Furthermore, including keywords unnaturally into your pages may lead to keyword stuffing. On the other hand, Google does use a specific algorithm as a signal that determines the relative importance of the web page in Google Search – PageRank. In researching this article, the author spoke directly to Pedro Dias (former Google employee), Ammon Johns (SEO Pioneer), and Dan Taylor (Russian search engine and technical SEO expert). Google’s Search Quality Raters Guidelines used to be a closely guarded document at Google that was eventually leaked online. Google now openly publishes the document as an example of what its Quality Raters are looking for when they manually review websites. For example, queries such as “best coffee shop” are considered location-dependent and will deliver a map of results based on your location.
- Google’s job is to give people web results that satisfy their questions, so if you don’t satisfy intent, you’ll likely not rank very well for very long.
- Page speed has been cited as one of the leading SEO ranking factors for years.
- For every piece of content that you create, you need to have one primary or target keyword and a few LSI keywords.
What Are Ranking Factors on Google?
This allows you to monitor organic traffic and assess how well your site is performing against others in your niche. Domain authority, in and of itself, is not one of the Google ranking factors as it is a score created by Moz. However, the signals that Moz uses to determine a website’s domain authority are more or less similar to the Google ranking factors that determine authority. Title tags and meta descriptions are short summaries that tell both users and search engines what a given page is about. Keyword-rich, optimized, and persuasive tags and descriptions have an indirect impact on rankings when the optimization leads to increased click-through rates. Long gone are the days when search engines operated on a basic level, where keyword stuffing and a volume of links were obviously direct factors that impacted ranking.
Tactics To Improve Rankings and Master Local SEO in 2025
The concept is important for all niches, but especially for anyone in YMYL niches, such as finance or health, where the results can really impact the user’s life in a significant way. Google is striving to always surface the best results, so machine learning systems have been developed as part of the move towards parsing natural language queries. Google can understand the difference between “cheat” as a disingenuous person and “cheat” as a way to game a system (as in cheat code). Run a free SEO analysis to uncover site issues, competitor gaps, and ranking opportunities. That’s why it’s important that you regularly update your content to keep it fresh.
The more important Google believes a ranking factor to be, the more important it is to optimize for that factor. Google Posts appear in your business listing, so posting consistently helps keep your profile fresh and engaging. Include high-quality images, a clear call to action, and relevant local keywords to drum up business for these one-off events. Claiming your GBP makes your business look more credible and professional, ensuring that customers see accurate, up-to-date information.
Creating lists typically involves using a combination of Google and keyword tools (either free or paid) to find all the related keywords to your keyword seeds. You need at least 1 keyword seed at this stage, but it doesn’t hurt to have more, even dozens or hundreds of seeds if you’re planning a larger content strategy. To be helpful, we need SEO Anomaly a step-by-step checklist for ranking a page starting from an idea, all the way to traffic pouring into your Google Analytics account. But an unnatural link profile with tons of low-quality or spammy backlinks can trigger Google penalties.
