There is no end to our curiosity about how Google ranks a site on its search engine results pages. Because Google never says anything about its ranking factors. All of us who work with SEO have learned about this mysterious world through research.

So let's get into the mystery world of Google today and try to find out why Google ranks a site. What things does Google see?

Welcome everyone to my post today, where I am going to discuss the Google ranking factor.

Let's get started.

We all know that Google's ranking factor is one of the most complex issues in the online world. There was a time when SEO meant only Meta Tag and Backlink. Not too long ago, when it was very easy to rank sites/pages by bringing backlinks from Keyword Stuffing and Irrelevant sites.

The arrival of Google's Hummingbird algorithm update in September 2013 was an earthquake for the SEO industry. You probably know how relevant this Hummingbird update is to Google's search results pages. Since then, it has become much more difficult to rank a site by SEO with the BlackHat technique.

The main goal of the Hummingbird Algorithm was to focus on how relevant a page was to keywords before it was ranked in the Google search engine results page. How many times has that particular keyword been used on this page where it used to be. But no matter how many times the Hummingbird keyword has been used, it has given more importance to how relevant it is to the content of the page.

Google's main ranking factors depend on 10 things. Apart from this, there are some minor ranking factors, but these are considered to be the most important ranking factors.

1. Domain ranking factor
2. Webpage factor
3. Website factor
4. Backlink factor
5. User interaction
6. Special Algorithm Rules
7. Social signal
8. Brand signal
9. On-site web spam factor
10. Off-page web spam factor

Domain ranking factor

01. The age of the domain

It is a common question whether the age of the domain plays any role in the ranking. There are different doctrines before and after, but many SEO specialists think that new domains give better results than old domain rankings.

This means that as your domain ages, so does your ranking maturity.

However, this does not mean that you will always use expired domains. There are many things to note when using an expired domain, especially its backlink profile.

02. Top-level domain

There is a lot of talk about top-level domains (TLD) and second-level domains (SLD). Here too, the majority of people say that it is easier to rank a top-level domain than a second-level domain. Personally, I have always been in favor of top-level domains.

These are usually considered Top Level Domains:

✔ .Com ✔ .Net

✔ .Org ✔ .K

✔ .Info ✔ .Eo

✔ .Me ✔ .Xiz

03. Exact match domain

Exact Match Domain (EMD) means taking the domain as the main keyword you want to work with. Suppose you want to rank for this keyword Food and you get this domain Food.com, this is Exact Match Domain. Exact match plays a positive role in domain search results. However, content quality plays a big role here.

04. VfL Bochum vs. 1. FC Union Berlin Private WhoIs

If a domain car is registered in your name, you can hide its information through WhoIs Guard if you want. Doing Whois Data Private or Hide the domain means you want to hide something. So keeping Whois data public without keeping it private is the best practice.

05. Spammer WhoIs Owner

If Google traces a domain owner as a spammer, it has the same effect on the rest of the domains in its ownership.

06. Country Top Level Domain

If the Country Code Top Level Domain (ccTLD) of a specific country, this domain is preferred in the search results of that country/area. An example of a ccTLD is the .com.bd domain.

Page-level factor

07. Keywords in the title

This is a very common factor, the keyword you want to rank in must have that keyword in the title. This is one of the most important ranking signals for On-Page SEO.

08. Keywords at the beginning of the title

After an experiment with the popular SEO tool MOZ, they formally stated that the keywords used at the beginning of the title performed better in the search results than the keywords in the middle or at the end of the title.

09. Meta description / meta tag

Although Google does not consider meta descriptions as a direct ranking factor. Then there is the value of meta description in search results. In particular, it helps increase your site's CTR (Click Through Rate).

10. Using keywords in H1 tags

The H1 tag is called the second title tag. If Google considers the title of your website as the main ranking factor then the H1 tag can be called as the second-ranking factor. But remember one thing, it is not right to use more than 1 H1 tag in a page/post.

11. Long content

The length of content plays a very important role in ranking. Because Google always wants to give the user accurate and more information at the same time. So if your content is short then ranking becomes difficult. Backlinko's founder Brain Dean, after researching about 1 million Google pages, said that the average length of the 1st result on the 1st page of Google is 1600 words +

12. Keyword density

Keyword density refers to the percentage of the main keyword (the keyword you want to rank) used in the entire article. However, you have to be very careful about keyword density. Because if the keyword density is very low, it is difficult to rank, so if the keyword density is high, the chances of getting a penalty on Google are also high.

