If you Google \u2018SEO ranking factors\u2019 you\u2019ll get a return of hundreds of posts. If you read some of these posts, you\u2019ll start to see an aggregate, a common denominator. What is that common denominator? It\u2019s the phrase \u2018200 ranking factors<\/strong>\u2018. Yes, 200. Rumour has it that Google\u2019s algorithm is built on over 200 ranking factors\u2013though no one can actually confirm with these factors are.<\/strong> Even then, each of the factors has\u00a0several variables.<\/p>\n

Google\u2019s\u00a0algorithm and its host of zoo animals (Penguin, Panda, Pigeon, Hummingbird) are always changing which makes declaring any exacts re: ranking factors to be a bit of a moot point. While we can\u2019t promise exacts, we are going to give you a guide to the ranking factors we think are the most important.<\/p>\n

Keywords<\/h1>\n

How important are keywords?<\/h2>\n

If your digital marketing campaign were a person, keywords are your skeleton. They make the base from which everything else grows. Keywords break down into two, in your domain\/URL and your onsite SEO.<\/p>\n

Domain<\/h3>\n

Back in the day, your domain name was\u00a0seriously weighted. Say if I wanted to rank for digital marketing Ireland, I could have bought a domain called digitalmarketingireland.ie and that would have been weighted in my favour. While it\u2019s not weighted so much any more, there are suggestions that it does still help. As for URLs of posts, Google puts importance on the first 3-5 words.<\/p>\n

Onsite SEO<\/h3>\n

Your onsite SEO is one of the most important ranking factors and covers:<\/p>\n

\n
• Title tags, blog title, onsite content, structure e.g. H1 tags, meta descriptions.<\/li>\n
• Image descriptions and alt tags.<\/li>\n
• Outbound\/inbound links.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

  Your keywords need to be present in all those places, though don\u2019t go crazy and have a density that\u2019ll get you de-indexed. Anything above 5% is questionable.<\/p>\n

  Content<\/h1>\n

  If keywords are your skeleton, then content is the flesh and skin. Content is what gives your digital marketing campaign life. This metaphor is getting a bit odd, but you see my point.<\/p>\n

  As Head of Content, content\u00a0marketing is something I do a lot of. Content breaks down into a whole load of ranking factors of it\u2019s own, so let\u2019s consider them.<\/p>\n

  Content Marketing Ranking Factors<\/h2>\n

  \n
  • Keywords<\/strong> \u2013 as above. Keywords, keywords, keywords. Know what you\u2019re targeting and make sure they are present throughout your site. Just be careful not to keyword stuff and have so many occurrences that Google\u2019s bots think you\u2019re a spammer.<\/li>\n
  • Length<\/strong> \u2013 the longer a piece, the more naturally keywords can occur. Further again, long-form content typically gets shared more, which increases your social signals.<\/li>\n
  • Social signals<\/strong> \u2013 shares on social media. The more you\u2019re shared, the more trustworthy search engines will find you.<\/li>\n
  • Amount of time spent on the page.<\/strong> The \u2018dwell time\u2019 tells Google how long people were on your page\/s. If they came on and bounced after ten seconds, that\u2019s not a good sign.<\/li>\n
  • Click-through-rates<\/strong> from search \u2013 the higher your CTR, the more Google reads you as trustworthy.<\/li>\n
  • Multimedia<\/strong> \u2013 images, video, etc. Mix it up. Google likes multimedia. So do humans.<\/li>\n
  • Links in and links out to trusted resources<\/strong> e.g. Wikipedia. If your content is good, you\u2019ll earn links. The more good links you have, the higher you\u2019ll rank. With outbound links, it\u2019s a little like telling search engines that you\u2019re using a citation, and are backing your information up.<\/li>\n
  • Freshness<\/strong> \u2013 updating content is always a plus. Updating possibly out-of-date content is a nice way to tell Google that you\u2019re committed to providing great, relevant content.<\/li>\n
  • Spelling and grammar<\/strong> \u2013 Google actually allocates more trust to sites with proper grammar and a higher reading\/comprehensive level. Get the basics right at the least.<\/li>\n
  • Structure \u2013\u00a0<\/strong>bullet points, bolded text, etc. Make sure your layout is easy to read on the web and on mobile.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    Links<\/h1>\n

    I\u2019m not really sure how to tie links back to the body metaphor except to compare them to blood. Link juice is the mojo that gets a site ranking better. Without a good link profile, ranking gets more difficult.<\/p>\n

    \n

    This is Matt Cutts. Digital marketers have a love\/hate relationship with him.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

    Link-buidling as a Ranking Factor<\/h2>\n

    \n
    • Inbound<\/strong> \u2013 links coming in to your site. If someone is linking to you: yay! If they\u2019re a good site, even better. Inbound links tell Google you\u2019re legit, which is exactly what you want.<\/li>\n
    • Outgoing<\/strong> \u2013 as in the \u2018Content\u2019 section, outgoing links to trusted resources are an extra SEO boost as they consolidate your info.<\/li>\n
    • PR of links coming in<\/strong> \u2013 Page Rank. Every site on the web has a page rank. A very new site gets a ?. Sites like Facebook are a 10. Wikipedia gets a 9. The higher the Page Rank, the more trusted the site and the more a link from them is worth.<\/li>\n
    • Age of links<\/strong> coming in. Links slowly but surely get more valuable over time.<\/li>\n
    • Social shares<\/strong>\u2014weighted for G+. As I said in the \u2018Content\u2019 section, social media cannot be ignored. Pinterest provides lots of tiny SEO boosts and Google are totally biased towards G+.<\/li>\n
    • Diverse links.<\/strong> Some have more sway e.g. .gov and .edu have higher authority than your standard .ie.<\/li>\n
    • Link location<\/strong> e.g. a link in a blog (contextual link) is worth more than a link in an author bio.<\/li>\n
    • Relevant\u00a0directories and citations.<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

      Other<\/h1>\n

      \n

      Getting a page like this to rank legitimately would be impossible.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

      (Sincerest apologies if that coloured monstrosity hurts your eyes!)<\/p>\n

      And finally: a couple of random ranking factors:<\/h2>\n

      \n
      • Usability\/User Experience<\/strong> \u2013 if your site is hard to use, your bounce rate will be higher, your dwell time lower, and your pages per session will take a dip. All of these will negatively affect your rankings.<\/li>\n
      • Having \u2018Trust\u2019 pages –<\/strong>\u00a0Contact Us, Terms and Conditions, Privacy. Make sure you\u2019ve got these bad boys.<\/li>\n
      • User reviews<\/strong> \u2013 for an e-commerce website, having user reviews is an important ranking factor.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

        There you have it: a list to the more important ranking factors. There\u2019s another 100 ranking factors to go, but discussing all of them would take forever, and it gets quite technical. Backlinko <\/a>have a pretty complete list of all the factors, if you\u2019re into that sort of thing. If you think we\u2019ve made a horrible mistake and missed out important ranking factors, let us know<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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        If you Google \u2018SEO ranking factors\u2019 you\u2019ll get a return of hundreds of posts. If you read some of these posts, you\u2019ll start to see an aggregate, a common denominator. What is that common denominator? It\u2019s the phrase \u2018200 ranking factors\u2018. Yes, 200. Rumour has it that Google\u2019s algorithm is built on over 200 ranking […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":98,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nuamarketing.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nuamarketing.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nuamarketing.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nuamarketing.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nuamarketing.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.nuamarketing.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":99,"href":"https:\/\/www.nuamarketing.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10\/revisions\/99"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nuamarketing.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/98"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nuamarketing.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nuamarketing.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nuamarketing.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}