Samuel Edwards

Quality SEO isn’t cheap. Exploring the types of SEO cost structures and the value of SEO services can help you better understand the best structure of SEO pricing models and how to get the most bang for your buck. Budget is one of the biggest considerations in an SEO campaign. No matter how much traffic you gain, how many new leads you close, and how much total money your SEO strategy makes you, none of that matters if your recurring revenue is still less than what you’re spending on SEO pricing. That being said, a greater SEO budget, if spent wisely, generally leads to greater results. When considering the question “how much does SEO cost?” you would be wise to understand the correlation between SEO costs and SEO results: If you’re paying less than a few hundred dollars a month, you probably aren’t building anything substantial. In fact, you’re probably doing more harm than good. Though it’s hard to pinpoint an exact figure for the cost of hiring a good search engine marketing expert, we typically advise a minimum of $500 per month for local SEO or any small business or startup. For most companies targeting short-tail keywords on a national level, $2,500-$5,000 per month is a much more realistic minimum figure, with added benefits as you scale up your budget. The more competitive the niche, the larger your budget will need to be. So how can you tell whether it’s time to increase your own SEO budget? Here we explore payment models and differences in SEO strategies that can affect the price you pay for SEO services. SEO Pricing Structure There are a handful of different payment models, depending on how you’re looking to implement digital marketing services. Each pricing model for SEO has its own advantages and disadvantages, and offer their own price ranges. Over the course of this article, we’ll introduce the main SEO services you’ll need to enlist in a campaign, how much effort they take (roughly), and how those efforts are collectively priced in each of the following payment models: In-house SEO experts In-house employees will cost you full-time salaries (or time, if you plan on doing the work yourself). SEO Freelancers and consultants Freelancing SEO consultants will cost you hourly or project rates. SEO agencies An SEO agency will generally cost you monthly SEO retainer fees for ongoing, managed SEO. Hybrid models Hybrid services typically leverage the power of multiple options above. SEO Cost vs. SEO Quality vs. SEO Speed It’s also important to recognize the “quality” factor in your SEO company services. If an agency is charging far more money than another, it probably means they’ll be doing more work, and you’ll be seeing far better results by enlisting. This isn’t always true; you’ll find price discrepancies among identical services and service discrepancies at the same price level. However, it’s important to realize that SEO costs scale according to the amount of effort involved (and the amount of effort involved often correlates with your ultimate success). On the other end of the spectrum, paying too little for SEO can land you with a bad crowd—keyword stuffers, link spammers, and other link schemers who will end up doing more harm than good for your site. If you find a price for organic SEO that seems too good to be true, it probably is. You don’t want this to happen to you:   (Image Source: Moz) With the background information out of the way, let’s start taking a look at how much effort an SEO campaign really takes, and how much each option to pursue that effort will cost you. SEO Pricing Components to Consider There are many working parts to an effective organic search campaign, so it’s virtually impossible to relegate all of them to a simplified description of “SEO services.” This makes answering the question of “how much does SEO cost?” that much more complex. Some SEO agencies and digital marketing consultants may try, but it’s in your best interest to dig a little deeper and find out what they’re truly offering. Most practitioners will have a few key areas of specialization, and may generalize in the other areas. As you’ll need a little bit of everything if you want to succeed, I encourage you to look at options that guarantee you the best overall range of coverage. We also haven’t covered the research and strategy components here, even though they are important, because you may already have an SEO strategy in mind, and approaches vary too wildly to settle on an “average” amount of effort. 1. One-Time On-site Optimization (Image Source: Moz) First, your site needs to be cleaned up. If your site isn’t in proper working order, or isn’t optimized for search engines, it isn’t going to rank on Google. Fortunately, most of the changes you’ll need to make—such as restructuring your navigation, writing good titles and descriptions, fixing site speed and optimizing for mobile devices—are one-time changes. Depending on what shape your site’s in, this could take a few hours or several days’ worth of effort, maybe even more if new development is involved. Most SEO agencies and consultants will charge a “setup” cost for SEO or otherwise include it for free as part of an ongoing SEO package. For an in-house worker, this will mean a delay in beginning the “actual” campaign work. 2. Ongoing On-site Optimization Once your site is optimized for search engine visibility, you won’t have to do much on a regular basis unless something changes. For example, you might need to perform keyword research, correct a 404 error, get rid of a duplicate page, readjust for new keywords you’re targeting (with the help of expert keyword research), or change some design element to perform better. Still, it’s a good idea to perform a regular on site SEO audit, monthly or weekly depending on the magnitude of your campaign. A regular SEO audit will not be time-intensive, shouldn’t factor much into the overall costs of