The question is, what percentage of keywords can be included in an entire article? The answers are given one by one, but in my personal opinion, the main keyword should not be used more than 5-6 times in 1000 word articles.

13. Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) keyword

As we have seen above, if the keyword density in the content is high, Google will look at it with a bad eye and there is a possibility of penalties. But it is also difficult to rank articles without true relevant keywords. An excellent solution, in this case, maybe the Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) keyword, LSI keyword means to use the relevant keyword in a term article.

For example, your keyword is "Keyword research tool", then its LSI can be "Best Keyword tools", "Google keyword planner tool", "google keyword research tool" etc.

If you can't find the LSI keyword on your own, you can use a tool called LSIGraph

14. Page loading speed

Loading speed is considered an important ranking factor in both Google and Bing 2 search engines. If pages on your site take too long to load, it is detrimental to your site. Normally a page should load in 3-4 seconds.

I use these tools to check the loading time of the site.

Google Page Speed Insight

Pingdom

15. Duplicate content

There was a time when websites could be ranked as spamming or black hat ways. At that time, since Google did not use the important terms of the rank brain or artificial intelligence as it is now, it often ranked duplicate content.

But now is not the time. If your website has duplicate content it is a big negative sign in the eyes of Google and the site can get a penalty at any time for this duplicate content. So before uploading the content on the site, you must check the whole content in a good way with the plugin checker.

I use these tools to check if the content is duplicate.

SEO Small Tool: Plagiarism Checker (FREE)

Copyscape (My Favorite)

In the above article, we got an idea about Google's domain level and page level ranking factor, now we will start discussing the rest of the page level ranking factor.

16. Image optimization

As you may know, a lot of visitors come to the website from images in search results. So I want the image of the content to be optimized properly. Properly optimizing the image is also considered as a ranking factor by Google.

If you are interested, I will write a detailed article on image optimization in the future, I hope you will comment in the comments.

17. Content updates

Google always wants to give accurate information to its visitors. Therefore, it is important to update the content. Suppose you wrote an article on a topic 3 years ago, if you add some new information and updates to the article every month, Google likes it. Content updates are a proven ranking factor for Google.

18. Keyword Prominence

Putting your desired keyword in an important place on a web page is called keyword prominence.

That is, whether you put your main keyword in the first 100 words of the page/post, or whether there is a keyword in the heading tag of the page, this keyword prominence.

19. Outbound / External link

Just as it is important to have inbound or internal links in a site, it is also important to have outbound or external links.

But, many are not keen on external links. Feel that there is no benefit to my site from external links.

But now Google has changed this idea. It is important that your site has an internal link as well as an external link. This will increase the trust of visitors and Google to your site. If you can take a user to a more informative site it is much better to increase your trust.

20. Grammar and spelling

The grammar and spelling mistakes of the article play a role in the ranking of the website. Since Google is now using Artificial Intelligence (AI) in search results, Google does not allow such minor errors. This means that if your article has a grammar or spelling mistake, it will play a negative role for both the site and Google.

This is one of my favorite tools you can try:

Grammarly (Paid tool)

Grammarly Google Chrome Extension

21. Multimedia

People prefer to see or hear than to read. Google and Prefer to put images, videos, audio in the content. Since how long a visitor stays on the site is considered an important ranking factor, adding multimedia content like images, videos or audio will keep visitors on the site longer. Which will help increase the ranking of the site?

22. Internal link

A few days ago I published a detailed content on my site about backlinks. Where internal and external links are discussed in detail.

However, the internal link (Internal Link): When you link a page/post within a website to another page/post is called an internal link. It is also called Inbound Link. This helps the link juice to pass correctly in all the pages/posts of your site, as a result of which your site gets Google rank.

23. Broken link

A broken link or dead link is the same thing. Suppose you have an internal link to another page on your site. Later, at some point, you delete the linked page or change the URL. So now when you click on that anchor text, instead of the desired page, 404 Error is showing, this is the broken link.

This can also happen in the case of external links.

For example, if the page with which you made an external link is no longer alive, then that link is also called a broken link.

It is never good to have a broken link for a site. You should redirect these links 301 to the relevant page.

24. Reading level (readability)

Reading level (readability) is tested to understand how easy or difficult it is to read the content. Online marketers and SEO experts always say that content is always easy to write. So that both a PHD holder and a high school student can read and understand the article.

