If you boil down Google’s Ranking Factors, it’s just math.
What makes one site rank above another is simply based on a 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 diversity among all the other top correlated factors.
The list below (which we first released as a simple infographic in 2015) contains the top 200 Spearman correlated Google ranking factors, including the technical on-page SEO you will need to perform to rank higher.
The more Google ranking factors you add to a given web page, the more tuned your page will be.
More importantly, the better able you will be to outrank big competitors in Google search.
It also means, you’ll be more likely to survive the next Google update because if you have diversity among Google ranking factors, you’re more likely to have a factor that gets shifted toward a higher weight the next time Google updates its algorithm.
What are Google ranking factors?
You’ll find some disagreement and controversy relating to the semantics of this term.
But for our purposes, a ranking factor is simply an aspect or element of a webpage or website that is correlated with higher rankings in SERPs. In other words, if your web page features a ranking factor or caters to a known direct ranking factor that has risen in Spearman correlation weight relative to others, its likelihood of rising in rankings for relevant keyword terms will increase.
Hypothetically, if you optimize your site for all of Google’s top ranking factors, you should have no trouble beating the competition – assuming they’re not matching you or surpassing you strategically.
Before we dig into the most important Google ranking factors to acknowledge, let’s talk about how to read this guide.
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.
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.
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).
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!
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.
Insights are meaningless unless they’re actionable.
Accordingly, we encourage you to read this list not just for the sake of satisfying your curiosity, but for the sake of making actionable changes to your website.
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.
When considering these 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 that is not included here like click-through-rates, user search history, on-page dwell time and returning visitors. In other words, there are ranking factors, that better match with search intent, that only Google can measure. We unfortunately don’t have that data.
Keep that in mind when combing this complete list of Google ranking factors.
Without further ado, let’s take a look at the 200 top Google ranking factors that influence your positions in Google search results.
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.
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.
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 more important to have factor diversity when building content for your web pages.
This is similar to the above, but it consolidates 100 factors. It’s important to note that the top 50 have a higher correlation than the top 100, as you might expect; in other words, it reinforces the idea that higher-correlation ranking factors are more important than lower-correlation ranking factors.
What is an SEO “entity?” We’ll be seeing this term several times on this list. An entity is essentially an iteration of a keyword with proper context, matching what the user intent with search results.
Similar to an LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) keywords, entity keywords disambiguate what a particular page or paragraph is about.
They’re words that make it very clear to both users and bots that a page that includes words like “Big Apple” aren’t talking about New York, but an award winning apple pie recipe.
For example, if a user performs a Google search for “Cleveland dentist,” an entity could be “Cleveland dentist,” or “dentist in Cleveland” or “Cleveland dental professional.”
The total number is what counts here.
Before thinking you might be keyword stuffing, first let the data do the talking!
That’s why it’s important do do your own in-depth keyword research, focusing on the LSI and entity keywords, before making assumptions.
Google prefers recent content to dated content, though even old content can end up in search results. What’s most important for this factor is that you have a publish date attached.
This represents the total number of nonzero factors used throughout the URL.
Note that this is somewhat lower than the top 50 and top 100 factors chosen.
This falls in line with other, similar meta ranking factors on this list.
For a given query, how many keywords are located in the HTML tag?
Similarly, how many keywords are located in the body tag of your website?
Ahrefs is a popular brand in the SEO world, offering dozens of free tools and resources to help you plan, execute, and monitor your campaign.
This factor calculates the number of “referring domains” you have; in other words, this represents the number of different domains pointing to a page of your site. More is better for higher rankings.
There remains a strong correlation between Google Rankings and total backlinks to a page. Source: Ahrefs.
This refers to the number of referring class C networks (as determined by Ahrefs) linking to the target page.
Google ranking factors must also take into account IP addresses associated with different domains.
This way, it’s difficult to build authority and search engine rankings by capitalizing on dozens of domains owned and managed by the same person.
Ahrefs Rank (AR) is a concise measurement of backlink profile quality. The better your backlink profile quality (mostly meaning the quality and number of your referring domains), the higher your AR will be – and the higher your search engine rankings will be.