The legal field is evolving into a more digital marketplace. More and more clients are looking for lawyers who can offer the best of both worlds- high-quality legal services with an innovative, tech-savvy approach. As such, in order to nail legal SEO, lawyers need to be aware of the latest trends in digital marketing strategy so they stay ahead of their competition. Leading local SEO strategies for law firms have fairly consistent over the last decade. However, there are some differentiating factors in 2025 that will put your law business at the forefront of today’s legal digital marketing landscape in your particular law niche. Optimize Your Website for Local Search Most law firms are local businesses. That means that local search engine optimization (SEO) is the name of the game when promoting your law firm’s online marketing. Here are a few best practices for local SEO: Using consistent and accurate business information on your website, including contact details. This means having the correct address, phone number etc., as listed in Google Maps. Optimizing keyword phrases to target specific search terms that potential clients might be using when searching online marketing (e.g.: “personal injury lawyer“). Targeting keywords relevant to your practice area with content on the main pages of your site (home page). Try adding unique articles or blog posts about those topics too. It will help you rank higher for related queries! Creating an optimized title tag for each page of your website which includes pertinent keywords so it can appear in SERPs more prominently. Nail Your Content Marketing Strategy There are plenty of other ways to go about marketing your law firms online, but content marketing is the backbone. This is why you should publish blog posts that provide useful and informative information about your practice area. This could be anything from an overview of the latest legal news to a breakdown of what digital marketing for lawyers can do in various situations, like when someone has been injured on the job or after being involved in a car accident. The more specific you are, the better. And the faster you can get your content out there, the better. You can also develop educational pieces on key topics such as DUI or white-collar crime. These articles will help educate current clients and attract new ones at the same time by showing them how they’ll benefit from hiring your firm. Conduct Audience Research Before you start writing your content, it’s important to know who your target audience is. For example, if most of the people searching for a “personal injury lawyer” are in their late 20s and early 30s, then you should have a section on your site that caters specifically to this demographic. This might include videos or articles on what they need to do after being injured at work or how to handle insurance companies when an accident has occurred. On the other hand, someone search for “mass tort lawyer” on a cancer case, may be in a totally different age demographic and should be targeted accordingly. Keep Up with Google Algorithm Updates Google never stops changing its algorithm so make sure you’re up-to-date by signing up for Google Alerts (alertboxusa.com) which will notify you about emerging trends like changes in ranking algorithms and how they’ll impact your website. Build Up Your E-E-A-T Another way to help your marketing for law firms stand out from the competition is by building up its E-A-T. E-A-T stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness. You can do this in a number of ways, such as: Adding testimonials on your website that show how satisfied past & more clients are with the services you offer. Engaging with other professionals or experts in your field online via social media (Twitter, LinkedIn). It’s best if these interactions happen naturally rather than being too pushy about it!. Having accurate descriptions of specializations. For example, some people might think “family lawyer” refers just to divorce cases but there are actually different types of family law, such as custody and adoption. Run Google Ads Campaigns It might sound counterintuitive as many people think of Google Ads as being used to drive traffic to your website, but there are a number of benefits when it comes to running ads on search engines. You can use them for lead generation by promoting offers such as “free consultation” or “get started today.” You’ll also be able to track conversion rates and see if you’re getting more clicks from online campaigns than offline ones. This data will help you better plan future digital advertising & internet marketing efforts or online marketing efforts. Develop Social Media Digital Marketing Strategy The best way to get clients these days is through social media marketing . Whether they find you via Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn, it’s important that each page has its own unique content so potential prospective clients feel like they’re engaging with a trusted brand. Investing in social media marketing ads will help in sending more traffic to your website. Many social media platforms, like Facebook Ads, will allow you to create dynamic advertisements without breaking the bank. Publish High-Quality Landing Pages In the age of Google, it’s not enough to have a website with just basic information about your law firms. Instead, you should create landing pages that are specifically designed for certain audiences, which will help in converting potential clients into paying ones. Lead generation pages can be designed for people who have just been injured on the job or after being involved in a car accident and need legal advice as quickly as possible. Generate Leads with Gated Content Gated content is a great way to generate quality leads by making potential new clients register and provide their contact information in order to access an exclusive resource. This can be as simple as offering downloadable eBooks or webinars, but it’s important that your gated content has value for the user so they’re willing to share their personal data with you.