You used a lot of complex words in the article. Even if a PHD holder/university student understands the article, it will be difficult for a high school student to understand some of the words in the article. Then he will no longer be interested in reading the article. Since "how long a visitor stays on the site is important in Google's eyes", it can be said that the reading level of the article is considered by Google as a ranking factor.

If you are using WordPress, you will find that the Yoast SEO Plugin has an option called readability.

You can also try this tool if you want: Hemingway Editor

I try to keep my article readability in grades 5-6 in the Hemingway tool. I hope you will get some more interesting ideas about the site.

25. URL Length

Too long URL length gives negative results for website ranking. So you should keep the URL as short as possible. And never let the URL exceed 50 characters, that's the maximum.

26. URL contains keywords

Having keywords in the URL is very important for ranking. Basically, the URLs that Google takes signals for ranking are different. If you do not include the focus keyword in the URL, Google will create confusion as to what keyword you want to rank.

Learn more about URLs: You can read the URL Structure Rules.

27. Reference / Source

We do not always refer to references or sources in articles. I often use images from Google without any courtesy. The main reason behind this is the fear of giving links. This is a wrong practice. According to the "Google Quality Guidelines", any article, especially a research type article, is referred to as a reference or source as a positive sign.

28. Location on sitemap

It's not a proof sign though. However, it is thought that Google indexes the pages at the beginning of the sitemap first. That being said, getting the rank of the page at the top of the sitemap is easier than the page at the bottom.

Using sitemaps for small sites such as less than 500 pages is not so important.

29. The quality of other ranked keywords

Google notices other similar keywords to rank in the main keyword. If you think you have a site in the kitchen where you write about kitchen related products. Here, it is assumed that you have already ranked some of the keywords relevant to your niche. At this point, it will be easier to rank for new articles.

30. Age of pages

This is very important. The age of the page plays a role in ranking Google. Especially in the beginning, it takes some time for Google to understand a page or a website. However, as the age of the page increases, this time takes less time. Because in the eyes of Google, you have been able to prove yourself as an authority site.

31. User-friendly layout

There was a time when websites were designed with all kinds of colors, including red-blue-green-yellow. In other words, many people are worried about whether the site is user friendly. But now it is certain that Google considers the user-friendly interface as a very important ranking factor. So user-friendly interface should be taken seriously for creating an SEO friendly website.

Site-level factor

32. Domain Trust / Authority

Google then gives importance to a site, so the domain trust of the site will be more. Domain trust refers to the overall value/authority of the domain. The question is, how to increase the domain trust? Quality backlinks are the only way to increase the trust / overall value/authority of a domain.

When your website gets backlinks from a quality site that is relevant to your niche, it will also be a signal to Google that your website is also a website on that subject. Thus you need to gradually increase the trust of the domain through backlinks.

33. Site updates

It bears a striking resemblance to Factor No. 17 in the previous article No. 2, where there was talk of content updates. Not just content, it's important to keep the website up to date. Google always wants its visitors to get accurate and updated data, which is why Google updates every month.

Site update refers to the site's theme, plugins, and content. You can get ideas about Google Freshness Algorithm from this article for more details.

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-algorithm-history/freshness-update/

34. Number of pages

Google also takes into account the total number of pages on your website for ranking. We have learned from previous factors that site authority plays an important role in ranking, in which case Google will give more priority to a 100-page website than a 10-page website. If the quality of the content is very good, in many cases the website with fewer pages also ranks. However, backlinks play an important role in this.

35. Sitemap

A sitemap helps Google search engines crawl your site very easily. It is important to have a sitemap on the website.

36. Contact US page

Google prefers to have a "Contact us" page on its website. So that the visitor can easily inform the website authority or owner if he has any questions.

37. SSL

Many people may know what Secure Sockets Layer or SSL is, for those who don't know, read this article - https://www.digicert.com/ssl/

In short, Secure Sockets Layer or SSL is a type of security protocol. SSL is used for various purposes including payment transactions, data transfer, social site security. Recently, Google's own browser, Chrome, was instructing people not to visit websites other than SSL.

Note that SSL is one of the many ranking factors that Google has confirmed to everyone. In other words, if you want to see the site in a good position, you must have SSL or Secure Sockets Layer on that site. International domain and hosting providers charge for SSL. But lately, some local service providers have been seen offering this service for free.

38. Terms and Service page

Having Terms and Service pages on the site means giving visitors an idea at the beginning about what kind of service or product is available on your website and what kind of Terms & Conditions it has, which helps to increase the credibility of your website.

