To improve rankings, traffic and revenue from search, you need to start by optimising your site for the ranking factors of the most widely used search engine, Google. They run into the hundreds, from backlinks to content to page experience.
A couple of notes before we start:
- Where do these ranking factors come from? They were selected over 25 years of digital marketing experience across thousands of websites. They also come from official search engine documents, such as patents and Google's official documentation.
- Are these all of Google's ranking factors? Search algorithms are largely driven by machine learning, and you should not assume the ranking factors are the same for every industry or query. Google changes all the time: it is as if every single query followed its own algorithm, based on user data and on the ranking factors available, which keep evolving.
So if you are looking for SEO shortcuts, you won't find any here. This article is a detailed overview of the search engine ranking factors that keep their value even as algorithms get more complex. If you can't work out why your site is not ranking well, ask us for an audit.
First, let's look at the main SEO ranking factors.
What are the main SEO ranking factors?
The main SEO ranking factors in 2025 are:
- Backlinks
- Content
- Page experience
Find out more about these confirmed ranking factors below:
| Backlinks (PageRank) | ||
|---|---|---|
| What Google says: | According to Google Search Central, PageRank is "one of our core ranking systems" and helps the search engine "understand how pages link to each other as a way to determine what pages are about and which might be most helpful in response to a query". [ 109 , 110 ] | |
| How to optimise | Create content with an original point of view (or an interesting take) on a topic. Share original research, such as the results of a Twitter poll or a SurveyMonkey survey. Produce original visual content, such as an infographic or a video. Build a unique tool that helps solve a problem. Publish original content on other sites to strengthen your company's reputation. | |
| Content (helpful content) | ||
|---|---|---|
| What Google says: | According to Google Search Central: "The [helpful content] system generates a site-wide signal...for use in Google Search." "Any content, not just unhelpful content, on sites determined to have relatively high amounts of unhelpful content overall is less likely to perform well in Search, assuming there is other content elsewhere from the web that's better to display." "For this reason, removing unhelpful content could help the rankings of your other content." [ 37 ] | |
| How to optimise | Use your target keyword in the title tag, meta description and headings (H2, H3 and so on). Use target and related keywords throughout your content. Share your first-hand experience of a topic, for example how to fix a flat tyre. Highlight your expertise, such as your certifications, years of work in an industry and more. Highlight trust in your brand, for example with awards, reviews and more. | |
| Page experience | ||
|---|---|---|
| What Google says: | Google Search Central states: "Google's core ranking systems look to reward content that provides a good page experience." [ 108 ] | |
| How to optimise | Optimise your design for every device, from desktop to tablet and mobile. Migrate your site from HTTP to HTTPS and get an SSL certificate. Improve your page speed with image compression, code minification and server optimisation. Assess your site's accessibility. | |
Explore all the search engine ranking factors
See how Google generates search results by exploring these groups of search engine ranking factors:
- Confirmed
- Likely
- Potential
- Unlikely
For convenience, we have organised these ranking factors by importance:
- 🧊 Low: minimal SEO impact, not essential for ranking well.
- 🌡 ️ Medium: moderate SEO impact, necessary but not fundamental for ranking well.
- 🔥 High: the greatest SEO impact, fundamental for ranking well.
[Confirmed] SEO ranking factors
Since it launched, Google has confirmed more than 30 different SEO ranking factors, including:
| Canonical URL | ||
|---|---|---|
| 🔥High | According to Google Search Central, "there are a number of reasons why you would want to explicitly tell Google about a canonical page", including: 1. Specifying which URL you want people to see in search results 2. Consolidating signals for similar or duplicate pages 3. Avoiding spending crawl time on duplicate pages [ 29 ] | |
| Content helpfulness | ||
| 🔥High | According to Google Search Central: "[Helpful content] generates a site-wide signal... for use in Google Search." "Any content, not just unhelpful content, on sites determined to have relatively high amounts of unhelpful content overall is less likely to perform well in Search, assuming there is other content elsewhere from the web that's better to display." "For this reason, removing unhelpful content could help the rankings of your other content." [ 37 ] | |
| H1 tag | ||
| 🔥High | According to Google Search Central's guidelines on title tags, "heading elements, such as <h1> elements" are among the sources used to generate title links automatically. Because Google uses clicks in organic results as a ranking factor, the sources of title links act as an indirect ranking factor. [ 69 ] | |
| Keywords | ||
| 🔥High | According to Google Search's documentation on ranking: "Our systems analyze the content to assess whether it contains information that might be relevant to what you are looking for. The most basic signal that information is relevant is when content contains the same keywords as your search query." "For example, with webpages, if those keywords appear on the page, or if they appear in the headings or body of the text, the information might be more relevant." [ 91 ] | |
| Manual actions | ||
| 🔥High | According to Google's Search Console documentation, "If a site has a manual action, some or all of that site will not be shown in Google search results... Most issues reported here will result in pages or sites being ranked lower or omitted from search results without any visual indication to the user." [ 95 ] | |
| Number of DMCA notices | ||
| 🔥High | According to the Google Search blog, "we will begin [in 2012] taking into account a new signal in our rankings: the number of valid copyright removal notices we receive for any given site. Sites with high numbers of removal notices may appear lower in our results." [ 103 ] | |
| PageRank | ||
| 🔥High | According to Google Search Central, PageRank is "one of our core ranking systems" and helps the search engine "understand how pages link to each other as a way to determine what pages are about and which might be most helpful in response to a query". [ 109 , 110 ] | |
| Robots.txt | ||
| 🔥High | According to Google Search Central, "Google only indexes images and videos that Googlebot is allowed to crawl." [ 113 ] | |
| Title tag | ||
| 🔥High | According to Google Search Central, "A <title> element tells both users and search engines what the topic of a particular page is." [ 128 ] | |
| User search settings | ||
| 🔥High | Google Search's documentation on ranking results states: "Information such as your... search settings help us to ensure your results are what is most useful and relevant for you at that moment." [ 138 ] | |
| Webspam | ||
| 🔥High | According to Google Search Central and its guide to Google Search ranking systems, "We have a variety of spam-detection systems, including SpamBrain, that deal with content and behaviors that violate our spam policies." [ 142 ] | |
| XML sitemap | ||
| 🔥High | According to Google Search Central, "Create an XML sitemap file to ensure that search engines discover the new and updated pages on your site, listing all relevant URLs together with their primary content's last modified dates." [ 144 ] | |
| Fresh content | ||
| 🌡️Medium | Google Search Central's guide to Google Search ranking systems documents its "query deserves freshness" systems, which are "designed to show fresher content for queries where it would be expected". [ 36 ] | |
| Content originality | ||
| 🌡️Medium | Google Search Central's guide to Google Search ranking systems documents its original content systems, which "help ensure we're showing original content prominently in search results, including original reporting, ahead of those who merely cite it". [ 39 ] | |
| Core Web Vitals | ||
| 🌡️Medium | According to Google Search Central, "We highly recommend site owners achieve good Core Web Vitals for success with Search... This, along with other page experience aspects, aligns with what our core ranking systems seek to reward." [ 45 ] | |
| Domain diversity in SERPs | ||
| 🌡️Medium | Google Search Central's guide to Google Search ranking systems documents its site diversity system, which "works so that we generally won't show more than two webpage listings from the same site in our top results, so that no single site tends to dominate all the top results". [ 51 ] | |
| E-E-A-T | ||
| 🌡️Medium | According to Google Search Central: "Our systems aim to prioritize [content] that seems most helpful. To do this, they identify a mix of factors that can help determine which content demonstrates aspects of experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness, or what we call E-E-A-T." "While E-E-A-T itself isn't a specific ranking factor, using a mix of factors that can identify content with good E-E-A-T is useful." "For example, our systems give even more weight to content that aligns with strong E-E-A-T for topics that could significantly impact the health, financial stability, or safety of people, or the welfare or well-being of society." [ 54 ] | |