If you want local, targeted traffic, you have two options: Dominate the search results nationally or Rank your local Google Business Profile listing. Some businesses do both, but ranking your website takes time and money. Want to get traffic faster without having to wait a long time for SEO? Although you can certainly optimize for local SEO website to generate local traffic, you’ll need time and a large budget for that. Focusing on your Google Business Profile (Formerly known as “Google My Business”) will generate traffic faster and without the need to spend a lot of money. What is Google Business Profile? Google My Business Profile is a free Google business listing stored in Google’s database. Business listings will show up in several places across the Google network, including in search results, on Google Maps, and in Google Shopping. On the surface, it functions just like any other business listing. For example, you can display photos of your business, display your hours of operation, list your services, and provide your contact information. At a deeper level, it plays a crucial role in generating traffic from Google searches. Here are the steps you’ll take to add your business to Google: 1. Sign into your Google Business Profile account If you don’t have a Google Business Profile yet, you can get one by looking for your business in Google’s database or click on the option to add your business to Google. If you see a listing for your business, but you don’t remember creating it and you don’t have access to the business account, you can claim your listing. This walkthrough video explains how to create or claim your listing. Otherwise, continue with the following steps to create your listing. 2. Select your business category Choose the category that best represents your business and then click “next.” For instance, a lawyer looking to optimized for law firm SEO, might choose something in the legal niche. 3. Set your location Set your location by choosing whether or not you have a physical location for customers to visit. If you do, you’ll be asked to enter your address. When asked to add a map marker, make sure you place the marker as accurately as possible. If you don’t have a physical address for your customers, but you offer in-person services or deliveries, you’ll be asked to list the areas you serve. Once this information is entered, click “next.” 4. Add your contact information In this section, you’ll add your phone number and website address. You can also omit your phone number if you prefer not to be contacted by telephone, but it’s a good idea to have a contact number. 5. Verify your business This step is vital. You’ll be asked to verify that you are the business owner or rightful representative by providing a physical mailing address. This address will be hidden from public view and is only used by Google. Google will send you a postcard to this address with a verification code that you’ll need to fully activate your listing. If you already have a code, go here to verify your business. 6. Customize your listing profile This step is where you’ll enter more nuanced information like your business description, business hours of operation, photos, and how you prefer to be contacted. Once you complete this section, clicking “continue” will bring you into your Business Profile Manager dashboard. This is where you’ll find all the tools to manage your listing, manage reviews, read and reply to messages, and even create some PPC ads on Google. Optimize Your Google Business Profile to get more traffic Once you’ve created your Google Business Profile, here are some tips to quickly optimize your Google Business Profile to start getting more traffic. 1. Know how your Google Business Profile drives traffic Knowing how your GBP drives traffic is essential for optimization. In a nutshell, three factors determine local search ranking: How relevant your listing is to a user’s search terms. The more relevant your listing is, the more likely it will be to show up in results. How far your business is from the user’s location. How popular your business is in your niche. This factor includes the number of reviews you have, your review score, and some SEO factors like how many backlinks you have. Here’s how it works on the front end from the user’s perspective. GBP results are displayed above organic search results. A well-optimized Google Business Profile will turn up in those results. If your GBP shows up, you’ll get traffic even if your web pages never show up in search results. Here’s how it works on the back end. Google knows where a user is from based on their IP address. Google also knows where your business is located based on the zip code you provide in your listing. When a user searches for a business like yours, a bunch of Google Business Profiles are displayed at the top of the page favoring businesses local to the user. When you optimize your GBP to come up in local search results, many users will click on your listing instead of scrolling down to the organic search results. Knowing this gives you the advantage because you can optimize your listing by including a variety of keywords related to your business that people might search for. For example, if you’re running a Mexican restaurant, you can name the individual dishes you serve (like enchiladas and tacos) to capture traffic from people specifically searching for those dishes. Having a Google Business Profile improves your local SEO because your listing is more likely to come up in search results for local search users looking for businesses nearby. This will be discussed more in-depth later in this article. 2. Prioritize your GBP listing You can spend tens of thousands of dollars on search engine optimization (SEO), but if you’re on a budget there are other ways to get traffic, mainly through your GBP. If you haven’t