We also take into consideration the number of referring pages to the target, as determined by Ahrefs.
This factor refers to the number of nofollow backlinks pointing to the target. This may be surprising, considering nofollow backlinks are effectively ignored by Google bots.
In spite of the fact that Google claims nofollow backlinks do nothing, here the data is disputing and telling a story quite the opposite.
This ranking factor refers to the number of backlinks pointing to the target that include relevant anchor text.
Often mistakenly referenced as the most important and correlated of the Google ranking factors, this refers to the number of dofollow backlinks pointing to the target as measured by Ahrefs.
The Div tag is used as a container for HTML elements, defining a specific section in an HTML document. This factor counts the number of keywords found in Div tags.
Header tags in your HTML document are represented by “H,” with subsequent numbers referring to headings deeper in the document. This ranking factor counts the number of relevant keywords found in H1-H6 tags in total.
Similarly, this ranking factor counts the keywords found in your H1-H3 tags.
P tags in an HTML document represent paragraphs
This factorial counts the number of keywords found in P tags in a given target.
How many entity iterations are found in your H2 tags? Having more is typically better, but again, you’ll need to be careful not to stuff your H2 tags.
Here we have dofollow links, as measured by Ahrefs, as a factor for ranking. Note that dofollow backlinks, nofollow backlinks, total backlinks, and text backlinks are all in the same category of importance.
How many entity iterations are found in your H3 tags?
LI tags are used for list items in an HTML document. This weighted factor counts the number of keywords found in all your LI tags in the target page.
How many of your keywords are found in natural sentences in the body copy of your target page?
How many keywords, in total, are found in your H1 and H2 tags? These are arguably the most important headers to focus on.
Your A tags, in an HTML document, refer to hyperlinks. How many keywords are found in the A tags throughout your document?
How many entity iterations are found in natural sentences in the body copy of your target page?
The title tag of your page is what appears as the page title in SERPs. Accordingly, it bears heavy importance. The number of entities in your title tag will be correlated with your rankings in Google search results.
Your HTML tag, the root of your HTML document, is also important. The number of entities found here will help predict where you end up ranking.
What about H2 tags? If you’re focused on optimizing all your header tags, it shouldn’t surprise you to learn that keywords found in H2 tags are also an important factor.
Latent semantic indexing (LSI) refers to a system used by Google to acknowledge and understand synonyms and context in user queries. Practically speaking, that means Google is really good at figuring out user intent, rather than studying keywords exactly. LSI words in sentences refers to the number of LSI keywords (often common words, synonyms, and extended phrases) found in your sentences.
How many iterations of a given term appear on the target page?
Once you eliminate the head block, script, styles, comments, and HTML tags, you’re left with a “clean” measurement. What is the keyword density here?
This ranking factor refers to the body tag size of your target in kilobytes.
Leading keywords are simply keywords that appear first in a given section. In H1-H6 tags, how many leading keywords appear?
How many keywords are found in anchor text in the target? HREF is used to identify sections within a document, but it also functions as an attribute of the anchor tag.
How many keyword matches are found in the URL displayed within SERPs? Choosing the right domain and naming your pages appropriately can help you here.
Like other Google ranking factors, this focuses on Google search engine results pages (SERPs); here, we’re looking for matches found in link anchor text, or the first text a user sees when perusing entries.
How many keywords are found in your script tags?
This is highly similar to #38 above, but it only counts unique A tag HREFs.
How many Google search terms are found in the HTML tag at the root of your HTML document?
How many search engine terms are found in the body tag of your HTML document?
How many leading keywords are found in your H1, H2, and H3 tags?
Looking only at the top 30 KB of a target page, what is the variation density of the target?
How many keywords are in the top 10 most used phrases in a target page?
These Google ranking factors, while still important, tend to have the lowest Spearman correlation. They should remain the lowest priority when focusing on your search engine optimization.
Alt attributes, or alt tags, provide descriptive context for certain types of images. How many keywords appear in these alt tags?
