le ranking signals: An exhaustive breakdown of all confirmed and rumored factors

You will find at least 200 variables that affect how sites rank in Google search results pages.

However, there is a huge difference between what might affect SEO and what’s simply a good principle for ranking well.

Although it may sound like semantics, “best practices” doesn’t automatically translate into ranking factors.

Let’s now separate the facts from the fiction, and talk about all that you should be doing every day as a marketer.

This article will examine all known, confirmed, rumored and absolute myth-level Google ranking factor factors in an easily-read, high-condensed manner.

Confirmed ranking factors

These are the ranking factors that we have confirmed to be true. They have a significant impact on your search results in Google.

Core Web Vitals

Your Core HTML Vitals evaluate page experience signals to determine how engaging the user experience. In 2021, they confirmed that were ranking signals. Make sure your site is in good standing.

Source Timing to Bring Page Experience to Google Search

Anchor text

Google confirmed that they use concise anchor texts (read: “SEO Strategies” and not “click Here”) to better understand your pages. This can lead to Google placing your page higher on the SERPs.

Although it is not the most important ranking factor (especially after the Penguin update), it can still be helpful.

Source Search Engine Optimization Guide

Domain history

While you may think your business is legitimate and up-and-running, what if someone else was using the domain to scam customers?

Domain history is important, and it’s a ranking signal. However, John Mueller from Google has stated that the issue will be resolved over time. We recommend that you play it safe with this one.

Source English Google Webmaster Central Office-Hours Hangout (Nov. 13th, 2018)

E-A-T

Google’s EA-T framework evaluates authority, trustworthiness, and expertise. While it’s not a ranking factor, many of its factors are ranking elements. This one is in the confirmed column. However, we do have a “but only type of” note.

Source How Google Fights Disinformation

Headings

Google can use headings (including H1s as well as H2s) to rank pages. They help Google understand what the page is about. Although they aren’t the only ranking factor that matters, they do matter. Make sure your headings are clear and keyword-friendly.

Source English Google Webmaster Central Office-Hours (August 7, 2020).

HTTPS

SSL, also known as HTTPS (as opposed to HTTP), is a well-known ranking factor. This is also an essential part of providing a safe user experience. If you have not already, you should.

Source HTMLS as a Ranking Sign

Content

It is clear that content is used to rank websites. The quality of the content and how it answers questions can make a difference in ranking. Google evaluates the content as a whole (not just its headings).

Source English Google Webmaster Central Office-hours (August 7, 2020).

Backlinks

Linking to your site via other websites has been a standard SEO practice for a long time. PageRank has been using backlinks from other sites as “votes”, offering a new way of analyzing quality, which was originally inspired by academic papers.

Source: Ranking Results – How Google Search Works

Keyword prominence

Keyword density is not a ranking factor, but keyword prominence. This refers to the position of the keyword. The closer it is to the title, or the beginning of the text the more prominent it will be.

Source English Google Search Office-Hours (June 18, 20,21)

Keyword stuffing

Google has confirmed that keyword stuffing, which is the practice of over-stuffing content with keywords to increase its ranking, is a bad ranking factor. Avoiding it will cause you to suffer.

Source Spam Policies For Google’s Web Search

Payed links

It is a negative ranking factor if you have paid for backlinks. This is something you should avoid.

Source Spam Policies For Google Web Search

Mobile-friendliness

Mobile-friendliness has been a confirmed ranking factor and has been growing in importance over the years. Mobile search results are especially important, as they have surpassed desktop searches for for at least seven years. Here are some examples of where mobile responsive best practices overlap with confirmed ranking signals.

Source Making the Web more mobile-friendly

Page speed

Page loading speed is an important factor in Google’s SERPs. It has been proven since 2010. This directly impacts the user experience. Make sure your site loads as quickly as possible.

Source Speed is now a landing page factor for Google Search and Ads

The searcher is physically close to it

Google takes into account the physical proximity of searchers when determining which results to show, especially for local searches. Although you cannot change the physical location of your business location, ensure that all information about your business (including any location citations) is accurate and up-to-date.

Source How to Improve your Local Ranking on Google

RankBrain

RankBrain, an AI system that was released in 2015 and significantly improved in 2016, aims to integrate AI into search queries for better results. This is especially useful for long-tail keywords or ambiguous queries. Although it is a proven ranking factor, there are no clear and distinct ways to optimize for it.

Source: Google Q&A

Relevance, distance, and prominence

These three signals are confirmed by Google to be ranking factors. They determine the popularity, geographical closeness, and relevance of a business to a specific search. These signals are vital for local search results. Take them into consideration when optimizing your local business pages and don’t forget to get reviews.

Source How to Improve your Local Ranking on Google

Title tags

While there is ample evidence to suggest that optimizing title tags can increase ranking, we also know they are not as important as the rest. Although it’s only one aspect of a larger picture, they state that Google considers keyword stuffing here to be a negative factor.

Source English Google Webmaster Central Office-Hours Hangout (January 15, 2016).

