Blog "Fast Dynamic SEO" List of SEO ranking factors and signals

Google constantly updates and changes its search algorithms. According to Google, there are more than 200 parameters that it tracks and on which it builds positions in the result page. In this article we show you 9 important parameters that Google considers when ranking search results. Of course, this list is not complete. Full list consists of more than 200 factors. But this is most important factors. And they will be useful to anyone who wants to promote website on the Internet.

So, the firstly is the Content and User Experience.

1. Content

Yes, it's not news. Everyone know it. Huge amount of external links won't outweigh the quality content. And most interesting, it's that the quality of this content is more important than the number of words or density of keywords. On the other hand, longer texts are more respected by Google. But no one knows the exact length that gives you a guaranteed result. But what is known for sure that is if the topic indicated in the title is descriptive and open completely, then the rating of this page is higher. And of course, the regular updating of your site is an added advantage.
So, write new content regularly.

2. User experience

Discussion and debate about behavioral factors have been going always. But now, when machine learning has been connected to the analysis system, this factor begins to play a very important role. Google has a lot of parameters, which are responsible for behavioral factors. But we should pay attention only for 2 of them: CTR and Bounce Rate.

• CTR (Click-through rate) is the ratio of the number of clicks on the link to the number of impressions of this link for a some key query. There are very important how you fill your meta tags title and description. They should to correctly displayed exactly what your website is all about. From this meta tags formed the snippet in search result page.

• Bounce Rate is the percentage of "refusals" of users and return them to search results after clicking on your link. If you aren't familiar with bounce rate it just means how quickly someone leaves your website after visiting it.

  High Bounce Rate = Very bad!

  Why? Because you want people to stay on your website, browse some inner pages, read over things, and overall have an enjoyable experience.

• RankBrain is the machine-learning artificial intelligence system that’s used to help process its search results. It looks for relevant answers to the user's requests based on factors such as request history, user behavior, page context, synonyms of keywords. It processes and refines queries, using recognition patterns for complex and ambiguous (ambiguous) key phrases and defining them in various topics. So, it is don't necessary to use exact words in the text. Because Google is getting smarter and can show some results from "related requests".

3. Backlinks

Yes, backlinks are still important to Google. The Internet is filled with millions of new articles, notes, posts every day. And if someone put a link to another site, that gives Google a signal about the importance of this page for some people. Especially if links are located on high-authority domains. This gives you more chances to get the lead in the SERP.

One of the points that should be noted when we talk about back links is the presence of an anchor in the link. The link can:

• be without an anchor
• contains a domain name
• contains an anchor (keyword or other text)
• be with a picture

In the case of a anchor with a picture, the alt description in the img tag is important.

4. Mobile-friendliness

This year, the percentage of mobile traffic exceeded 75%. This means that every 3 of 4 people look at your website on a mobile phone. And since the end of 2016, Google began to pay attention to the presence of mobile versions of websites. Now a huge number of different devices and gadgets. And it's very difficult to make a separate mobile version for each type of screen size. Therefore now the more correct way is using an adaptive layout. That allows you to flexibly adapt the site to any screen. And if in the past design was doing first for the desktop, then now the development is doing for all screen sizes together.

You can easily test your website for mobile-friendliness here: Mobile-Friendly Test by Google Search Console.

5. Page speed

Considering that 75% of traffic go to mobile devices, page speed has become more crucial than ever. Websites with fast page speed will have a better positions at search results. This is also an important factor in the statistics of sales from your site. People do not like to wait. If they want to get some information and need to wait 5-10 seconds for see a content, then they will faster close your page and go to your competitors, even if they are lower in the SERP.

And again Google give us very useful tool: PageSpeed Insights by Google

6. Structured markup and micro-markup

Search engines are programs that analyze content. And depending on how you good explained the structure of your site to a search engine, then visitors will come by the more relevant requests. That means they will find what they looking for and they will spend a longer time on your website. And that's exactly what Google wants. Relevant result for any request.

7. Social signals

Now people spend a lot of time on social networks. And search engines are measuring how many people on your website taking an action such as sharing your website socially on things like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, etc. It was also noticed that Google tracks and scores for activity from Reddit, Quora, Pinterest, and of course in Google+.

8. Safety

Having an SSL certificate and connecting to a secure protocol is gaining importance. Already on the some websites Google Chrome show the notice: "Your connection to this site is not secure". That's mean in soon future it will be important for ranking.

9. Domain

Previously, if the domain name contains accurate the keyword then it gave a big increase in the ranking. Previously, he even boldly matched the keywords in the domain name in the SERP. Now it no longer gives such a result, but still gives Google some signals. Also one of the factors considered by Google is the history of the domain, its age, and when it will expire. Older domains, with a good reputation, are much easier to keep in the ranking than new ones.

Other parameters

As already mentioned above, Google has many more parameters and this list can be continued, but the further parameters are not so important and do not play a significant role.

But what we need to say, these are what parameters decrise the rating:

• Technical errors in the site code (HTML, CSS). How to check them you can see on the article Check technical errors your website.
• Not unique content. Do not copy texts from other sites. It is better to write less, but your own, than to use already written by someone text.
• High keyword density in text. In this case, Google thinks that you want to misinform it. And it evaluate this as spam.
• Duplicate content. Displaying the same information on different URLs. Often this is due to technical errors and in result the one page is displayed at different addresses.
• Duplicate of pages title or meta tags.
• A large number of outbound links. If you are not a catalog or listing, why do you need them too much? But even in this case there are honest methods of hiding links from search engines.
• Unreadable text. This happens when the site uses a font color close to the background color or a very small font size.
• No sitemap and robots.txt files. If you are registered in the Console, then it will be indicated there. Read about this here: First analysis of your website
• Linking to a domain homepage that page sits on. Each page should not contain link to itself.