| Interstitials | ||
| 🌡️Medium | According to Google Search Central, "Intrusive interstitials and dialogs (page elements that overlay the page, usually for promotional purposes) make it hard for Google and other search engines to understand your content, which may lead to poor search performance." [ 84 ] | |
| Locality | ||
| 🌡️Medium | According to Google Search Central, Google runs local news systems for ranking, which "work to identify and surface local news sources whenever relevant, such as through our 'Top stories' and 'Local news' features". [ 93 ] | |
| Mobile-friendliness | ||
| 🌡️Medium | According to Google Search Central, "We're boosting the ranking of mobile-friendly pages on mobile search results." [ 97 ] | |
| Nofollow backlinks | ||
| 🌡️Medium | According to Google Search Central, "Use the nofollow value when other [rel] values don't apply, and you'd rather Google not associate your site with, or crawl the linked page from, your site." Google's John Mueller added in an #AskGoogleWebmasters session that "that means we don't pass any PageRank from the source of the link to the destination of the link". [ 98 , 99 ] | |
| Page experience | ||
| 🌡️Medium | Google Search Central states: "Google's core ranking systems look to reward content that provides a good page experience." [ 108 ] | |
| Server location | ||
| 🌡️Medium | According to former Google employee Matt Cutts, "the location of the server (in terms of IP address) is a factor [in ranking]", which means Google uses a user's IP address to decide which content is most relevant to serve. For their part, websites use a CDN to serve their content from the server location closest to the user. [ 114 ] | |
| Site architecture | ||
| 🌡️Medium | According to Google Search Central's SEO Starter Guide, "While Google's search results are provided at a page level, Google also likes to have a sense of what role a page plays in the bigger picture of the site." It adds: "Use a directory structure that organizes your content well... try using your directory structure to indicate the type of content found at that URL." [ 115 ] | |
| User interests | ||
| 🌡️Medium | According to Google Search Central, "Discover shows people content related to their interests, based on their Web and App Activity." [ 135 ] | |
| User location | ||
| 🌡️Medium | According to Google Search's documentation on ranking results, "Information such as your location... help us to ensure your results are what is most useful and relevant for you at that moment." [ 136 ] | |
| User search history | ||
| 🌡️Medium | According to Google Search's documentation on ranking results, "Information such as your... past search history... help us to ensure your results are what is most useful and relevant for you at that moment." [ 137 ] | |
| User-generated content (UGC) | ||
| 🌡️Medium | According to Google's John Mueller: "Google doesn't differentiate between content you wrote and content your users wrote. If you publish it on your site, we'll see it as content that you want to have published, and that's what we'll use for ranking... if you have a lot of user-generated content, make sure that it meets your standards for publishing content on your website." [ 139 ] | |
| Bold formatting for keywords | ||
| 🧊Low | According to Google Search Central's John Mueller: "We do try to understand what the content is about on a web page and we look at different things to try to figure out what is actually being emphasized here, and that includes things like headings on a page." "But it also includes things like what is actually bolded or emphasized within the text on the page. So, to some extent, that does have a little bit of value there in that it's a clear sign that actually you think this page or this paragraph is about this topic." "And usually that aligns with what we think the page is about anyway, so it doesn't change that much." [ 22 ] | |
| Domain name | ||
| 🧊 Low | According to Google Search Central, Google runs an exact match domain (EMD) system to "ensure we don't give too much credit to content hosted with domains designed to exactly match particular queries". The team behind the "Search Off the Record" podcast adds: "Sometimes I tell people that if you're starting out, it might make more sense to focus on your brand rather than on keywords, because your website will probably evolve over time... think long term, because changing your domain name is always a hassle." [ 53 ] | |
| Google Business Profile | ||
| 🧊 Low | According to Google Business Profile documentation, "To improve your business's local ranking, use Google Business Profile to claim and update your business information" and "make sure that your business information in Business Profile is accurate, complete and engaging". [ 65 ] | |
| HTTPS | ||
| 🧊 Low | According to Google Search Central, "we're starting to use HTTPS as a ranking signal. For now it's only a very lightweight signal... [carrying] less weight than other signals such as high-quality content." [ 76 ] | |
| Image alt text | ||
| 🧊 Low | According to Google Search Central's best practices for image SEO, webmasters should "focus on creating useful, information-rich content that uses keywords appropriately and is in context of the content of the page" when writing alt text. [ 77 ] | |
| Image file name | ||
| 🧊 Low | According to Google Search Central's best practices for image SEO, webmasters should "use short, but descriptive filenames. For example, my-new-black-kitten.jpg is better than IMG00023.JPG." [ 78 ] | |
| Anchor text | ||
| 🧊 Low | According to Google Search Central's SEO Starter Guide, "the better your anchor text is, the easier it is for people to navigate and for Google to understand what the page you're linking to is about". [ 81 ] | |
| Meta description | ||
| 🧊 Low | According to Google Search Central's SEO Starter Guide: "Description meta tags are important because Google might use them as snippets for your pages in Google Search results." "Identical or similar descriptions on every page of a site aren't helpful when individual pages appear in the search results. Where possible, create descriptions that accurately describe the specific page." [ 96 ] | |
| Reviews | ||
| 🧊 Low | According to Google Search Central, "The reviews system aims to better reward high quality reviews, which is content that provides insightful analysis and original research and is written by experts or enthusiasts who know the topic well." [ 112 ] | |
| Site navigation | ||
| 🧊 Low | According to Google Search Central, "The navigation of a website is important in helping visitors quickly find the content they want. It can also help search engines understand what content the site owner thinks is important", adding that "Although Google's search results are provided at a page level, Google also likes to have a sense of what role a page plays in the bigger picture of the site." [ 116 ] | |
| Structured data | ||
| 🧊 Low | According to Google Search Central, structured data: "...describe[s] your content to search engines, so they can understand your pages better. Search engines can use this understanding to display your content in useful (and eye-catching) ways in search results." "We recommend that you use structured data with any of the supported notations to describe your content." Google's John Mueller adds: "It's an extremely lightweight signal." [ 124 , 125 ] | |
[Likely] SEO ranking factors
Although they have not been explicitly confirmed, these are likely Google ranking factors:
| Ranking factor | Importance | Details |
| 2xx (success) | 🔥High | According to Google Search Central, a 2xx (success) HTTP status code means that "Google considers the content for indexing". [ 1 ] |
| 4xx (client errors) | 🔥High | According to Google Search Central, "Google's indexing pipeline doesn't consider URLs that return a 4xx status code for indexing, and URLs that are already indexed and return a 4xx status code are removed from the index". [ 3 ] |
| 5xx (server errors) | 🔥High | According to Google Search Central, 5xx (server) errors "prompt Google's crawlers to temporarily slow down with crawling. Already indexed URLs are preserved in the index, but eventually dropped". [ 4 ] |
| AI content | 🔥High | According to Google Search Central, "Appropriate use of AI or automation is not against our guidelines. This means that it is not used to generate content primarily to manipulate search rankings, which is against our spam policies." [ 8 ] |
| Backlink diversity | 🔥High | According to Google's PageRank patent, "The rank assigned to a document is calculated from the ranks of documents citing it." However, an updated 2018 patent states: "One possible variation of PageRank that would reduce the effect of these techniques is to select a few 'trusted' pages (also referred to as the seed pages) and discovers other pages which are likely to be good by following the links from the trusted pages." For websites, a diverse backlink profile that includes several "trusted" pages could be an advantage. [ 18 , 19 ] |
