Google Ranking Factors 2020

Google Ranking Factors for 2020

05 April 2020

Home >> Google Marketing >> Google Ranking Factors for 2020

 

Every digital marketer should know the following factors that Google search engine looks at when ranking web pages in the year 2020:


1. Domain Age: A factor that does not trigger any part of the search engine algorithm. The ranking of an older domain is mainly influenced by content and backlinks. Thus, domain age is not that important.

 

Domain Age

 

2. Top-Level Domain Extension (Country): Considering this factor helps your website to rank for one country but limits the ability to rank globally.


3. Title Tag Keyword: Including a relevant keyword in Title Tag is always an important On-Page SEO factor.

 

Title Tag Keyword

 

4. Length of Web Page Content: The content length of your web page correlates with the Search Engine Ranking Page (SERP) position. A web page content with more words is preferred in search engine algorithms as compared to short-form content.


5. Heading Tag Keyword: You can consider H1 Tag (known as Second Title Tag) as a relevant signal.

 

Heading Tag Keyword

 

6. The Density of Keywords: Google search engine uses Keyword Density to analyze the topic of a web page. Be sure that you do not stuff keywords into your content.


7. Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI): LSI acts as a quality signal of web page content and helps Google search engine to distinguish between the words with more than one meaning.


8. Web Page Loading Speed: Spiders of search engines analyze the HTML code of your web page to estimate its loading speed. Both search engines 'Bing' and 'Google' use page speed as a ranking factor.

 

Loading Speed Test

 

9. Google Penguin Update: Websites that engage in manipulative link schemes can easily get penalized by Google Penguin update. This will further diminish the search engine results pages (SERPs) presence of websites.


10. Google Sandbox: Temporarily limits the search visibility of new websites that get a sudden influx of links.


11. Disavow Tool: Websites that are victims of negative SEO should use disavow tool to remove the manual or algorithmic penalty.


12. Request for Reconsideration: You can easily lift a penalty with a successful reconsideration request.


13. AMP: Implementation of Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) improves the loading speed of web pages in the mobile version.


14. Canonical Tag: Proper use of this factor can prevent your website to get penalized (by Google search engine) for duplicate content.


15. In-Depth Topic: Rankings on Google are directly related to the in-depth topic of a web page.


16. Optimizing Images: The images of the website are optimized through their description, file name, title tag and ALT text. Image optimization is considered as an important Google ranking factor.


17. The Recency of Content: The updated or recently published content is always favored by the Google search engine (Caffeine Indexing Infrastructure).


18. Schema Markup: Implementing structured data on your website is an indirect ranking signal. This factor helps web pages to have a higher SERP CTR.


19. Linking Content Quality: Links from well-written and relevant content pass more value as compared to links from the poorly written content.


20. Bounce Rate: There is an obvious correlation between Google search rankings and bounce rate.


21. Duplicate Content: Search engine visibility of a website is negatively influenced by duplicate content on the same site or the internet.


22. SSL Certificate: Security is the top priority for Google and thus HTTPS is confirmed as a ranking signal.

 

SSL Certificate Security

 

23. Duplicate Meta Tags: The web page rankings will decrease if the Meta Tags across the website are duplicated.


24. Bookmarks in Chrome: Web pages might get a boost if they get bookmarked in Chrome.


25. Google Panda Update: Always avoid low-quality content on your website or else you will get penalized by Google Panda update.


26. Over Optimization: Google can penalize your website if you perform over-optimization activities such as header tag stuffing, keyword stuffing and more.


27. Hacked Websites: Google search engine can completely deindex your website if it gets hacked.


28. Breadcrumbs: This factor helps visitors to navigate on user-friendly site architecture. It also categorizes the topic of a web page.


29. Analytics: You should install two powerful SEO tools 'Google Analytics' and 'Google Search Console' on your site to improve the indexing of your web pages.


30. Domain Age of Backlinks: Links from new domains may not be powerful as compared to backlinks from aged domains.


31. The Number of Referring Domains: As per the recent study, this factor is the most important factor in the Google search engine algorithm.


32. Description Tag Keyword: A description tag is a key ranking factor that can impact your click-through rate (CTR). Meta Description is not used as a direct ranking signal by search engines.


33. The Appearance of Target Keyword in Domain Name: This relevant signal provides an edge over websites that do not include the target keyword in their domain names.


34. Registration Length of a Domain Name: Used to analyze the validity of a domain name. SEO experts always consider legitimate domain names to be paid for several years in advance.


35. Content Changes: The significant changes in web page content plays a role in freshness.


36. Quality of Outbound Link: As per the recent study, the linking from your web pages to authority websites helps send trust signals to Google search engine.


37. Grammar and Spelling: An SEO expert should use 'Grammarly for Chrome' extension to focus on this quality signal.

 

Grammar and Spelling

 

38. Anchor Text in Backlinks: Keyword-rich anchor text used in a backlink is a strong Google ranking factor.


39. Authority of Backlinks: The authority of a linking web page and a linking domain has been an extremely important Google ranking factor.


40. Guest Postings: Links from guest postings still pass the value to your web pages.


41. Links from Diverse Sources: A web page may be considered as spammy if it receives the maximum number of links from a single source. Digital Marketing Boy suggests you build a natural link profile by attracting links from diverse sources.


42. Mobile-Friendly: Properly optimized web pages for mobile devices are always rewarded by search engines. Mobile-First Indexing of Google algorithm gives importance to the mobile-friendly websites.


43. Domain Authority: High domain authority (DA) web pages will rank better than pages with lower DA scores.


44. W3C Validation: A poor quality website contains a lot of HTML errors. Digital Marketing Boy suggests you use W3C Validator to fix all the errors because a well-coded page is used as a quality signal.


45. Number of Backlinks: You can expect an impact on search engine rankings if your web page has a greater number of backlinks from the same domain.


46. Contextual Advertising: A backlink from a content page is more effective as compared to a link from an empty web page.


47. Location of Link: The text link in the footer or header of a web page is not that powerful as compared to the link in the content.


48. Length of URL: Short URLs in search results of Google tend to perform better than excessively long URLs.


49. Website Architecture: It is easy for search engines to organize your content if you create a powerful website architecture. Website Architecture helps Googlebot to index web pages of your website.


50. Website Maintenance or Server Issues: Your web pages may be deindexed if your website is facing downtime or server issues.


51. The Number of External Links: Several dofollow links from your web pages to websites can hurt your search engine rankings.


52. Excessive 301 Redirects: The authority of your web page will decrease if it attracts a greater number of backlinks with 301 redirects.


53. Mixed Media: There is a good correlation between search engine rankings and mixed media. The mixed media elements such as videos and images act as a content quality signal.


54. Internal Links: More authoritative internal links to a web page indicate its importance in search engine ranking signals.


55. Broken Links: A web page may be neglected if it has too many broken links. Thus, this factor should be taken into consideration and fix all the broken links of your website.

 

Broken Links Checker

 

56. Link Relevancy: Your web page will receive more value if you are linked from a relevant page.


57. Link from Wikipedia: A factor that can help you to gain a little trust for your website. Note that links from Wikipedia are nofollow.

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