how to rank your website on google - Google Ranking Factors

Google uses hundreds of ranking signals andtweaks their algorithm around 500-600 times per year. And many of these ranking factorscan't even be looked at independently. It's not to say that they're unimportant, butan average person doing SEO for their site doesn't need to worry about 200+ranking factors. 

So today, I'm going to walk you throughthe most important Google ranking factors so you stay focused on the thingsthat matter most. Stay tuned. [music] The first and arguably most importantranking factor are quality backlinks. Backlinks form the basis of PageRank, whichis the foundation of Google's ranking algorithm.

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 They mention it on their "how search works"page, they've tweeted about it, and independent studies confirm the relationship betweenbacklinks and organic traffic. But not all links are created equal. There are a lot of factors that contributeto a backlinks ability to push a page higher in the SERPs. And the two most important arerelevance and authority. We have a full tutorial that goes deep intothe attributes of high-quality backlinks, so I'll link that up in the description.

 The next ranking signal is freshness. Freshness is a query-dependent ranking factor,meaning it's more important for some queries than others. For example, a query like "teslanews" has super-fresh results. And that's because people wantinformation on current news. Not something that happened four years ago. But freshness isn't limited to just news topics. If we look at the SERP for the query "bestheadphones," you'll see that all of the top ranking pages have the currentyear in the title. 

And that's because people don't want to knowabout the best headphones from 2014. Technology is advancing and there are alwaysnew models and manufacturers coming out. But for a query like, "how to tie a tie",freshness isn't as important since nothing has really changed. So for queries that require freshness,keep your content up to date. We have a step-by-step tutorial on how toidentify these queries and republish content to get more search traffic, so I'll linkthat up for you in the description.

 The next ranking factor is search intent. While backlinks are arguably the mostimportant ranking factor, search intent is likely the most overlooked. Search intent represents the reasonbehind a searcher's query. So when someone searches for "how to makechicken soup," they want to find a recipe. When they search for "best headphones,"they want to see a listicle with a variety of different headphones. And the way we determine search intentis by looking at the top-ranking pages and identifying the 3 C's of search intent. The first C is content type.

 So are the top pages mostly blog posts,product, category, or landing pages? For "best headphones," they're clearly blog posts. The second C is content format. So are most of the top pages how-tos,tutorials, listicles, or opinion editorials? Again for "best headphones," they're listicles,which is kind of obvious since the word "best" implies that comparisons need to be made.

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 Finally is content angle. And this is the most dominant USPthat the top-ranking pages are using. For the query "best headphones," it lookslike they're going with the "freshness" USP by including the current year in the titles. Of the 3 C's, content type and content formatare absolutely critical to match, otherwise, you'll be hard-pressed to rank highfor any meaningful query. Next up is topical authority of the website. Google wants to rank pages from authoritativesources and this goes way beyond backlinks. For example, if we look at the SERP for"how to unclog a toilet," you'll see that this DR 42 site is outranking much morepowerful websites with significantly more referring domains. 

Well, this page comes from a website that's justabout plumbing so it's likely more authoritative on that topic. Now, if we're being honest, this isjust an educated guess. But there are more clues to helpus solidify our argument. #1. Google's search quality rater guidelines mentionsomething called E-A-T, which stands for expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness. I don't know about you, but in our opinion, webelieve that it's near impossible for a person or website to demonstrate all threequalities on every topic. Alright, so the second point of support for topicalauthority is in Google's SEO starter guide. They say "cultivate a reputation for expertiseand trustworthiness in a specific area."

 #3. Pages on websites that are focused onone particular topic will have more internal links from pages about similar things. And not only do internal links help increase"authority," but they also help Google understand what the pages are about. Finally, there's evidence to suggest thatthe perceived authoritativeness of a site is query-dependant in this Google patent. Alright, the next ranking factoris content depth. Depth is about hitting the talking points ofa topic that searchers want and expect to see.