39. Duplicate content

Just 1 duplicate content is enough to destroy a site. Google is very strict on copyright issues. Many people used to rank with duplicate content, but Google is now smarter than before. I personally am in favor of writing the content myself. However, if that is not possible in any way, then you have to check the content with good plagiarism checker software while taking content delivery from the content writer. In this case, I prefer CopyScape. However, it is a paid tool.

It can also be checked manually. If you search for a line with "" at the beginning and end of it, if any result comes, it means it is plugged content.

40. Mobile friendly

Another important factor in Google ranking is that the website is responsive. Because in the USA, people now search from mobiles more than laptops or desktops. So if your website is not mobile-friendly, Google will not rank your site from mobile search. As a result, you will lose visitors. Those who do not know about Mobile Fast Index can read this article.

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/mobile-first-index-actually-mean/178017/

You can be sure that your website is mobile-friendly by using Google's own tool. If you go to this link and link to your website, Google will let you know if your site is mobile friendly.

https://search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly

41. Breadcrumb Navigation

Breadcrumb refers to a guide to a specific page of a website. This means that a particular page or post can be called breadcrumb.

42. Site Usability / User Interface

It is very common that after visiting a website, if you think it is too complex, that is, if the user interface of the site is bad, then Google does not rank that site. So there is no alternative to a good user interface to get a good position in the search results.

43. YouTube

YouTube is a service of Google. If there is a YouTube video in a content/article, that content ranks faster than other content/articles.

44. User Review / Site Reputation

Reputation of any website plays a very important role for ranking. In this case, it can be said that important websites like Google, Yelp, RipofReport, if you have a good review of your website, it will help boost the rankings.

Backlink factor

The most important factor in ranking a website in search results is the backlink factor.

45. Link Domain Age

If you get backlinks from a website, the value of the link depends a lot on the age of the website. Let's say you have the opportunity to get links from two websites. One of the websites is 3 years old and the other is 6 months old. Here, if you take a link from a 6-month-old website to a 3-year-old website, the results will be better.

46. Linking Domain Authority / Rating

The older you are, the better off you are. Age, as well as domain authority, also plays an important role here. Suppose the domain authority of one website is 50 and that of another is 15. Here it can be said with certainty that the value of links in 50 authority domains is higher than 15 authority domains.

A variety of tools are used to check domain authority/rating. You can use Moz's Link Explorer for free - https://moz.com/link-explorer

Other than that, those who use Ahrefs can get an idea of the domain authority by looking at its domain rating feature.

47. Getting links from different IPs

just linking will not boost the site search results. If so, you have taken links from 3 websites. But all the websites are under one hosting company and everyone's IP is one. Then the links of those websites will not have much value. So you have to make sure that the IP of the linked website is different.

48. .EDU.GOV Backlinks

Many who are working in the SEO industry may know about 10beast.com, the famous affiliate website of Lukman Khan of Pakistan. This website sold for ৫ 5 million in December 2016 (Taka 42 crore in Bangladeshi Taka)

In an interview, Lukman Khan gave a detailed idea about his 10beast.com website to SEO specialist Matt Digit. And he mentioned that the.EDU domain played a very important role in boosting the ranking of his website.

You can watch the whole interview from Youtube.

However, there is a lot of debate about whether the.EDU link still works. But personally, I think it still works.

49. Total Linking ROOT Domains

Suppose a site gets a link from 30 root domains, another domain gets a link from 20 root domains of the same value. The site that gets the link from more domains will rank first. Because we know that the higher the authority of the site, the higher the ranking of the site in Google search results.

But you can't take links from wherever you want. As important as Total Linking Root Domains is, it is even more important to have link relevance.

50. Link Relevance

There was a time before 2012 when sites were ranked with articles with spamming links, bad anchors and over-optimized keywords. But after the Panda Update (https://moz.com/learn/seo/google-panda) in February 2011, SEO is not as easy as it used to be. We have learned from previous articles that backlinks are the most important factor in ranking a website. But that link has to be relevant.

Suppose you are building a home and garden niche site but there is no relevance of backlinks. Most of the links on your site are from phishing or hunting related websites. Then there is a possibility of penalty eating of this site in any Google update. So there is no alternative to link relevance. If you visit the Baby Nish site, you should try to get backlinks from the Baby Nish site. Or if you take a link from another niche, it should be noted that it is a post related to your niche.