As reported by DomDetailer, what is the Moz Page Authority (PA) of this target? Authority is a relative measure of trustworthiness in the eyes of search engines.
As reported by Ahrefs, does this website have any dofollow links? It’s hard to improve your search engine ranking without them.
What is the total size of your target page in kilobytes? Smaller pages have several advantages, such as loading faster, which improves your page speed and enhances your Core Web Vitals.
As reported by Ahrefs, does the target page have text backlinks?
In other words, are there backlinks with optimized anchor text?
As reported by Ahrefs, does the target page have nofollow backlinks?
As reported by Ahrefs, does this website have any backlinks at all?
Once the HTML has been cleared, how many total words appear in the target page?
How many kilobytes is this page, once you’re left with only clean text?
What is the number of sentences on this page? Online, frequent, short sentences tend to work better than infrequent, long ones – assuming the same word count and equality across other variables.
How many matches are found in the search results path?
Your title tag is important for both user experience and search optimization. How many keywords are found in it?
How many keywords are found in the H3 tags of the target page?
How many entities are found in the H4 tags of the target page?
As reported by DomDetailer, how many referring subnets are there?
As reported by DomDetailer, what is the citation flow (CF) of the target page? In other words, how much link juice is there to give to other sites? This is usually reflective of the total number of links pointing to a page.
How many HTML tags are you using?
How many keywords are in the top 5 most used phrases in a target page?
As reported by DomDetailer, what is the Moz Domain Authority (DA) of this target? Authority is a relative measure of trustworthiness in the eyes of search engines.
The Span HTML element is used for phrasing content on your website. How many keywords appear in your Span tags in your target page?
How many keyword matches are found in the URL displayed in search results?
As reported by DomDetailer, how many IPs are referring to this target page?
How many entities are found in your meta description tag?
Your meta description is seen by users in SERPs, so it’s important for more than just SEO itself.
As reported by DomDetailer, how many domains are referring to this target page?
What is the word count of this page? Shorter content can perform adequately in SEO, but longer content generally performs better.
Looking only at the canonical URL of this page, how many keywords are found?
How many keywords (including exact match keywords) are found in the first 100 words of your target page?
As reported by Ahrefs, how many backlinks are pointing to the images on this page?
Don’t forget, Google image search can drive a lot of traffic, especially if your images have backlinks.
More importantly, a good image SEO strategy can have a major impact on the quantity and quality of inbound links pointing to your domain.
As reported by DomDetailer, what is the trust flow (TF) of this target? This is an assessment of the quality of domains referring to a site.
Look at the pure URL of your target. How many keywords are found there? This may or may not be the same as your canonical URL.
How many P tags are you using throughout the HTML document of this target?
How many matches are present in the name of your file path (if relevant)?
Looking at your target page meta description, how many keywords are present?
As reported by DomDetailer, how many links are pointing to your target page?
How many keywords are in the top 3 most used phrases in a target page?
How many search terms are present in all your header tags, from H1-H6.
In the main tags of your site, how many keywords are present?
In the nav tags of your site, how many keywords are present?
How many entities are found in the H1 tags of the target page?
How many keywords are found in the H1 tags of the target page?
How many heading tags (H) are you using throughout the target page?
As reported by Ahrefs, how many internal backlinks are you using? This is useful not just for optimization, but also for helping users navigate.
Also, consider your internal link anchor text (and preferably make it exact match) when adding links.
As reported by Ahrefs, what is the current rating of your domain? Higher rated domains have a much easier time getting internal pages to rank.
As reported by Ahrefs, does this target page have any image backlinks?
How many questions are found within your target page? Questions are often useful for catering to specific user intent.
This is one of the reasons many of our most important pages include a frequently asked questions (FAQ) section, including our homepage.
As reported by Ahrefs, how many pages are found? Having more pages ranking in Google will increase the likelihood of pages on the same domain ranking.
Are there any entities to be found in the H2 tags of the target page?
How many exact matches for Google Keyword Density (GKD) are found?
As reported by Ahrefs, how many external backlinks are present?