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 For example, if we look at the SERP for "bestwatch brands," you'll see that search intent tells us that we need to create a listicleblog post specifically about luxury watches. But this doesn't tell us what's importantfrom a content perspective other than the fact that we should be talkingabout Breitling instead of Timex. In order to figure that out you need to actuallyvisit the top-ranking pages and look for similarities between the content. And if you look at the top-ranking pages,you'll find that they all mention something about price. 

They all mention popular brands like Rolex. And they all talk about technical specifications. So if you want to rank for this query, youshould probably talk about these things too. It's not about limiting your creativity orcopying others, but since Google is ranking similar pages at the top, it's tellingus what they want to see. And since Google's job is to deliver the mostrelevant results for any given query, it's probably what the searcher wants to see too. Another way you can find talking points is tolook at the People Also Ask box in the SERP, as well as the related searches at the bottom. Now, one other thing I highly recommend doingis to do a content gap analysis at the page level. 

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This is a bit different because it'll showyou common keyword rankings between the top-ranking pages. Just go to Ahrefs' Content Gap tool and add thetop 3 relevant ranking results in the top section. Leave the bottom section blankand then run the search. So as you can see, people want to know aboutthe "most expensive watch brands," they want "high end watches" and so on. Try and extract subtopics from here and geta better understanding of the language people use when they're searching forcontent on this topic.

 Next up is PageSpeed. PageSpeed has been a knownranking factor since 2010. And while a lot of people obsess over improvingtheir site speed by fractions of a second, from an SEO perspective, it doesn't reallymatter much for most sites. In fact, Google said: "The speed update willonly affect pages that deliver the slowest experience to users and will only affecta small percentage of queries." Bottomline: improve your pagespeed so it's not super-slow.

 You don't want people to bouncebecause your page wouldn't load. What's more important about page speedis that if visitors won't wait for your page to load, they won't see your content, contactyou, or purchase anything from your site. We have a full tutorial on how to optimizea WordPress website's speed, so I highly recommend checking that out. And even if you don't have a WordPresssite, I cover a lot of the main principles that contribute to load time. Alright, next up is to ensure yoursite uses the HTTPS protocol. In 2014, Google announced HTTPS as a verylightweight signal affecting fewer than 1% of global queries. And while using HTTPS probably won'tmake a huge impact on your site's rankings, it's a quick win that you can doin under 5 minutes.

 So if you're still using the unsecure HTTPprotocol, then it's probably worth changing. Finally is user experience. Google wants to rank content thatoffers visitors a positive experience. Because if people are finding good resultsfrom their search engine, then they'll keep using it. So the absolute basics would be to try andkeep visitors on your site for as long as possible without any kind of trickery. So create easy-to-read content, a well-organizedsite, responsive design, and go easy on the ads and pop-ups. Basically, you want to have a site that'sdesigned around the users' needs first.

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 Now, in terms of the way they measureuser satisfaction is debatable. There is no definitive proof that Googleuses things like dwell time or CTR in their ranking algorithm. But if we look at this patent from Google,they describe how clickthrough rate and other behavioral signals could be usedto influence search engine rankings. And while Google remains adamant thatthese factors are too noisy and unreliable, SEOs have tried experiments and foundCTR to be effective in higher rankings. So the key takeaway: instead of obsessing over metrics like CTRand dwell time, focus on creating excellent content and an overall positiveexperience for visitors. 

Now, was any of this advice new or exciting? Nope, but that's kind of the point. Ranking in Google is rarely about the latesttips, algorithm updates, or buzzwords. It's about putting in the work to create contentthat searchers are looking for, providing a great user experience and proving to Googlethat it's the best result for a query. Now, a topic like Google ranking factorscan be pretty controversial. So are there any other ranking signals that Imissed that you think are critical to focus on? Let me know in the comments and if youenjoyed this video, make sure to like, share, and subscribe for more actionableSEO and marketing tutorials. I'll see you in the next one. 

Also read https://tricksblog424.blogspot.com/2021/02/free-seo-tools-for-blogger-in-2021.html