affects conversions from anyone who ends up on your website from their phone.
Quantity and Diversity of Linking Websites. This refers to your inbound link profile. It’s important to have not just a lot of inbound links to your site, but to have them from different domains rather than having many of them come from one website.
Schema is a common short term for structured data, named after Schema.org, the website for structured data markup. It was created by a collaborative team from 
We always recommend that our SEO clients include schema structured data markup as an important SEO technique. That’s because giving the search engines structured data helps them understand your webpages better and results in a ranking increase for you. It’s especially critical for 
There is a stupefyingly simple way to implement this stuff on your website. It’s a lifesaver if you’re doing your own coding, but even if your webmaster does it for you, this solution can save significant time, effort, and money.
Yext Knowledge Tags is an enhancement to their Knowledge Graph PowerListings which provides a simple short snippet of code to add to your web pages that will implement full schema coding throughout. If anything changes in your Knowledge Graph, it’s automatically reflected in the schema code on your website. Immediately.
“Alexa, tell me about voice search”