51. Competitor Links

We use a variety of link building strategies to bring webpages to the top 1 of Google search results. If you can get a link from one of your competitors, then Google will give more value to the link received from the competitor than any other link.

The first question that comes up is… .. How do I get a link from the company? (An article on link building strategy will be published on the site soon)

The simplest and most important answer is "content". If you want to get a link from a competitor, the quality of your content must be very good so that your competitor is interested in giving you a link.

52. Spammy/bad links

Spammy links are a bad thing for any website. If you work in the SEO industry, you may have heard of the term "Negative SEO". Some people use negative SEO to outsource their competitor's website. So you always have to be careful that your website does not fall into the hands of Negative SEO in any way. Then if the site is affected by Negative SEO in any way, you have to delete the link from the search console.

53. Guest Post

Guest Post is one of the main factors in the backlink strategy of a website. You can write content as a guest on various niche relevant sites. And you can take the link for your website from your written post. This strategy is one of the most popular and popular strategies in the SEO industry.

There was a time when the owners of Nish Relevant blogs could be mailed to content publishers and links could be taken from there. But now that the SEO industry is very competitive, it can be said that only links are not available.

After sending a mail to a blog owner, if he sits down for 20/50/100 dollars for a guest post, it is not surprising. However, Google's Community Guidelines clearly state that the link must be taken in a natural way. Before taking a link from a guest post, be sure to check if the site is relevant to you and the site's metrics.

54. No-follow links

There are usually two types of links.

I) Do-follow link

II) No-follow link

Do-follow links are the most important. Because the link juice is passed only if the link is do-follow. So all the links on the site will be do-follow?

Answer - No.

Because if Google understands that you are trying to manipulate search results. Manipulating means buying a link with money and linking to your website, then your site will get a hefty penalty.

I see many people thinking like this, if I take the link with money, will I take No-follow canoe? This is a fatal misconception. When backlinking, keep in mind that the links are a mix of Do-follow and No-follow.

55. 301 Redirect

I have been noticing for some time now that 301 Redirect is becoming quite popular for ranking websites. Permanently redirecting an existing page to another relevant page here is called 301 Redirect. 301 Redirect also has some issues. If you can't redirect 301 properly, the website will not rank but there is a possibility that the rank of the site will go down. So you should not use 301 Redirect on the website without having a clear idea about it.

56. Anchor Text

Anchor text is very important for ranking signals. Basically, by looking at the text (anchor text) of your link, search engines can easily understand what kind of keyword rank you want.

However, it should be noted that the anchor text should not be over-optimized. Then the website is almost certain to get a penalty.

57. Country TLD Referring Domain

If the referring domain of the links taken to rank a website in a particular country is mostly Country TLD of that country, then it has some effect on the search results.

Suppose you are trying to rank SEO India in this keyword. Now if the referring domain in the backlinks you are doing has more than .in then it will be clear to Google that the Indian website is linking to it so the site is related to India. This way Google will rank you in that particular area.

58. Linking Domain Relevance

In addition to this post, many previous posts have talked about the relevance of linking domains. Search engines are now taking a serious look at whether the domain you are linking to is related to your niche and how relevant it is.

If you take a link from a technology blog on a phishing site, it will not be relevant. But it doesn't have to be 100% accurate. If you want you can take a link to your phishing niche site from the outdoor niche site.

59. Negative / Positive Link Velocity

Link velocity is a very important issue. Every SEO expert needs to have an idea about this. Link velocity is the type of backlinks you make to your site in a given period of time.

Let's say Rahim made 40 backlinks in the first 15 days after creating a website and then no backlinks in 3 months. After that, he did 45 backlinks in 7 days.

On the other hand, Karim is doing backlinks 5-6 hours per month after creating a website. Here Rahim's link building strategy is called negative link velocity and Karim's link building strategy is called positive link velocity.

60. Authority Links

Links from authority sites are always more important for any website. The value of 1 authority link is always higher than 10 low-quality links. However, in the case of niche sites, authority sites are often competitors. Then no matter what the competitor or the authority says, 1 link from such a site can give a big boost to your website in search results.

We've already discussed some of Google's top 60 ranking factors. Hopefully, the articles are useful for those who are working with new SEO.

You can find out your opinion about the article in the content, thank you all for taking the time to read the article.

If you have any questions in this regard, you can let us know in the comment box. I will try to answer every comment inshaAllah.

Thanks, everyone. Stay well

Ferdous wahid

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