How many HTTPS links are found? HTTPS websites are inherently more secure, and are therefore prioritized by Google and other search engines.
How many leading keywords (keywords at the beginning of a string of text) are found in the H2 tags of the target page?
As reported by DomDetailer, how many Facebook shares has this page gotten?
How many images, complete with alt text, are found on this target page?
When looking at the Open Graph content of the target page, how many keywords are found?
How many total internal links are found on this target page?
How many total links are found on this target page?
How many keywords are found in the footer tags of this webpage?
As reported by DomDetailer, what is your Moz rank? This is a consolidated measurement and predictor of SEO performance.
Among your LI tags on the target page, how many are exclusively made up of keywords (with no other content present)?
As reported by DomDetailer, how many “Moz links” are present?
What is the number of dofollow links on your target page?
When looking at the Open Graph meta description of the target page, how many keywords are found?
How many total images can be found in the target page?
How many latent semantic indexing (LSI) keywords are found in the title tag of your target page?
Frequency-inverse document frequency is essentially a measurement to determine the quality of content found on a target page. Is your page high enough quality to improve your search engine ranking?
Among your A tags on the target page, how many are exclusively made up of keywords (with no other content present)?
In the summary text of search results, how many matches are found?
How many user search terms are found in the sentences of the body copy in your target page?
How many H3 tags are present in your target page?
Are there any entities to be found in the H1 tags of the target page?
How many LSI words are found across your H2 tags?
How many leading keywords are found in the title tag of your target page?
Are there any entities to be found in the H3 tags of the target page?
How many LSI words are found across your H3 tags?
As reported by Ahrefs, the total number of 301 redirects associated with your site.
How many JSON-LD (JavaScript Object Notation for Linked Data) types are present in your target page?
What is the content length of your search result summary text?
As reported by Ahrefs, how many words are on this page? Or in other words, what is the content length?
As reported by Ahrefs, are there any redirects pointing to this page?
This is based on the variation count that Google appears to be using for keyword density.
Among your H1-H6 tags on the target page, how many are exclusively made up of keywords (with no other content present)?
Among your Span tags on the target page, how many are exclusively made up of keywords (with no other content present)?
How many search terms are found in the title tag of the target page?
How many questions are present in the headings of your target page?
How many keywords are present in the strong tags throughout your document?
How many absolute URLs are found for your target page?
How many keywords are found across all your H4, H5, and H6 tags of the target page?
How many keywords are present in the A tags throughout your document?
Are there any entities to be found in the H4 tags of the target page?
How many leading keywords are found in your H1 tags?
How many keywords are found in the H4 tags of the target page?
As reported by Ahrefs, how many .edu backlinks are pointing to your website? .edu domains tend to be more trustworthy and more powerful, due to their academic nature.
How many keywords are found in the last 100 words of your written content?
As reported by Ahrefs, how many linked root domains are there for the target?
Using the Script tag inside the body of the HTML, how many kilobytes is this page?
How many H2 tags are present in your target page?
Among your H1-H3 tags on the target page, how many are exclusively made up of keywords (with no other content present)?
Does your title tag match any entities?
How many questions are present in the H2 tags of your target page?
While the correlation is lower for the following terms, they still have an impact on rankings and are still included in the diversity of Google ranking factors you might be shooting for.
How many keywords are present in the section tags of your target page.
Are there questions found in your headings?
How many keywords are found in the title attributes of your page?
As reported by Ahrefs, does your target page have any backlinks from .edu sources?
How many keywords are in the used phrase in your target pages?
How many leading keywords are found in your H3 tags?
How many search terms are found in the H1 tags of your target page?
As reported by DomDetailer, how many .gov links are pointing to your target page?
Again, .gov and .edu backlinks are still correlated, even if Google says they are not.
The data doesn’t lie.
Are there entity keywords present in your meta description?
How many keywords are found in the tags you use for your onsite articles?
How many search terms are found in the H2 tags of your target page?
Does your target page have a JSON-LD answer?
Does your target page have a JSON-LD question?
How many questions are found throughout your target page’s H3 tags?