Negative SEO (aka “Google Bowling”) was once a huge threat to websites and webmasters. As Google has expanded into natural language processing, negative SEO is less of a threat than it once was. Google typically ignores irrelevant and low quality links. But don’t let that make you complacent! While successful negative SEO attacks are VERY rare, they can still have a massive negative impact on your site and traffic. If you feel you’ve been the victim of a negative SEO attack, you are not alone. We’ve been hit with multiple. Here is one fairly recent example: What are Negative SEO Attacks When someone attacks your site with negative SEO, they are employing unethical black hat SEO strategies to manipulate your rankings and bring you down in search engine results. There are a number of ways this is done: Thousands of overtly spammy backlinks to your site (e.g. link farms and link wheels) Copying content from your site and posting it all over the web Creating social profiles and review sites that speak negatively of your business Removing your top backlinks Backlinking with irrelevant links like Viagra or online poker Hacking into a website, altering the code, taking down the site or adding malicious code Forums are one of the most notorious places where negative SEO exists. There are also SEO agencies that employ these negative SEO tactics by inserting spammy links in comments. Smaller/Newer Sites are Most Impacted by Negative SEO Attacks Large businesses with established, old websites will have thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of incoming links already. A negative SEO attack adding a few hundred or a thousand spam links will hardly budge that site’s ranking. The percentage of bad links is simply too low. The site may experience a brief drop in rankings, but such a bump in the road is normal for large, established sites. Small businesses and new websites looking to build a following are most at risk. It’s one of the reasons that startup SEO & digital marketing can be so difficult. Small niches can be incredibly competitive, and black hat webmasters won’t think twice about using a negative SEO attack to nuke the competition. The typical story for a small business is this. Business A is new and looking to establish itself in a niche Business B is looking to establish itself in the same niche Business A is using Google best practices and following all the rules to build traffic organically Business B sees that they can’t compete and comes up with a negative SEO attack on Business A Business A suddenly finds their site removed from rankings and penalized for black hat SEO Business B takes advantage of the temporarily vacant niche to establish themselves as the number one resource, despite a better resource existing Business A has two options; clear up the negative SEO or fail Business A has very little recourse, and it all comes down to information and timing. Types of Links that Negatively Affect SEO A lot of webmasters are having extreme difficulty determining what backlinks are negatively affecting their rankings in the SERPs. However, there are a few major types of backlinks that have the potential to reduce visibility in the search engines. Purchased Links It’s important to understand that there is nothing wrong with buying links. Thousands of companies buy links on webpages because it’s a great way to reach more people. In fact, a lot of companies make a decent ROI through links that they’ve purchased on various webpages. However, webcrawlers want webmasters to label paid links with a no-follow tag, which means ranking power is not passed through the links. Webmasters need to avoid paying for links that are do-follow, which means the links pass ranking power. Although research shows that paid links do increase Google rankings, they can also cause ranking penalties, which have catastrophic effects on SEO rankings. Non-relevant Links Webmasters should also avoid getting irrelevant links to their website. The Google Penguin update changed the importance of various ranking factors. Basically, it greatly enhanced the importance of relevant links while decreasing the power of irrelevant links. The Penguin update made link relevance crucial. It only makes sense that a website about hotel would have relevant links from websites that are about hotels or similar. If an abundance of irrelevant backlinks aren’t already hurting your online exposure, then there is a good chance that they will in the future. Put simply, it’s best to avoid obtaining irrelevant backlinks. Broken and Dead Links It’s not unnatural for many of a website’s links to become broken over a long period of time. A few broken links will not cause too much harm to your rankings, but if a website loses a large percentage of its links, it can negatively impact SEO. Both external and internal links can reduce search rankings when broken, so it’s a good idea to keep track of both. Link Networks In the last couple of years, the Internet has witnessed a massive increase in link networks. A link network can be any network of web properties that are used for the sole purpose of building backlinks to a website. There are both public and private link networks. Search engine algorithms have been taking action against the largest link networks. Some link networks are made out of websites that have expired while others are created with hundreds of free-hosted blogs. There is no denying that link networks pass serious ranking power. If they didn’t, then Google wouldn’t be attacking such networks so aggressively. However, while the ranking power of link networks can be quite potent, they also come with a huge level of risk. Due to the very strict stance that search engines have taken against link networks, both public and private, any websites caught using such networks are at risk for being penalized. In a worst-case scenario, a website might even be kicked out of the search index, which would cause a total loss of search engine

