11 Most Important Google Ranking Factors 2024

Out of the 200+ Google ranking factors, do you want to know which ranking factors are the most important for SEO?

Google uses a ranking algorithm to determine how well the content of your website corresponds to a specific online search. Every now and then, Google changes how its algorithms analyze data and rank websites based on their relevance to users. You need to adapt to the new standards quickly to keep your digital business up with the competition and get the most out of your SEO investments.

In this article we will discuss the most important Google Ranking Factors that will help you improve your Google search rankings.

We’ve compiled a list of the most important Google ranking factors so you can concentrate on the factors that will affect your Google ranking the most.

Before jumping towards the most important Google ranking factors, let’s briefly understand what google ranking factors are and how the Google ranking algorithm works.

What are Google Ranking Factors?

Google Ranking Factors are the variables considered by the Google search engine to analyze and rank web pages in their search results.

For effective SEO, one needs to understand Google’s ranking algorithm thoroughly. Content and digital marketing strategists should be familiar with these factors because they help to create a better user experience, which means more leads and conversions for your business. So we recommend you keep these factors in mind in 2024.

Which Factors Affect Google Ranking the Most?

You may be urged to optimize for all ranking factors to get a higher ranking. But that’s not possible from Google’s point of view. But you can give the most weight to the major Google ranking factors that will help you the most.

Considering the Google ranking algorithm of 2024, we’ve compiled a list of the most important ranking factors to help you improve your site’s ranking in search engine results. Among Google’s 200+ ranking factors, the following section lists the 11 most important Google ranking factors. 

Top Google Ranking Factors 2024

1) High-Quality Content

As everyone knows that, who is in the digital marketing field, content is king. And in the case of Google ranking factors, content is king in ranking factors.

If you can create or write content for your website or blog which is unique, fresh, and relevant to the user search intent, then Google will rank this content higher on its SERP (Search engine page results).

To maintain content quality , you must keep the following things in mind:

• Your content be original, unique and current.
• It should add value with relevant information related to the topic.
• You should keep an ideal content length between 1500 to 2500 words (long-form articles)
• The content should be presented and written correctly in a reader-friendly way.

Google always pays attention to the quality of the content and you can find your top performing content on your website or blog using the best Google Analytics plugin. That doesn’t matter how optimized your website or blog is, if your content quality is not good according to Google, then you don’t expect a higher ranking for your website or blog.

2) Website Loading Speed

Among 200+ different search engine ranking factors, another ranking factor that you should focus on is your website page’s loading speed. Simply you have to improve your website page’s loading speed instead of beating your competitors with milliseconds of website load time. But you should pay attention that how fast a website page loads for your users.

If everything else is perfect, having a site that takes a long time to load will be bad. So, having a site that loads quickly is a good factor.

Note: Google included page loading time to its Core Web Vitals in May 2021, and even in 2024, it’s still part of the Google Ranking Algorithm.

Google considers certain metrics about your site’s speed very important to how users enjoy your site. It checks your website’s overall speed and responsiveness, as well as how fast different parts, like fonts and images, load.

Google wants your site to load speedily and be an excellent experience for people who visit it.

Google wants that every website page loading speed should be fast to provide a great user experience for your audience or users. To check your website loading speed, you can use Google Page Speed insights

This tool will analyze your website speed and display a score for mobile and desktop and give you suggestions and highlight the factors that you need to improve, to speed up your website loading speed.

3) Backlinks

Backlinks are one of the most important SEO ranking factors and one of the best ways for Google to figure out how to rank websites.

Backlinks are important since they indicate that one website recommends another’s content. It’s like an endorsement. Google looks at how many people visit your site and how many links you have to see how valuable they are.

In fact, backlinks and content go hand in hand, as webpages without any backlinks are hardly get any organic traffic or rank in Google search results.

Backlinks or inbound links are like a vote of confidence for your website ranking in Google search results. Google adds all those votes together and checks if your website or content deserves to rank in Google’s top results or not.

If you have or can get backlinks from high authority websites then you can easily boost your ranking in Google top search results according to your Niche. Because if acquiring these backlinks, you are sending signals to Google that your website or blog content is trustworthy.

Why does the relevance of backlinks matter?

According to Google’s John Mueller, backlinks do not provide a website’s popularity but rather provide users value. Linking to bigger websites like CNN or Wikipedia does not magically improve your website’s ranking. Mueller emphasizes that linking to high-authority sites does not help with search rankings.

Instead, focus on useful links that benefit users. Links should add value for users and should not be linked solely for authority and rankings. John Mueller advises treating links like content and asking yourself if the link provides additional, unique value to users. If it does, then link naturally. Don’t link to your users if it is irrelevant to your users.

4) Mobile Friendliness

Along with website loading speed, there is another thing to look at is whether your website is mobile-friendly or not.

Since 2019 Google has shifted to mobile-first which means that Google will now use your website’s mobile version for indexing and ranking in Google search results. So your website should be mobile responsive.

Google likes mobile-friendly websites. It has even added a mobile-first indexing factor where the algorithm will first crawl the mobile version of your website to index and rank it on SERPs. It’s important to keep optimizing your website for mobile devices so that all the pages load as quickly as possible for users.

Most people will visit your site on their phones, so if it looks messy and disorganized, they may leave it right away for a better-optimized site from a competitor

Previously, Google was using your desktop website version as the primary version for indexing. But with 3.7 Billion mobile internet users in the world, Google has made this shift to Mobile-first. So, if you want to boost your ranking, this is the best time to make your website mobile-friendly.