| JavaScript-generated content | 🔥High | According to Google Search Central: "While Google does run JavaScript, there are some differences and limitations that you need to account for when designing your pages and applications to accommodate how crawlers access and render your content." If your site has JavaScript problems, this could affect rankings directly by preventing accurate crawling. [ 85 ] |
| Site uptime | 🔥High | According to Google's John Mueller, "If the URL returns HTTP 5xx... nothing will happen (no drop in indexing or ranking) until a few days have passed." Mueller adds: "When things come back (assuming that's within days or weeks, and not months after the drop)... they're usually back exactly as they were in the past." [ 117 ] |
| 3xx (redirects) | 🌡️ Medium | According to Google Search Central, Googlebot (one of its web crawlers) follows up to 10 redirect hops before showing a redirect error, and up to five redirect hops for a robots.txt file before treating it as a 404 error. Within the 3xx (redirection) HTTP status codes, Googlebot treats a 301 as a "strong signal that the redirect target should be canonical" and a 302 or 303 redirect as a "weak signal that the redirect target should be canonical". [ 2 ] |
| Ad-to-content ratio | 🌡️ Medium | According to Google Search Central's guidance on assessing content, webmasters can review content presentation and production by asking, for example: "Does the content have an excessive amount of ads that distract from or interfere with the main content?" Similarly, in the leak of the Yandex search engine's code, people found that it "issues the heaviest penalty for a single ranking factor" when it "determines there is advertising of any kind on the page". Although it differs from Google, Yandex is heavily modelled on Google Search and has employed former Google engineers. [ 6 , 7 ] |
| Author | 🌡️ Medium | According to Google Search Central's guidance on assessing content, webmasters can review content expertise by asking, for example: "Is this content written by an expert or enthusiast who demonstrably knows the topic well?" [ 10 ] |
| Author bios | 🌡️ Medium | According to Google Search Central's guidance on assessing content, webmasters can review content expertise by asking, for example: "Does the content present information in a way that makes you want to trust it, such as clear sourcing, evidence of the expertise involved, background about the author...?" [ 11 ] |
| Backlink anchor text | 🌡️ Medium | According to Google Search Central, "Google uses links as an important factor in determining the relevancy of web pages." Google for Developers documentation says websites should use "short, descriptive phrases that provide context" for anchor text, while Google Search Central adds that "links with optimized anchor text in articles, guest posts, or press releases distributed on other sites" can be treated as link spam when the intent is to "manipulate rankings in Google Search results". [ 13 , 14 ] |
| Backlink anchor text diversity | 🌡️ Medium | Google launched Penguin, a ranking system, to help fight spam tactics on the web such as link schemes, where sites received backlinks with the same anchor text. According to Google Search Central, "any links intended to manipulate rankings in Google Search results may be considered link spam". A backlink profile with uniform anchor text can point to link spam, but there are other considerations, such as the referring domain and the surrounding text. [ 15 , 16 ] |
| Backlink context | 🌡️ Medium | In its Penguin announcement, Google Search Central included an example of link spam, noting that "if you try to read the text aloud you'll notice that the outgoing links are completely unrelated to the actual content". By looking at the context of a backlink (for example, a text about workouts that links to URLs about payday loans), Google can spot possible link spam. [ 17 ] |
| Click-through rate (CTR) | 🌡️ Medium | In the US antitrust trial against Google, a former Google employee stated: "Pretty much everyone knows we're using clicks in rankings." [ 33 ] |
| Content topic | 🌡️ Medium | According to Google Search Central, "our systems give even more weight to content that aligns with strong E-E-A-T for topics that could significantly impact the health, financial stability, or safety of people, or the welfare or well-being of society. We call these 'Your Money or Your Life' topics, or YMYL for short." If your site covers YMYL topics, keep a close eye on this Google ranking factor. [ 42 ] |
| Directory listings | 🌡️ Medium | According to Google Search Central, "There are some great, topical directories that add value to the Internet... If you decide to submit your site to a directory, make sure it's on topic, moderated, and well structured. Mass submissions, which are sometimes offered as a quick SEO alternative, are mostly useless and not likely to serve your purposes." [ 49 ] |
| Domain age | 🌡️ Medium | According to Google's John Mueller, "domain age helps nothing". Domain age can still bring indirect benefits to SEO rankings, though. An older, more trusted domain name, for example, may have a more established backlink profile, which helps PageRank, a Google ranking factor. [ 50 ] |
| Entity matches | 🌡️ Medium | Google uses entities across several elements and systems, including: - BERT - Google Knowledge Graph - Schema markup - Passage ranking system - RankBrain. Through these elements and systems, Google can better understand and serve content from the web. [ 55 ] |
| Heading tags (H2, H3 and so on) | 🌡️ Medium | According to Google's SEO Starter Guide, you should "use meaningful headings to indicate important topics, and help create a hierarchical structure for your content, making it easier for users to navigate through your document". Google's John Mueller adds: "a heading is a really strong signal telling us this part of the page is about this topic... whether you put that into an H1 tag or an H2 tag... doesn't really matter". [ 70 , 71 ] |
| Hreflang tag | 🌡️ Medium | According to Google Search Central, hreflang is one of several methods Google supports for indicating the different versions of your URLs by language. [ 72 , 74 ] |
| Keyword frequency | 🌡️ Medium | According to former Googler Matt Cutts, "the first one or two times you mention a word, that might help with your ranking, absolutely. But just because you can say it seven or eight times, that doesn't mean that it will necessarily help your rankings." Cutts adds that keyword frequency can lead to keyword stuffing. [ 89 ] |
| Keyword prominence | 🌡️ Medium | According to Google's John Mueller, "if there's something that you want to tell us that your page is about, I would make that as visible as possible". He suggests: "So, don't just put that as a one word mention at the bottom. Rather, use it in your titles, in your headings, in your subheadings, in your captions for images, all of that to make it as clear as possible for users and for Google when they go to your page that this page is about this topic." [ 90 ] |
| Number of internal links | 🌡️ Medium | According to Google's John Mueller, internal links help Google understand how important a URL is. Mueller says: "the more you make it clear that this is something [the URL] that's really important for your website, by showing it to users more frequently, by having kind of visible links to that content within your website, the more we can clearly understand that this is probably something you care about and want to treat as something a bit more important." [ 104 ] |
| Number of referring domains | 🌡️ Medium | According to Google's original research paper on PageRank, "PageRank extends this idea by not counting links from all pages equally, and by normalizing by the number of links on a page." Studies have found correlations between organic traffic and the number of referring domains. [ 106 , 107 ] |
| Contact information on the website | 🌡️ Medium | According to Google's Search Quality Rater Guidelines, "we expect most websites to have some information about who... is responsible for the website and who created the [Main Content], as well as some contact information, unless there is a good reason for anonymity... Any website that handles personal, private, or sensitive data must provide detailed contact information." The Search Quality Rater Guidelines do not set out Google's ranking factors, but they show what Google values in online content. Google even says that its search quality raters help it evaluate different search experiments. [ 140 , 141 ] |
| A/B testing | 🧊 Low | According to Google Search Central, "it may not matter much if Google crawls or indexes some of your content variations while you're testing. Small changes, such as the size, color, or placement of a button or image, or the text of your 'call to action'... can have a surprising impact on users' interactions with your page, but will often have little or no impact on that page's search result snippet or ranking." [ 5 ] |
| AMP | 🧊 Low | According to Google Search Central, "Google Search indexes AMP pages to deliver a fast and reliable web experience... While AMP itself isn't a ranking factor, speed is a ranking factor for Google Search." [ 9 ] |
| Author pages | 🧊 Low | According to Google Search Central's guidance on assessing content, webmasters can review content expertise by asking, for example: "Does the content present information in a way that makes you want to trust it, such as clear sourcing, evidence of the expertise involved, background about the author or the site that publishes it, such as through links to an author page or a site's About page?" [ 12 ] |