Private blog networks (PBNs) have been used for years as an SEO strategy. Perhaps you have dabbled in creating one yourself or collaborated (in some cases unawares) with others who own them. Here we’ll discover more about PBNs, including: Definition of a private blog network (PBN) How PBNs are created Pros and Cons of a private blog network History and risks of PBNs Let’s get at it! What Is a Private Blog Network (PBN)? Let’s start with a description of PBNs, including how they work—or at least how they’re supposed to work. A private blog network is a collection (network) of individual, distinct websites (blog) owned by a single person or organization (private), typically for the purpose of generating links for a primary domain. To understand why this could be valuable, you have to understand the basics of link building. When conducting a Google search, Google’s algorithm considers both the relevance of potential websites (whether or not the results are related to your query) and their authority. Their “authority” is a measure of their trustworthiness, which is calculated based on a number of factors; most prominently, this is determined by the number and quality of links pointing to the domain. If you earn enough high-quality links, your “domain authority” will grow, and it will be easier for you to rank in the future. So let’s say you have a primary website and you’re looking to do SEO for your personal injury law firm. If you wanted to build PBN links, you could purchase domains relevant to the law, develop content for those sites, and use them to build links back to your main money site (a glorified and solely-owned link wheel for SEO purposes). This allows you to forgo conventional link building strategies, which require patience, attention to quality, relationship building, and did I mention patience? Hypothetically, all the nodes in your PBN could be used as separate avenues for revenue generation, and tightly interlink with each other. However, this is a problematic approach for a few reasons. First, this would be extremely time- and money-intensive, and your peripheral sites probably won’t be as profitable as your main site; accordingly, this bears out a low return on investment (ROI). Second, the closer your nodes’ relationships are, the more likely they’re going to be targeted with a Google penalty. There are a number of strategies that people have used to improve the effectiveness of their PBNs. For example, it’s common for people to purchase expired or expiring domains for their PBN nodes; these tend to have a lot of existing authority, meaning the links you build with them will instantly be more powerful—without having to wait months for the new websites to mature. Are Private Blog Networks (PBNs) White Hat or Black Hat? In SEO, everything is about quality. You want to provide high-quality, natural content to your readers, and build high-quality natural links on external publishing websites. Accordingly, your SEO “Spidey sense” might tingle when reading a description of how a private blog network (PBN) works. Is a private blog network a black hat or white hat tactic? If you’re building a PBN for the pure purpose of manipulating your search rankings, and your nodes are throwaway sites with no real purpose, you’ll be violating Google’s terms of service. In fact, it’s even possible to report websites and networks engaging in this behavior. In the past, Google has taken manual action against PBNs to limit their influence and dissuade webmasters from building them (which we’ll touch on in the next section). Accordingly, you can describe PBNs as a black hat tactic. That said, there’s a lot of room for customization and improvement in your PBNs. You could build a small PBN of just one or two extra sites, and spend a lot of time fleshing out those sites with high-quality content, genuinely intended to be valuable to readers. In this scenario, your websites would function as independently valuable, self-sustaining entities, with the links you build merely as an added bonus. Here, your PBN could mostly be considered white hat. Because of this, a private blog network exists in a kind of “gray hat” territory. Google explicitly encourages webmasters not to engage in PBNs, but there are ways to make them more valuable. The PBN Google Crackdown of 2014 Of note, Google issued a massive crackdown on PBNs back in 2014, and continues to remain vigilant in handing out manual penalties for suspected offenders. The specific violation cited by these manual actions was typically “thin content.” Some SEO professionals reported traffic drops of up to 90 percent over the course of a single weekend, and were never able to recover using the same tactics as before. If you decide to use PBNs, you need to be prepared for this possibility. There are several ways to guard yourself from penalty, of course. For the most part, Google brings the penalty down on sites that clearly seem related to each other. It often detects this by noting the link relationships between domains, or by noting the public owners of each domain; domains that tightly interlink with each other and are owned by the same person are frequently the target of penalty. You can fight back in a few important ways Make your registration public, or use different registering entities. Don’t allow your websites to fall under the same registration umbrella. Use a diversity of links. If your nodes are constantly pointing to each other, and only each other, it’s going to be a red flag. Make each site independent. While you may be building nodes to “feed” a central important site, try not to make that relationship obvious with your content or structure. Each site should stand independently. Assess publishers. If you’re using a white label link building service or a white label SEO team, you will want to apply strict guest blogging filter parameters to the sites from which you are looking to acquire backlinks. The ROI Problem With PBNs There’s