How large is the size of your page head, in kilobytes?
As reported by Ahrefs, does this target page feature internal on-site links with relevant anchor text?
Sales words are words like “free, best, top, ultimate, fine, cheap, cheapest, high end, and quality.” Do any of these words appear in the title of your page?
How many H4 tags are present in your target page?
Sentiment words are words like “unique, most, useful, coolest, cool, amazing, awesome, definitive, and ultimate.” Do any of these words appear in the title of your page?
Looking at the ID attributes throughout your target page, how many keywords are present?
How many kilobytes are associated with your inline CSS?
How many prices are found on your target page?
AggregateRating is a Schema type; is it featured on your target page?
How many LSI words are found in your page’s meta description tag?
As reported by Ahrefs, are there external links for this target page?
How many keywords are present in the class attributes of your target page?
How quickly does your website load (in milliseconds).
Google has been pushing core web vitals for over a year.
Site speed and individual page speed are now listed among the measurable Google ranking factors.
The faster your website is, the better – for both SEO and general user experience.
However, in some cases, slower load time CAN indicate more authority as a page might have a much larger amount of content.
But treat such cases as the exception, rather than the rule.
It just depends on the search term and what is ranking for a particular term.
As a general rule, optimize for page speed and Core Web Vitals, but don’t let it be a sticking point.
For instance, we have had a client who was obsessed with page speed as a ranking factor.
He was constantly monitoring Core Web Vitals results.
We optimized both mobile usability speed and desktop page speed load to the 90th percentile and he continued to think that THIS was he reason he was experiencing fall-off in keywords.
Take a look above. This is ranked #173 out of 200. It’s a factor, but don’t get hung up on it.
As reported by Ahrefs, does your target page have any linked root domains?
How many external backlinks are present in your target page?
How many US phone numbers are present in your target page?
As reported by Ahrefs, how many .gov backlinks are pointing to this target page?
How many leading keywords are found in your H4, H5, and H6 tags?
How many leading keywords are found in your H4 tags?
How many claimed brands (as in, claimed through your Business Profile on Google) are present in your target page?
What percentage of your internal links pointing to your target page are dofollow links?
How many LSI words are found across your H1 tags?
How many entities are found throughout your H5 tags?
As reported by Ahrefs, does your target page have any .gov backlinks?
How many keywords are found in your target page’s I tags?
As reported by Ahrefs, how large is this page, in total?
Among your H1 tags on the target page, how many are exclusively made up of keywords (with no other content present)?
In the Twitter description of your target page, how many keywords are found?
As reported by Ahrefs, how many images are found on your target page?
Is there at least one US phone number to find on this page? Google likes contact information to be available.
Is there any JSON-LD product available on this page?
Among your Strong tags on the target page, how many are exclusively made up of keywords (with no other content present)?
As reported by Ahrefs, how many RSS backlinks are found for this target page?
How many LSI words are found across your H4 tags?
Is this target page categorized as a home and construction business? Some industries have a naturally higher propensity to rank than others.
How many search terms are found in the meta descriptions of your target page?
In your Meta Open Graph site name, how many keywords are present?
How many directories are in your search result URL path?
How many words are found in the meta description tag of your target page? Concise meta descriptions generally perform better.
How many dofollow external links are present in your target page?
How confident do you feel about these Google ranking factors?
Is your site is experiencing issues or any drops in the search engines?
Have you taken a look at Google Analytics, Google Search Console (GSC) and/or Core Web Vitals (CWV) to see if there are any errors present?
Have you considered Google E A T?
Is your SEO strategy in full alignment with all the variables listed above?
And the biggest question of all, are you receiving the organic traffic you feel you deserve and need?
Are you sure you’re doing everything in your power to get your pages to rank one (or even the first page) in search engines?
If not, don’t worry.
Search engine optimization is often extraordinarily complicated, and attempting it alone can be overwhelming.
That’s why we’re here.
If you’re ready to get help with your SEO strategy, or if you just need a consultation or SEO audit to help you figure things out, we’re here for you. Contact us for a free consultation today!