| Backlink stability | 🧊 Low | According to Google's patent "Information retrieval based on historical data", backlinks that stay stable can indicate good content quality, while backlinks that become unstable can indicate declining or poor content quality, or a link scheme. [ 20 ] |
| Backlink velocity | 🧊 Low | According to Google's patent "Information retrieval based on historical data", the search engine monitors how quickly backlinks are gained. In some cases the velocity can look like spam, while in others it looks normal. [ 21 ] |
| Breadcrumbs | 🧊 Low | According to Google Search Central, "We recommend using breadcrumb structured data markup when showing breadcrumbs." Google uses structured data markup as a ranking factor. [ 27 ] |
| Browser caching | 🧊 Low | According to Google's PageSpeed Insights documentation, "We recommend a minimum cache time of one week and preferably up to one year for static assets." It is not a direct ranking factor, but caching helps improve page speed, which feeds into Core Web Vitals, a Google ranking factor. [ 28 ] |
| Click depth | 🧊 Low | In 2008, Google Search Central shared the following: "make sure your important pages are clickable from the homepage and easy to find for Googlebot throughout your site." Ten years later, in 2018, Google's John Mueller commented: "It's more a matter of how many links you have to click through to actually get to that content rather than what the URL structure itself looks like." For example, URLs closer to the homepage (considered the most important page of a site) look more important than URLs further away from it. Yandex took a similar approach in its search algorithm by counting the number of slashes (/) in a URL. [ 30 , 31 , 32 ] |
| Content comprehensiveness | 🧊 Low | According to Google Search Central, when assessing how helpful a piece of content is, webmasters can ask: "Does the content provide a substantial, complete, or comprehensive description of the topic?" [ 34 ] |
| Content Delivery Network (CDN) | 🧊 Low | According to Google's John Mueller, "I don't think [a CDN] is critical." Mueller does mention that using a CDN can lead to faster page loading, which could mean a better user experience, especially for websites with a global audience. [ 35 ] |
| Country-code top-level domain (ccTLD) | 🧊 Low | According to Google's "Search Off the Record" podcast: "If you're targeting a specific country and you can afford it, then it's usually helpful to pick the country-code top-level domain name." "For example, if you're in Switzerland, picking CH, which stands for Confoederatio Helvetica, which is the Latin name for Switzerland, can be helpful because maybe your users will trust that domain name more. And then in search, you might also get a little boost from people searching from Switzerland." [ 46 ] |
| Crawl budget | 🧊 Low | Crawl budget can act as an indirect ranking factor, because crawling is a prerequisite for ranking. According to Google Search Central's documentation for large websites, "Google determines how much crawling resources to allocate to each site, based on popularity, user value, uniqueness, and serving capacity." [ 47 ] |
| Domain "history" | 🧊 Low | According to Google's "Search Off the Record" podcast: "Oh, look up the history [of the domain name]... make sure you're not buying something that was once terrible spam." [ 52 ] |
| First link priority | 🧊 Low | According to Google's John Mueller, "This [ first link priority] is not something... where we'd say, 'It's always like this: it's always the first link, always the last link, always an average of the links...' Rather, it's something that our algorithms might choose to do one way or the other. So my recommendation would be not to worry too much about this." [ 59 ] |
| Google knowledge panel | 🧊 Low | According to Google Search Central, "Google's algorithms find information, such as your site name, business contact information, and social profiles, that's publicly available on the web. You can update or provide additional information for your site for more reach and recognition in search results." [ 66 ] |
| HTML-to-text ratio | 🧊 Low | According to a Reddit AMA with Google's Gary Illyes and John Mueller, code-to-text ratio is not a ranking factor. Mueller explained in an earlier Google Search Central hangout: "We mostly pick up the visible content on the page and use that. Some pages have a lot more HTML, some have a lot less." Webmasters should still consider how the volume of code might affect page speed. [ 74 , 75 ] |
| Keyword at the start of the title tag | 🧊 Low | SEOs have had success with this tactic in the past, but Google now rewrites title tags in more than 60% of cases to better reflect what users are looking for. According to Google's John Mueller, a rewritten title tag will not change rankings in search results. [ 86 , 87 ] |
| Keyword density | 🧊 Low | According to former Googler Matt Cutts, "I would love it if people could stop obsessing about keyword density. There's no hard and fast rule." [ 88 ] |
| Spelling and grammar | 🧊 Low | According to Google Search Central's self-assessment questions for content, webmasters should ask: "Does the content have any spelling or stylistic issues?" to find possible ways to improve their content. Google's John Mueller adds: "We try to find really high-quality content on the web and sometimes it can appear that a page has lower-quality content because it has a lot of grammatical and technical mistakes in the text." [ 121 , 122 ] |
| Top-level domain (TLD) | 🧊 Low | According to the "Search Off the Record" podcast: "If we see that .example is overrun by spam and more than 99% of the content is spam, then we might not want to pick up sitemaps from those domain names because the chances of spam are too high. But I think this typically affects, or could only affect, the free TLDs or ccTLDs and the really cheap ones, precisely because they're cheap and attract spammers." [ 129 ] |
| URL slug | 🧊 Low | According to Google Search Central, "URLs with words that are relevant to your site's content and structure are friendlier for visitors", and webmasters should avoid "choosing generic page names like page1.html" and "using excessive keywords like baseball-cards-baseball-cards-baseballcards.html". [ 133 ] |
[Potential] SEO ranking factors
When it comes to SEO ranking factors, Google potentially uses several more, including:
| Ranking factor | Importance | Details |
| Content word count | 🌡️ Medium | According to Google Search Central's self-assessment questions for content, the search engine has no preferred word count. Google's John Mueller repeated this in Google Search Central Office Hours: "From our point of view, the number of words on a page is not a quality factor, not a ranking factor." Studies have found correlations between word count and rankings, but correlation is not causation. Other factors can explain higher word counts: SEOs believe word count is a ranking factor, produce well-optimised long-form content, and that content then ranks well because of the optimisation and the in-depth coverage of the topic. [ 43 , 44 ] |
| Content syndication | 🌡️ Medium | Syndication does not affect rankings directly, but it can indirectly affect the ability of the original content to rank. That is why Google recommends noindex on syndicated content, saying: "If someone is concerned about content they voluntarily syndicate and allow others to potentially rank for, our recommendation is to ask their partner to use noindex." [ 127 ] |
| Brand mentions or implied links | 🧊 Low | According to Google's John Mueller, "I don't think [brand mentions] are a bad thing... Because if [users] can find your website through that mention, then that's always a good thing. But I wouldn't assume that there's some... SEO factor that is trying to figure out where someone is mentioning your website name." Although they are an unlikely ranking factor, brand mentions can build trust with users, which has a knock-on effect. For example, if users learn that your website is a reliable source for information on XYZ, that shapes how they behave when they look at search results, cite sources in their own content and share content online. [ 25 ] |
| Brand popularity | 🧊 Low | According to Google Search Central's guidance on building high-quality sites, webmasters can use this question as a guide: "Would you recognize this site as an authoritative source when mentioned by name?" [ 26 ] |
| Citations | 🧊 Low | There is no direct evidence that citations in content affect rankings in search results. Citations can improve the quality, authority and trustworthiness of content, but there is no evidence that they influence rankings in search results. |
| Content reading level | 🧊 Low | According to Google's John Mueller, "it's not so much a matter of Google using that reading level score and saying this is good or bad. But rather, does this match what people are searching for?" Mueller also said: "From an SEO point of view, it's probably not something you need to focus on... But it is something that you should figure out for your audience." [ 40 ] |
| Content review | 🧊 Low | According to Google Search Central's self-assessment questions for content, you can ask whether "this content is written or reviewed by an expert or enthusiast who demonstrably knows the topic well". [ 41 ] |