URLs

URLs are a minimal ranking factor for search engines. This means keywords within a URL will be assessed by Google when crawling your site. Mueller repeatedly stated that this ranking factor is not worth spending too much time on.

Source @JohnMu Twitter

Not confirmed, but possible ranking factors

Google may not have confirmed all ranking factors, but this doesn’t mean they don’t have an impact on the algorithm. These are the unconfirmed, but still believed-to-be-expert ranking elements that may impact your SEO.

Alt text

While alt text is a good SEO practice, it is not an essential ranking factor. However, using alt text correctly and with keywords can improve your SEO strategy. It will give Google more context about the content of your page.

Source: Google Image SEO Best Practices

Breadcrumbs

Google uses breadcrumbs to determine the hierarchy of your pages. We know that breadcrumbs can be used to help Google categorize pages. Google also treats breadcrumbs like normal links in PageRank. Even though they aren’t yet confirmed as ranking factors, we believe they can have an effect on rankings.

Source @methode Twitter

Click depth

Based on Mueller’s remarks, click depth (or the number of clicks required to go from your home page into the destination page) is a very important ranking factor. However, it is not an important one. Consider how simple it is for users get to the end page.

Source English Google Webmaster Central Office-Hours Hangout (June 1, 2018,)

Local citations

These citations include your business’ key information, such as name, address and phone number. While it isn’t confirmed that these citations are a ranking factor for Google, they do appear online. Google has stated that local results are more relevant than those that don’t. Businesses with complete information will be ranked higher.

Source Increase your local ranking on Google

Co-citation

Google uses co-occurrence and co-citation to determine how closely two pages or sites are related. This may help them identify the context and how they relate. Google may be able to help you with some puzzle pieces by adding a few trusted, high-quality links to your website, but this is not likely to make a difference in ranking.

Source – Google patents related entities and what they mean for SEO

Language

It makes perfect sense that someone looking for shoes in Mandarin will not find a Spanish-language website. You will need to create content in the language they speak in order to reach users from different places.

Source Ranking Results – How Google Search Works

Links to internal resources

These links are to your website’s content, but you must use strong anchor text. They are certainly not necessary, but they can be helpful. They are unlikely to rank high in rankings compared to other factors like site loading times.

Source Find Out What Sitelinks are

Schema

Schema markup can be very valuable in driving clicks and also provides microdata that Google can easily understand.

Although it isn’t a well-known ranking factor, we know that it can help you rank in search queries that you might not otherwise have. It may be a ranking signal but it could also help your overall SEO.

Source Understanding Structured Markup Data

Search history of the user

Google understands that every user is unique. When delivering search results, the algorithm takes into consideration past search history.

This is something you cannot influence and it is often not significant, except for prominent SERPs that are localized or pages that are frequently accessed.

Source @searchliaison Twitter

Uncertain ranking factors

These ranking factors have been long speculated about and, while not explicitly denied, we have good reasons to believe they are unlikely to be official signals.

301 redirects

Matt Cutts, a former Googler, stated in 2012 that Google would allow unlimited redirects to one page. However, this may lead to a slight PageRank loss.

They are not, however, a ranking factor for page rankings. To avoid potential redirect chain issues, it is important to closely manage redirects and link management. This is a good practice to improve site performance.

Source Google recommends using 301 redirects when migrating from HTTPS to HTTPS.

Canonical links

Although Canonical links have a direct connection to search rankings, we know that Google may ignore them and choose their own canonical URLs to display in search results. Remember Captain Barbosa’s quote from Pirates of the Caribbean: “The code is more what I’d call guidelines than actual laws.”

Source Google chooses canonical URLs according to your site and user preference

Outbound links

It is too easy to manipulate outbound links to rank as a ranking factor. However, it is important to remember that Google can use the anchor text and links you select to help it better understand your content so that it can indirectly bring in value.

Source English Google Webmaster Central Office-Hours Hangout (January 26, 2016).

Ranking factors that are not proven to work

Some rumored ranking factors remain in doubt, but others have been proven to be false. Let’s take a look at the SEO issues shouldn’t be concerned with.

It’s worth mentioning that there are many other items on the list. However, we wanted to include the most important ones.

Rate of bounce

This one is being listed first, as it is a common misconception that bounce rates impact ranking. Google repeatedly stated that bounce rates do not impact ranking.

Source @methode Twitter

Soft 404 pages and 404 pages

Google has disproved the myth that 404 pages can affect how other URLs rank. However, broken links and pages can cause poor user experiences (so it is important to update them when possible).

Source: 404 (Page Not Found) errors

Google Display Ads

This one is a little more complicated than the others.

Display ads can slow down site loading times, especially if there are a lot of them. These ads can also affect your rank. They don’t directly affect your ranking by just appearing on your page.

These ads won’t have any direct impact on your SEO ranking. However, you should ensure that your page performance (including site loading speed and performance) is not affected by too many ads.

Google Ads, Google Search Console and Google Analytics will not automatically affect your ranking.

Source The Top Heavily Update: Pages that have too many ads above the fold are now being penalized by Google’s “Page Layout” algorithm

AMP

This is a simple one: AMP does not rank. Google has confirmed this multiple times since 2016, at the latest.