If you boil down Google’s Ranking Factors, it’s just math. What makes one site rank above another is simply based on a (complex) weighted calculation. And, while link building has always been the bell of the ball when it comes to ranking, it is NOT the most correlated factor for ranking in Google. No, the most correlated ranking factor is that you have diversification among all the other top factors. The more of the Google ranking factors listed here you add to a given web page, the more tuned your page will be for your target keyword and the better able you will be to: Outrank big competitors in Google search and Survive the onslaught of never-ending Google updates with less massive rankings drops The list below (which we first released as a simple infographic in 2015) contains the top 200 statistically significant Spearman correlated Google ranking factors, including the technical on-page SEO you will need to perform to rank higher. These factors aren’t just guesSEO hearsay. They’re based on real, statistical data. But, SEO beware! Over-optimization is definitely a thing, especially if you’re just building links. DISCLAIMER: When considering these Top 200 Google Ranking Factors, please keep in mind this list only includes factors where the data is available as an outside observer. Google itself has other data NOT included here (e.g. click-through rates, user search history, on-page dwell time, bounce rates and returning visitor data) that would help provide a more complete picture.  The 200 factors included here represent the absolute best measure of observable statistical correlation.  Ready to dive in? How to Read This Guide to Google Ranking Factors Before we dig into the most important Google ranking factors to acknowledge, let’s talk about how to read this guide. Declaring a “ranking factor “ Remember, Google doesn’t give us full transparency. We don’t know the exact mechanics of how Google search rankings or Google’s algorithm works. However, by observing and analyzing the structure of web sites and how they perform in Google Search results, we can mostly reverse engineer how the algorithm works. We declare something to be a ranking factor when it’s sufficiently measurable and apparently capable of influencing rankings in SERPs. Ranking factor correlation vs. causation Because there are so many variables in play, it’s hard to demonstrate causation, but correlation studies have shown what areas actually contribute to higher rankings and which do not. As such, we are heavily interested in and reliant on strongly correlated items when evaluating different Google ranking factors. While Google Analytics may show engagement data, most third party tools ignore these factors when calculating rankings weights because they don’t have them. But, they are critical. Be sure dwell time and bounce rates for your pages are in-check. Correlation alone can’t prove that one specific change or one specific variable is responsible for an observed result. Spearman correlations Throughout this guide, we’ll be including Spearman correlations associated with all Google ranking factors. Put simply, this is a statistical assessment of variable correlation; when the ranking factor is present, rankings tend to increase. There are actually thousands of Google ranking factors that Google measures, but these are those that are statistically significant enough to make the cut. And, quite frankly, if you choose to focus on more than 200 Google ranking factors, you’re going to become overwhelmed by the data (which is actually available, by the way). Validating findings We use a combination of different research approaches, different types of software, and different external sources to assemble and rank are most important ranking factors. We encourage you to attempt to validate or invalidate our findings, by doing your own research. But, much of the data here has been gleaned through the use of both Cora from SEOToolLabs and SurferSEO. Cora is the original, technical SEO tool. Surfer is the copycat. Both are great, but Surfer has a better user interface. Surfer analyzes over 500 factors, Cora boasts some 2,000+ and you can see them in detail from their exported, separate reports. It’s interesting to note that a strong correlation between social signals and rankings ceases to exist. So, let the data do the talking! Ranking Factor Categories Our list of Google ranking factors isn’t going to be segmented by category but rather listed in order of relevance and importance. The dozens of ranking factors at the top of the list are either more influential or more directly observable as influential factors. Overlap and similarities Many of the rank factors on this list are similar to other factors. For example, “backlinks,” “dofollow backlinks,” and “nofollow backlinks” are counted separately, and there are separate factors for the presence/absence of a feature and the occurrence frequency of that feature. Though repetitious at times, there are usually important nuances and subtle distinctions to note. Top 200 Most Statistically Significant Factors for Ranking on Google Without further ado, let’s take a look at the 200 top Google ranking factors that influence your positions in Google search results. Ranking Factors 1-47: Statistical Spearman Correlation -0.35 to -0.20 As of this writing, the following are the most statistically significant ranking factors for ranking #1 for your most competitive keywords. The correlations and weights will change as the algorithm is updated, but of over 2,000 scanned factors across the entire web, these are those that are the MOST significant. 1. Is Inner Page Is the page an “inner” page? Put even more simply, is it not a homepage? Interior web pages like your Product page, Contact page, and all your blog posts are going to rank easier than homepages. This is only one of the reasons performing SEO on your homepage is often more difficult and extraordinarily complicated. 2. Number of Top 50 Shared Factors Used This gets a bit meta, as this Google ranking factor consolidates the top 50 shared factors represented by a given page. Optimizing for many different ranking factors is correlated with higher rankings. Just like link diversity and anchor text diversity, it is even