| Exact match domains (EMDs) | 🧊 Low | According to Google Search Central, its exact match domain system "works to ensure we don't give too much credit for content hosted under domains designed to exactly match particular queries". The company's "Search Off the Record" podcast adds: "I think it can sometimes be useful." "For example, if I want to get a passport photo, I have weird sites that target any kind of photo. And then there's passportphoto.com. And I'm more likely to click on passportphotos.com for some reason as a user", but adds: "Anything that's in the URL can technically be manipulated by the site owner... Which means, in terms of ranking, it might not be as useful as people think." [ 56 , 57 ] |
| Google News | 🧊 Low | According to Google Publisher Center, "a feed or URL submitted in Publisher Center isn't guaranteed to appear in Google News". [ 67 ] |
| Google Search Console | 🧊 Low | According to Google Search Central, "The first step to establishing your website as an official presence is to verify ownership of your website in Search Console." [68] |
| Image format | 🧊 Low | WebP is seen as a better image format for page speed than PNG and JPEG, but it is not a direct ranking factor. In its SEO Starter Guide, Google Search Central suggests: "Use commonly supported filetypes; most browsers support JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP and WebP image formats." [ 79 , 80 ] |
| Internal link placement | 🧊 Low | According to Google's John Mueller, "I don't think there's anything quantifiably different about internal links in different parts of the page. I think it's different when it comes to the content in different parts of the page." Mueller also says that "internal linking is super critical for SEO", so build your internal links. [82,83] |
| Number of outbound links | 🧊 Low | According to Google Search Central, "Without outgoing links, your site can look isolated from the community, as each page becomes a kind of brochure. Most sites naturally include outgoing links." The team adds: "think of outbound links as a common-sense way to provide more value to your users, not a complicated formula", and notes: "we encourage webmasters to keep to under 100 links per page". [ 100 , 101 ] |
| Comments on content | 🧊 Low | According to Google's John Mueller, "What I think is really useful about those comments is that often people write about the page in their own words, and that gives us a little bit more information on how we can show this page in the search results." [ 102 ] |
| Number of outbound affiliate links | 🧊 Low | According to Google's John Mueller, "There's no limit... we're not saying affiliate links are bad or problematic. It's more a matter of: well, you actually need to have some useful content on your page as well." "So that's kind of the angle we take there... The amount of affiliate links on a site is totally irrelevant. The ratio of links to article length is also totally irrelevant." Indirectly, the number of affiliate links can affect rankings by affecting content helpfulness. [ 105 ] |
| Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) | 🧊 Low | According to Google's John Mueller, "saying by default that switching to a PWA will improve your rankings, I don't think that's the case. You can improve your rankings if you make a better website, but there are also lots of other things you need to think about... moving to a newer framework and a cleaner, faster website that works better for users, probably after 10-15 years you'll see changes in rankings. It doesn't have to be a PWA." [ 111 ] |
| Social signals | 🧊 Low | In 2010, former Google employee Matt Cutts said that Google was now using links from X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook as a ranking factor. Years later, Google's John Mueller and Gary Illyes suggested that social media no longer had much influence on search rankings. Illyes, for example, said that "for the record, in terms of PageRank, most social media links are a drop in the ocean". Mueller also said that clicks from social media have "no effect on SEO". [ 118 , 119 , 120 ] |
| URL length | 🧊 Low | According to Google Search Central, webmasters should: "Create a simple URL structure". Length is not mentioned directly, but the search engine advises webmasters to use "simple, descriptive words in the URL" and to "consider using hyphens to separate words in your URLs, as it helps users and search engines identify concepts in the URL more easily". Google adds in its SEO Starter Guide: "Visitors may be intimidated by extremely long and cryptic URLs." [ 130 , 131 ] |
[Unlikely] SEO ranking factors
Among the factors people associate with search engine optimisation, these are unlikely to have any effect:
| Ranking factor | Importance | Details |
| Bounce rate | ❌ N/A | According to Google's John Mueller, "there's a bit of a misconception that we're looking at things like the Analytics bounce rate when it comes to ranking websites, and that's definitely not the case." Bounce rate (including pogo-sticking) is also a metric webmasters can manipulate, which shapes how Google approaches ranking factors. Google's documentation for Universal Analytics went into this, stating: "Is a high bounce rate a bad thing? It depends." "If the success of your site depends on users viewing more than one page, then, yes, a high bounce rate is bad." "On the other hand, if you have a single-page site... or offer other types of content for which single-page sessions are expected, then a high bounce rate is perfectly normal." [ 23 , 24 ] |
| Content management system (CMS) | ❌ N/A | According to Google's John Mueller, "our search systems don't look for a particular CMS. For us, a CMS is just a way of creating web pages... Web pages made by hand can be just as good as those generated by WordPress, Wix, Squarespace or similar." [ 38 ] |
| Direct traffic | ❌ N/A | According to Search Engine Journal, the amount of direct traffic is unlikely to be a ranking factor, because it would be too easy for webmasters to use it to manipulate Google's search results. [ 48 ] |
| Emoji | ❌ N/A | Emoji in title tags can influence click-through rate (CTR), which is a ranking factor, but there is no evidence that Google directly rewards emoji in title tags, heading tags or content. |
| Favicon | ❌ N/A | Favicons appear in Google's search results, but there is no meaningful evidence that they can influence rankings. Google Search Central does, however, maintain favicon guidelines. [ 58 ] |
| Site update frequency | ❌ N/A | According to Google's John Mueller, Google learns how often to crawl your site based on how often it is updated: "For example, if you have a news website and you update it hourly, then we should learn that we need to crawl it hourly." A higher crawl rate will not directly raise rankings, but it can indirectly help your site's rankings by discovering new or updated content faster. [ 60 ] |
| Google Ads | ❌ N/A | According to Google's John Mueller, "these systems [Google Search and Google Ads] are completely separate on our side", while Google's Danny Sullivan adds: "Ad spend won't boost your SEO." Google's "How Search works" documentation adds: "Advertisers, partners, or anyone else with a financial relationship with Google don't get any advantages or special treatment in search results." The antitrust case between the US Department of Justice and Google revealed questionable practices linked to its Google Ads system, such as Google adjusting ad prices to meet its revenue targets. [ 61 , 62 , 63 , 64 ] |
| Keywords meta tag | ❌ N/A | According to Google Search Central, "Google doesn't use the keywords meta tag in our web search ranking... Because the keywords meta tag was so often abused." [ 92 ] |
| LSI keywords | ❌ N/A | According to Google's John Mueller, "There's no such thing as LSI keywords... as an SEO, you probably don't need to worry about that." [ 94 ] |
| Site size | ❌ N/A | Larger sites can have more organic visibility (because they have more chances to rank in organic results), but there is no evidence that Google favours larger sites over smaller ones. Site size is also something a webmaster could manipulate, which makes it a poor ranking signal. |
| Stock images | ❌ N/A | Factors such as image dimensions, file size, file name and so on can affect user experience and search rankings, but the choice of image itself is unlikely to. [ 123 ] |
| Subdomains | ❌ N/A | Google's John Mueller says: "Google web search is fine with using either subdomains or subdirectories... I'd recommend picking a setup that you can keep for longer." [ 126 ] |
| URL priority in the sitemap | ❌ N/A | According to Google Search Central, "Google ignores <priority> and <changefreq> values", adding: "You don't need to worry about the order of URLs in your sitemap; it doesn't matter to Google." [ 132 ] |
| User browser bookmarks | ❌ N/A | Google focuses on avoiding signals that are easy to manipulate, such as bookmarks. Because a webmaster could easily buy user browser bookmarks (or create several Chrome profiles), Google is unlikely to use them as a ranking factor. [ 134 ] |
| Wikipedia mentions | ❌ N/A | According to Google's John Mueller, "getting a link from Wikipedia has no SEO value and won't do anything for your site". [ 143 ] |
Optimise your site for these SEO ranking factors with SEO specialists
You now know which factors are involved in search engine optimisation and how to optimise for the main SEO ranking factors in 2025.