Source This Week on Google Podcast 341

BBB

Although Better Business Bureau (BBB), reviews can have an impact on consumer buying decisions, there’s no evidence that they can affect your SEO rankings. One of Google’s team members confirmed this.

Source English Google Webmaster Central Office-Hours Hangout (Nov. 13th, 2018)

Click-through rate

Although click-through rates (CTRs) have been widely believed to be a ranking factor for websites, it has now been proven that this is not the case. This is especially true since Google was aware of people trying to manipulate this information years ago. While it is great for your site’s CTR to be higher, don’t expect this to improve your rankings.

Source : CT in the Google Algo Google’s Gary Illyes, Stone Temple’s Eric Enge Discuss

Text to code signal

Although this is not directly related to ranking, it can have an impact on page performance, as well as ranking factors such loading speeds and user experience. Although not essential for ranking, it is worth keeping in mind.

Source English Google Webmaster Central Office-Hours Hangout (Mar. 27, 2018)

Meta descriptions

Although we know that strong meta descriptions are a good SEO practice for driving higher CTR to your website, Google hasn’t used them as a ranking signal since 1999 or the early 2000s.

Source @JohnMu Twitter

Manual action

Manual actions can be used to manually alter a website’s search visibility by removing or degrading a specific page or site from Google Search. These actions are carried out by Google and are penalities, not ranking factors.

Source: Manual Actions Report

Content length

SEO experts will tell you that to rank on Google, you must have at least 1,000 words. It’s false.

Google does not consider content length as a ranking factor. However, you need to have sufficient quality content to rank for any keyword.

Source: johnmu on /r/bigseo

Domain age

Although the age of your domain can affect site authority (see below), Google has stated that it is not a ranking factor.

Source @JohnMu Twitter

Domain authority

Google repeatedly stated that domain authority does not count as a ranking factor. Any “site authority” score is generated by a third party tool.

Higher domain authority sites may correlate with better SEO. Although some calculations may seem close, they are only correlative. This one is pretty common sense.

Source : Johnmu on the r/SEO/

Domain name

While your domain name is important (www.coolshoes.com can drive clicks), it isn’t a ranking factor, and hasn’t been in a while.

Source English Google Webmaster Central Office-Hours (September 11, 2020).

Priority for the first link

Google doesn’t care about which link is first. This isn’t the magic trick that some people claim it to be. They are concerned about the quality and safety of the links. Remember that anchor text is more important than the location of the link.

Source English Google Webmaster Central Office-Hours Hangout (February 20, 2018).

Content encyclopedia

Google will automatically prioritize a brand-new article above one that was written last year. No.

However, quality and thoroughness of the article are important. You can improve your ranking by updating regularly if you want to remain competitive.

Source @JohnMu Twitter

Types of Links

You think that having a domain ending with.gov/.edu will make a difference? Users may find it useful, but Google will not. It is not a ranking factor.

Source @JohnMu Twitter

Keyword density

Although it may have had an impact on ranking once, it isn’t a ranking factor. Remember that keyword stuffing is not a good idea.

Source: What Is The Ideal Keyword Density for a Page?

“We don’t know” if these are valid ranking factors (or not).

Are you looking for a ranking factor we haven’t yet discussed? There are some that are still up in the air. Some evidence suggests they might be ranking factors, but there is no way to prove it.

Authorship of your content

Google’s ranking of your page will be affected by the author’s name. We aren’t sure. However, it is a good idea to trust reliable authors.

Google recommends adding author information to article schema. We suspect authorship expertise plays a role in E-A–T. It’s still inconclusive. (Remember that we are referring to “authorship” in a wider sense than Google’s older Authorship.

Source: 14 ways Google may evaluate E-A-T

HTML lists

Ranking factors could include ordered HTML lists or orders. However, we don’t really know. It’s not a strong signal but can be helpful in SEO, especially if you can get a featured spot.

Source How to Get Google Featured Snippets: 9 Optimization Guidelines

MUM

Multitask Unified Model (MUM), which was introduced in 2021, is designed to improve the understanding of language by the algorithms so that Google can answer more complex queries. Although it is not yet a ranking factor, it may be in the near future. Google has already discussed how it helped improve some search results.

Source Using AI for Google Search Safety

Text formatting

Use HTML elements to format your text can make it easier for readers and Google’s crawling tool to quickly locate the most important parts. It is possible that italicized or bolded words may be given more weight. It can be used to tell Google what page you want, which may affect ranking. However, the jury is still out.

Source @JohnMu Twitter

Conclusion

Here it is – an extensive list of all known, verified and disproven Google ranking factors.

That’s not all. The list may change over time. This is probably the only thing that we can promise at the end.

Although the SEO rumor-mill has speculated for almost two decades about what Google’s “200 ranking elements” are, the truth is likely to be a lot more murkier.

Google will continue to use machine learning and AI to slice and dice data. The true ranking factors that will drive the needle for marketers tomorrow won’t be the static ones we used yesterday.

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