5) Keyword Optimization

Keyword Optimization is one of the most obvious Google ranking factors after link building, in which we use the keywords in our website.

Using the right target keywords helps Google figure out what your page is about.

Keywords are the search terms that users search for in Google relative to different topics or products. So, it’s important that your website contains the keywords your audience is searching for.

This will help you to boost your website ranking in Google search engine results.

To make your website or blog is keyword optimized you need to add keywords in the following areas of your website or blog posts.

1. Meta Titles: Include your target keyword at the start of your Posts or Page SEO Title in the Meta title tag.
2. Meta Description: Include your focus keyword with your company name of blog post name at the start of your Meta description. This will help the users what your page is about and click on it.
3. Image Alt Text: Google Can not read the images of a page or post, you can add keywords in the Image Alt text section plus you can also use focus keyword in the image name to tell the search engine what’s the visual about.
4. Anchor Text: Google search engine uses Anchor text to find out that what’s the page about, so you can use focus or related keywords for anchor text when linking your pages.
5. Include Keywords in headings (H1, H2, H3): You can further improve your content SEO organization by adding keywords variations or related search terms in your headings H2, H3, or H4 of your post or website page.
6. Use LSI Keywords: Instead of your Primary or Focus keyword, there are many other related search terms that people search for and these terms called latent semantic indexing keywords also called related keywords or search terms. By including these keywords or search terms on your page or post, you are helping Google that what’s the content about.
7. Add keywords in URL: Another keyword optimization technique that you can use is to include your keyword in the URL/Slug/Permalink of your post or page.

Tip: Always follow the rule feast of five which means that use 5 keywords or relate search terms(LSI) related to the specific topic or page.

6) Website Structure

Keyword Optimization is an important part of the Google ranking signals, but there is another factor that you should look into is your website structure, especially if you are going to launch a new website.

Your website or blog structure is one of the most important factors from a crawling and indexing perspective. It allows Google crawlers to easily find your website and its pages or sub-pages.

To improve the structure of your website or blog, you can start by creating a website sitemap. A website sitemap contains all the important pages that you want the search engine to know about these pages on your website.

It helps Google crawler to easily navigate through your website or blog, discover new content on your website, and index your pages according to the newly updated content.

7) Website Security

Along with website structure, your website security is one of the top Google ranking factors.

According to the Official Google Webmaster Central Blog, Security is one of Google’s most important goals. They put a lot of money into ensuring that their services have the best security in the industry, like strong HTTPS encryption turned on by default.

It is the main point where you need to ensure that your website is on HTTPS means it encrypts the data between your website and your user’s browser.

In 2014 Google confirmed that HTTPS is a ranking signal for a website or blog. So, if your website doesn’t have an SSL certificate or HTTPS, then it’s time to move your website from HTTP to HTTPS.

8) User Experience (UX)

Another vital Google SEO ranking factor we have is the user experience (UX) of your website or blog. Now there are many things that contribute to a good user experience.

Google’s most recent update focuses on how a website makes its users feel. As part of this update, the algorithms will look at a website’s UX in several ways to determine where it should rank in search results.

User Experience includes the following factors:

• how easy it is to get to a web page
• how many high-quality pictures and videos it has
• how quickly content popups on the page
• how your content is structured overall

and more….

But we need to know, how does Google measures this?

Google uses an artificial intelligence program called RankBrain, which incorporates other Google Ranking factors or signals like:

1. CTR(click-through-rate)
2. Bounce rate
3. Dwell Time (How much time a user spend on your website or blog)

If you want your website to be popular in 2024 and beyond, you should ensure it is user-friendly. Try to make it as simple as possible so people can use it easily and quickly to get to their desired content.

9) Content Relevancy and Search Intent

How well your content fits a user’s search intent is another important ranking factor for Google. Search intent is just a term for what a person is trying to search when they search.

To create relevant content, you must understand why a search query was conducted.

For example, if a person searches for the best WordPress Plugins, Google thinks that these searchers want to compare WordPress plugins and probably install a new one. If your organization has a good WordPress Plugin, it should have relevant content to be ranked easily.

Google has an algorithm called BERT (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers) that determines what users try to do when they type in a search query. When a user types in a search query, this algorithm helps the search engine find the results the user seeks.

So, if you want to rank in 2024 and beyond, you will need to add more content that matches your target’s search intent.

10) Optimized Video Content

Online businesses must be familiar with video marketing. Google ranks websites with informative and engaging embedded videos higher on SERPs.

Video content should be informative, relevant, and SEO-optimized. Helping Google locate the most crucial sections of your videos improves video SEO. 

11) Internal Links

Links are, of course, a very important SEO ranking signal. Along with backlinks, Internal Links also have importance. Adding internal links to your content will help Google and your visitors understand your content and its value.

Suppose you have a page with a lot of authority and adding a link to a relevant page on your site that helps people find it will also give some authority to the other page. This makes that second page rank higher in search engines.

Frequently Asked Questions

Conclusion

Almost all Google ranking factors are interlinked with each other. Among Google’s 200+ ranking factors, SEO Optimization, Web Structure (its design, security, and domain), and content are the top 3 ranking factors. 

Google’s ranking algorithm is based on ranking factors that encourage high-quality content and a great user experience. Understanding the main factors Google uses to rank websites can make or break your online marketing plan. You can use the best WordPress Plugin, Analytify, to analyze your WordPress site, see the metrics, and analyze your ranking.

If you have any sort of question, please ask in the comment section and we’ll happily assist you!