Ready to improve your SEO? Our team at Visilay can help you optimise your site for the main ranking factors. Get in touch online today to find out how we can help.
FAQs about search engine ranking factors
Learn more about search engine ranking factors with these FAQs:
What is ranking in SEO?
In search engine optimisation, "ranking" means where a URL appears (or ranks) in the organic search results (SERPs). Ranking matters in SEO because it correlates with the traffic a URL gets from search. As a rule, a higher ranking means more traffic than a lower one.
What are ranking factors?
Ranking factors are the elements search engines and their algorithms use to rank the search results for a given query.
Search engines like Google use hundreds of ranking factors, and they do not all carry the same value. Some ranking factors carry more weight than others in SEO.
How do search engines choose SEO ranking factors?
Search engines like Google weigh up a few questions when "choosing" an SEO ranking factor, such as:
- Can webmasters easily manipulate this factor?
- Does the factor support our goals (serving the most relevant and reliable information)?
- How does this factor affect our resources for analysing, indexing and serving information?
Depending on the factor, Google may also involve its Search Quality Raters programme.
How many SEO ranking factors are there?
There are hundreds of SEO ranking factors, across categories such as:
- Domain
- On-page
- On-site
- Backlinks
- User interactions
- Brand signals
- Webspam
Because search engine ranking factors carry different weights, focusing on the most important ranking factors is often more useful than trying to cover all of them. That is why this guide looks at the most important ranking factors (or the most debated ones) rather than going through hundreds of possibilities.
How do search engines rank search results?
Search engines decide how to rank search results, including featured snippets, with the following process:
- Exploring the web with spiders or web crawlers
- Indexing the information the web crawlers bring back
- Assessing the information against the ranking factors of the search engine's algorithm
- Serving the most relevant and reliable information for the search query
You can find out more about how search works in Google's documentation.
All SEO ranking factors
Looking for a summary of the SEO ranking factors above? See the table below:
| Ranking factor | Likelihood | Impact | Type |
| Canonical URL | ✅ Confirmed | 🔥High | On-page SEO |
| Content helpfulness | ✅ Confirmed | 🔥High | On-page SEO |
| H1 tag | ✅ Confirmed | 🔥High | On-page SEO |
| Keywords | ✅ Confirmed | 🔥High | On-page SEO |
| Manual actions | ✅ Confirmed | 🔥High | Other |
| Number of DMCA notices | ✅ Confirmed | 🔥High | Off-page SEO |
| PageRank | ✅ Confirmed | 🔥High | Off-page SEO |
| Robots.txt | ✅ Confirmed | 🔥High | Technical SEO |
| Title tag | ✅ Confirmed | 🔥High | On-page SEO |
| User search settings | ✅ Confirmed | 🔥High | Other |
| Webspam | ✅ Confirmed | 🔥High | Other |
| XML sitemap | ✅ Confirmed | 🔥High | Technical SEO |
| Fresh content | ✅ Confirmed | 🌡️ Medium | On-page SEO |
| Content originality | ✅ Confirmed | 🌡️ Medium | On-page SEO |
| Core Web Vitals | ✅ Confirmed | 🌡️ Medium | On-page SEO |
| Domain diversity in SERPs | ✅ Confirmed | 🌡️ Medium | Off-page SEO |
| E-E-A-T | ✅ Confirmed | 🌡️ Medium | On-page SEO |
| Interstitials | ✅ Confirmed | 🌡️ Medium | On-page SEO |
| Locality | ✅ Confirmed | 🌡️ Medium | On-page SEO |
| Mobile-friendliness | ✅ Confirmed | 🌡️ Medium | On-page SEO |
| Nofollow backlinks | ✅ Confirmed | 🌡️ Medium | Off-page SEO |
| Page experience | ✅ Confirmed | 🌡️ Medium | On-page SEO |
| Server location | ✅ Confirmed | 🌡️ Medium | Technical SEO |
| Site architecture | ✅ Confirmed | 🌡️ Medium | Technical SEO |
| User interests | ✅ Confirmed | 🌡️ Medium | Other |
| User location | ✅ Confirmed | 🌡️ Medium | Other |
| User search history | ✅ Confirmed | 🌡️ Medium | Other |
| User-generated content (UGC) | ✅ Confirmed | 🌡️ Medium | On-page SEO |
| Bold formatting for keywords | ✅ Confirmed | 🧊 Low | On-page SEO |
| Domain name | ✅ Confirmed | 🧊 Low | On-page SEO |
| Google Business Profile | ✅ Confirmed | 🧊 Low | Off-page SEO |
| HTTPS | ✅ Confirmed | 🧊 Low | On-page SEO |
| Image alt text | ✅ Confirmed | 🧊 Low | On-page SEO |
| Image file name | ✅ Confirmed | 🧊 Low | On-page SEO |
| Anchor text | ✅ Confirmed | 🧊 Low | On-page SEO |
| Meta description | ✅ Confirmed | 🧊 Low | On-page SEO |
| Reviews | ✅ Confirmed | 🧊 Low | On-page SEO |
| Site navigation | ✅ Confirmed | 🧊 Low | On-page SEO |
| Structured data | ✅ Confirmed | 🧊 Low | On-page SEO |
| 2xx (success) | 📈 Likely | 🔥High | Technical SEO |
| 4xx (client errors) | 📈 Likely | 🔥High | Technical SEO |
| 5xx (server errors) | 📈 Likely | 🔥High | Technical SEO |
| AI content | 📈 Likely | 🔥High | On-page SEO |
| Backlink diversity | 📈 Likely | 🔥High | Off-page SEO |
| JavaScript-generated content | 📈 Likely | 🔥High | Technical SEO |
| Site uptime | 📈 Likely | 🔥High | Technical SEO |
| 3xx (redirects) | 📈 Likely | 🌡️ Medium | Technical SEO |
| Ad-to-content ratio | 📈 Likely | 🌡️ Medium | On-page SEO |
| Author | 📈 Likely | 🌡️ Medium | On-page SEO |
| Author bios | 📈 Likely | 🌡️ Medium | On-page SEO |
| Backlink anchor text | 📈 Likely | 🌡️ Medium | Off-page SEO |
| Backlink anchor text diversity | 📈 Likely | 🌡️ Medium | Off-page SEO |
| Backlink context | 📈 Likely | 🌡️ Medium | Off-page SEO |
| Click-through rate (CTR) | 📈 Likely | 🌡️ Medium | On-page SEO |
| Content topic | 📈 Likely | 🌡️ Medium | On-page SEO |
| Directory listings | 📈 Likely | 🌡️ Medium | |
| Domain age | 📈 Likely | 🌡️ Medium | On-page SEO |
| Entity matches | 📈 Likely | 🌡️ Medium | On-page SEO |
| Heading tags | 📈 Likely | 🌡️ Medium | On-page SEO |
| Hreflang tag | 📈 Likely | 🌡️ Medium | Technical SEO |
| Keyword frequency | 📈 Likely | 🌡️ Medium | On-page SEO |
| Keyword prominence | 📈 Likely | 🌡️ Medium | On-page SEO |
| Number of internal links | 📈 Likely | 🌡️ Medium | On-page SEO |
| Number of referring domains | 📈 Likely | 🌡️ Medium | Off-page SEO |
| Contact information on the website | 📈 Likely | 🌡️ Medium | On-page SEO |
| A/B testing | 📈 Likely | 🧊 Low | Technical SEO |
| AMP | 📈 Likely | 🧊 Low | On-page SEO |
| Author pages | 📈 Likely | 🧊 Low | On-page SEO |
| Backlink stability | 📈 Likely | 🧊 Low | Off-page SEO |
| Backlink velocity | 📈 Likely | 🧊 Low | Off-page SEO |
| Breadcrumbs | 📈 Likely | 🧊 Low | On-page SEO |
| Browser caching | 📈 Likely | 🧊 Low | Technical SEO |
| Click depth | 📈 Likely | 🧊 Low | On-page SEO |
| Content comprehensiveness | 📈 Likely | 🧊 Low | On-page SEO |
| Content delivery network (CDN) | 📈 Likely | 🧊 Low | Technical SEO |
| Country-code top-level domain (ccTLD) | 📈 Likely | 🧊 Low | Technical SEO |
| Crawl budget | 📈 Likely | 🧊 Low | Technical SEO |
| Domain history | 📈 Likely | 🧊 Low | Technical SEO |
| First link priority | 📈 Likely | 🧊 Low | On-page SEO |
| Google knowledge panel | 📈 Likely | 🧊 Low | Off-page SEO |
| HTML-to-text ratio | 📈 Likely | 🧊 Low | On-page SEO |
| Keyword at the start of the title tag | 📈 Likely | 🧊 Low | On-page SEO |
| Keyword density | 📈 Likely | 🧊 Low | On-page SEO |
| Spelling and grammar | 📈 Likely | 🧊 Low | On-page SEO |
| Top-level domain (TLD) | 📈 Likely | 🧊 Low | Technical SEO |
| URL slug | 📈 Likely | 🧊 Low | On-page SEO |
| Content word count | 🎲 Potential | 🌡️ Medium | On-page SEO |
| Content syndication | 🎲 Potential | 🌡️ Medium | Off-page SEO |
| Brand mentions or implied links | 🎲 Potential | 🧊 Low | Off-page SEO |
| Brand popularity | 🎲 Potential | 🧊 Low | Off-page SEO |
| Content citations | 🎲 Potential | 🧊 Low | On-page SEO |
| Content reading level | 🎲 Potential | 🧊 Low | On-page SEO |
| Content review | 🎲 Potential | 🧊 Low | On-page SEO |
| Exact match domains (EMDs) | 🎲 Potential | 🧊 Low | Technical SEO |
| Google News | 🎲 Potential | 🧊 Low | Off-page SEO |
| Google Search Console | 🎲 Potential | 🧊 Low | Off-page SEO |
| Image format | 🎲 Potential | 🧊 Low | Technical SEO |
| Internal link placement | 🎲 Potential | 🧊 Low | On-page SEO |
| Number of outbound links | 🎲 Potential | 🧊 Low | Off-page SEO |
| Comments on content | 🎲 Potential | 🧊 Low | On-page SEO |
| Number of outbound affiliate links | 🎲 Potential | 🧊 Low | On-page SEO |
| Progressive Web Apps (PWA) | 🎲 Potential | 🧊 Low | Technical SEO |
| Social signals | 🎲 Potential | 🧊 Low | Off-page SEO |
| URL length | 🎲 Potential | 🧊 Low | On-page SEO |
| Bounce rate | ❌ Unlikely | ❌ N/A | On-page SEO |
| Content management system (CMS) | ❌ Unlikely | ❌ N/A | Technical SEO |
| Direct traffic | ❌ Unlikely | ❌ N/A | Other |
| Emoji | ❌ Unlikely | ❌ N/A | On-page SEO |
| Favicon | ❌ Unlikely | ❌ N/A | On-page SEO |
| Site update frequency | ❌ Unlikely | ❌ N/A | On-page SEO |
| Google Ads | ❌ Unlikely | ❌ N/A | Off-page SEO |
| Keywords meta tag | ❌ Unlikely | ❌ N/A | On-page SEO |
| LSI keywords | ❌ Unlikely | ❌ N/A | On-page SEO |
| Site size | ❌ Unlikely | ❌ N/A | On-page SEO |
| Stock images | ❌ Unlikely | ❌ N/A | On-page SEO |
| Subdomains | ❌ Unlikely | ❌ N/A | Technical SEO |
| URL priority in the sitemap | ❌ Unlikely | ❌ N/A | Technical SEO |
| User browser bookmarks | ❌ Unlikely | ❌ N/A | Other |
| Wikipedia mentions | ❌ Unlikely | ❌ N/A | Off-page SEO |
Sources
[1]: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/http-network-errors#http-status-codes
[2]: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/http-network-errors#http-status-codes
[3]: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/http-network-errors#http-status-codes
[4]: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/http-network-errors#http-status-codes
[5]: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/website-testing?hl=en
[6]: https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2019/08/core-updates#presentation-and-production-questions
[7]: https://searchengineland.com/yandex-leak-learnings-392393
[8]: https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2023/02/google-search-and-ai-content
[9]: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/amp/about-amp
[10]: https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2019/08/core-updates#expertise-questions
[11]: https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2019/08/core-updates#expertise-questions
[12]: https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2019/08/core-updates#expertise-questions
[13]: https://developers.google.com/style/link-text
[14]: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/essentials/spam-policies?hl=en&visit_id=638322073350401620-1317858641&rd=1#link-spam
[15]: https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2012/04/another-step-to-reward-high-quality
[16]: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/essentials/spam-policies#link-spam
[17]: https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2012/04/another-step-to-reward-high-quality
[18]: https://patents.google.com/patent/US6285999B1/en
[19]: https://patents.google.com/patent/US9165040B1/en
[20]: https://patents.google.com/patent/US7346839B2/en
[21]: https://patents.google.com/patent/US7346839B2/en
[22]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=G16FY_1eDAU
[23]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXxkoASrqNg&t=1505s
[24]: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1009409?hl=en
[25]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvYb2bdtT7A
[26]: https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2011/05/more-guidance-on-building-high-quality
[27]: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/seo-starter-guide?hl=en&visit_id=638308162819202811-1202907555&rd=1#usebreadcrumbs
[28]: https://developers.google.com/speed/docs/insights/LeverageBrowserCaching
[29]: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/consolidate-duplicate-urls#reasons-to-specify-a-canonical-url
[30]: https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2008/10/importance-of-link-architecture
[31]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyQbNGUycX8
[32]: https://searchengineland.com/yandex-leak-learnings-392393
[33]: https://searchengineland.com/former-googler-google-using-clicks-in-rankings-432401
[34]: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/creating-helpful-content#content-and-quality-questions
[35]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qhUhnBRe3Y
[36]: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/ranking-systems-guide#freshness
[37]: https://developers.google.com/search/updates/helpful-content-update
[38]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbgHkxqdu4c
[39]: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/ranking-systems-guide#original-content
[40]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hi3PZrxYFG0&t=1841s
[41]: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/creating-helpful-content#expertise-questions
[42]: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/creating-helpful-content
[43]: https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2022/08/helpful-content-update#avoid-creating-content-for-search-engines-first
[44]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=1228&v=PQrnhpNTOtE&feature=youtu.be
[45]: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/core-web-vitals
[46]: https://pod.link/1512522198/episode/5f7bd2bdc98d214aa842c3c0edd9e186
[47]: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/large-site-managing-crawl-budget
[48]: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/ranking-factors/direct-traffic/
[49]: https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2010/06/quality-links-to-your-site
[50]: https://twitter.com/JohnMu/status/1147051694280388608
[51]: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/ranking-systems-guide#site-diversity-system
[52]: https://pod.link/1512522198/episode/5f7bd2bdc98d214aa842c3c0edd9e186
[53]: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/ranking-systems-guide#exact-match
[54]: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/creating-helpful-content#eat
[55]: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/ranking-systems-guide
[56]: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/ranking-systems-guide#exact-match
[57]: https://pod.link/1512522198/episode/5f7bd2bdc98d214aa842c3c0edd9e186
[58]: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/favicon-in-search
[59]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSKD6bOMZSc&t=911s
[60]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmqrr7SLYJU
[61]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QopJ7H5Fbk0
[62]: https://twitter.com/dannysullivan/status/1347312963552612352
[63]: https://www.adweek.com/media/ad-buyers-dismiss-googles-claim-of-5-ad-price-hike-stating-it-too-low/
[64]: https://www.google.com/search/howsearchworks/our-approach/ads-on-search/
[65]: https://support.google.com/business/answer/7091?hl=en#zippy=%2Center-complete-data
[66]: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/establish-business-details#add-site-info
[67]: https://support.google.com/news/publisher-center/answer/9607025?hl=en
[68]: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/establish-business-details#register-search-console
[69]: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/title-link#page-titles
[70]: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/seo-starter-guide#headingtags
[71]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owoXikK9PRU
[72]: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/specialty/international/managing-multi-regional-sites#tell-google-about-your-different-language-versions
[74]: https://www.reddit.com/r/TechSEO/comments/sndet6/how_important_is_code_to_text_ratio/
[75]: https://youtu.be/PvNnPd76xSU?t=18m43s
[76]: https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2014/08/https-as-ranking-signal
[77]: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/google-images#descriptive-alt-text%20descriptive-titles-captions-filenames
[78]: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/google-images#descriptive-alt-text%20descriptive-titles-captions-filenames
[79]: https://developers.google.com/speed/webp/docs/c_study
[80]: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/seo-starter-guide#usestandardimageformats
[81]: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/seo-starter-guide?hl=en&visit_id=638308162819202811-1202907555&rd=1#goodlinktext
[82]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Waynp8mMqRg
[83]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgmh67PD6p4&t=1515s
[84]: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/avoid-intrusive-interstitials
[85]: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/javascript/fix-search-javascript
[86]: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-changes-more-than-61-percent-of-title-tags/435618/
[87]: https://twitter.com/JohnMu/status/1431680834428444677
[88]: https://youtu.be/Rk4qgQdp2UA
[89]: https://youtu.be/Rk4qgQdp2UA
[90]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGP1bl_HLu0
[91]: https://www.google.com/search/howsearchworks/how-search-works/ranking-results/#relevance
[92]: https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2009/09/google-does-not-use-keywords-meta-tag
[93]: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/ranking-systems-guide#local-news
[94]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UBSEiO87GM
[95]: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/9044175
[96]: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/seo-starter-guide?hl=en&visit_id=638308162819202811-1202907555&rd=1#descriptionmeta
[97]: https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2015/04/rolling-out-mobile-friendly-update
[98]: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/qualify-outbound-links
[99]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZwv8R64x2E
[100]: https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2008/10/links-information-straight-from-source
[101]: https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2008/10/linking-out-often-its-just-applying
[102]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvYb2bdtT7A
[103]: https://search.googleblog.com/2012/08/an-update-to-our-search-algorithms.html
[104]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCV6tEt3w0k
[105]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsFmPP1kc3Q
[106]: http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html
[107]: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/new-study-shows-positive-correlation-traffic-backlinks/164752/
[108]: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/page-experience
[109]: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/ranking-systems-guide#link-analysis
[110]: https://patents.google.com/patent/US6285999B1/en
[111]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G16FY_1eDAU
[112]: https://developers.google.com/search/updates/reviews-update
[113]: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/control-what-you-share
[114]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXt23AXlJJU
[115]: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/seo-starter-guide#navisimportant
[116]: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/seo-starter-guide?hl=en&visit_id=638308162819202811-1202907555&rd=1#navisimportant
[117]: https://reddit.com/r/bigseo/comments/otulg9/can_i_recover_lost_google_rankings_after_almost_5/
[118]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofhwPC-5Ub4
[119]: https://twitter.com/methode/status/910550830910181378
[120]: https://twitter.com/JohnMu/status/1429847035319103493
[121]: https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2019/08/core-updates#presentation-and-production-questions
[122]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPaRgzaMroU
[123]: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-on-use-of-stock-photography/468849/
[124]: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/seo-starter-guide?hl=en&visit_id=638308162819202811-1202907555&rd=1#addstructureddata
[125]: https://twitter.com/JohnMu/status/1335363377233801217
[126]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJGDyAN9g-g
[127]: https://twitter.com/searchliaison/status/1677330741212901379
[128]: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/seo-starter-guide#uniquepagetitles
[129]: https://pod.link/1512522198/episode/5f7bd2bdc98d214aa842c3c0edd9e186
[130]: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/url-structure
[131]: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/seo-starter-guide#simpleurlsconveyinfo
[132]: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/sitemaps/build-sitemap#additional-notes-about-xml-sitemaps
[133]: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/seo-starter-guide#use-words-in-urls
[134]: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/ranking-factors/chrome-bookmarks/
[135]: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/google-discover
[136]: https://www.google.com/search/howsearchworks/how-search-works/ranking-results/#context
[137]: https://www.google.com/search/howsearchworks/how-search-works/ranking-results/#context
[138]: https://www.google.com/search/howsearchworks/how-search-works/ranking-results/#context
[139]: https://youtu.be/muCwZcORL0k
[140]: https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/guidelines.raterhub.com/en//searchqualityevaluatorguidelines.pdf
[141]: https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/9281931?hl=en
[142]: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/ranking-systems-guide#spam-detection-systems
[143]: https://www.reddit.com/r/SEO/comments/iefdfs/how_can_one_get_backlink_from_wikipedia/g2hwyle/
[144]: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/seo-starter-guide?hl=en&visit_id=638308162819202811-1202907555&rd=1#create-a-navigational-page-for-users,-a-sitemap-for-search-engines
