As a small to medium business owner, manager, expert or student of Search Engine optimization (SEO), understanding Google ranking signals is an essential ingredient to the success of improving your organic online search rankings. Ranking higher in organic search engine results can lead to increased visibility, conversions and improves competitive advantage. The alternative – slipping down the rankings or not ranking at all can reduce visibility or add to lost opportunities. If you want to keep your website at or near the top of the rankings, it is important to understand how Google evaluates sites and uses its algorithms to rank them.
We’ve taken a quick look at some of the more important Google ranking signals that you should consider gaining an understanding of to improve and maximize search engine visibility and provided a summary of each below, with relevant references.
Core Web Vitals
A significant important ranking signal for Google is Core Web Vitals, which refer to a set of metrics that measure page loading speed, interactivity and visual stability. All of these are important indicators of user experience on a website, and Google uses them to evaluate websites for rankings. To help improve your site’s performance on these metrics, you should focus on optimizing the server response time for different pages on your website. This includes utilizing caching plugins and other optimization techniques. Core web vitals for your website can be accessed via https://search.google.com/search-console/.
Google reference: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/9205520?hl=en
Domain History
Google also looks at how long a domain has been registered when judging its ranking potential. Most reputable domains are usually older domains, so having an older domain name can be beneficial when it comes to SEO. It is also important to note that having an old domain could mean facing some penalties due to outdated practices used when setting up the website. This can include issues such as duplicate content or poor page structure that could lead to a lower ranking on SERPS. i.e., if you have registered a domain name that someone had previously registered it could have a detrimental impact on your sites performance.
Reference: See https://www.searchenginejournal.com/ranking-factors/domain-history/
Content Quality & Length
Content quality of course is a major factor in determining how high a website ranks in SERPs. Content that is poorly written content will often not rank as highly as more detailed articles with well-researched content. Longer structured articles with more than 1,000 words tend to rank higher than shorter articles which means that if you want your website to do well in Google searches it’s important to focus on producing well written detailed articles about topics related to your industry or niche area.
Google reference: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/essentials
E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authority & Trustworthiness)
Google considers E-E-A-T (or Double E-A-T) when determining the importance of content created, it’s helpfulness and originality. The E-E-A-T rating assesses the quality of content on a website with regards to accuracy, completeness and authenticity. The concept of E-E-A-T, which stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness I sone to consider with your website. Ensure that your website offers helpful content that provides value and expertise to users. Having an About Us, contact us and customer information pages with professional background information about your staff can boost the trustworthiness of a website in the eyes of Google’s algorithms. Depending on your website, you may need to consider other pages such as store policies on payment for shopping websites.
Google reference: https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2022/12/google-raters-guidelines-e-e-a-t
Headings & Subheadings
Having descriptive headings and subheadings that use relevant keywords is another well-known and documented way to make sure your website stands out from the competition. Search engine crawlers use heading tags such as H1, H2 and H3 as indicators of content relevance and importance. Make sure headings are clear and easy for humans to read as this helps create better user engagement which can positively affect your rankings as well.
Google reference: https://developers.google.com/style/headings
Anchor / Link Text
Anchor / Lin text helps search engines to understand the content of a page better. Anchor text is the visible text that appears in a link and it also helps search engines to determine what the link is pointing towards. Optimizing anchor text can help boost your rankings and it is important to focus on using relevant phrases and keywords in your anchor texts.
Google reference: https://developers.google.com/style/link-text
HTTPS & Security
HTTPS encryption is necessary for providing a secure connection between visitors and your site; any data transferred using HTTPS will be encrypted in transit making it secure from hackers and malicious actors. Having HTTPS encryption also helps with SEO performance as websites without HTTPS will be marked as “not secure” by search engines which could result in a lower ranking in SERPs.
Google reference: https://blog.google/products/chrome/milestone-chrome-security-marking-http-not-secure/
Backlinks
Backlinks are a well-known means of improving search engine rankings; these are links from other websites that point back to yours. Having more links from reputable websites increases trustworthiness in the eyes of Google’s algorithms which means your site is more likely to show up higher in SERPs for relevant searches. It’s important not to get carried away with backlinks, especially from non-related websites. Overuse of backlinks could be seen as manipulation by search engines which could result in penalties or lower rankings.
Google reference: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/essentials/spam-policies
Mobile-Friendliness
A confirmed ranking signal, mobile friendliness is becoming increasingly important when it comes to SEO; with more people using mobile devices than ever before, your website must function seamlessly between mobile, desktop and tablets if you want it to rank well on SERPS. Responsive design principles must be considered at all times when developing websites to ensure there are no issues associated with users moving between platforms. Page speed needs to also be considered and it is another well-known factor when considering mobile friendliness.
Google reference: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/mobile/mobile-sites-mobile-first-indexing
Physical Proximity to The Searcher
Google takes into account physical proximity when deciding how high up in SERPs it should show particular websites; this means that if someone who lives close by searches for something related to your business, they are more likely to see your website close to the top of SERPs than someone who lives further away. This means focusing on location-based keywords as well as optimizing for local SEO can lead to better ranking results overall.
Google reference: https://support.google.com/business/answer/7091?hl=en
Schemas, Title Tags & URLs
Optimized title tags + URLs are known as factors that improve SEO performance; title tags should be descriptive but still readable for humans while including relevant keywords where appropriate and URLs should be short and memorable as this makes them easier for both search engines and users alike. Schema markup is another helpful technique you can use when trying to get higher rankings on SERPs; schema code gives search engines more information about what kind of content they should be expecting from each page on a website which makes it easier for them to determine where each page should appear in SERPs for certain searches. Whilst schema markup hasn’t been from what we can see confirmed as a ranking factor, the classification of pages more than likely benefits rankings in some shape or form.
Google reference: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/essentials
What next?
Understanding Google ranking signals is critical for small business owners, managers and SEO marketers seeking improve organic search engine results for their target keywords or phrases. Taking steps such as optimizing server response times, using relevant anchor / link texts, having HTTPS encryption enabled, compliant title tags, concise and expert content and following googles E-E-A-T guidelines are all essential steps your organisation can consider when aiming to improve organic rankings on SERPSs.
If you don’t have Google Search Console setup for your website, this is a good place to start. Have a look at other useful products online such as SEMRush or AHrefs and download the Google search quality evaluation guidelines at https://guidelines.raterhub.com/searchqualityevaluatorguidelines.pdf for more information on how you can work with your web developers, SEO specialists and other stakeholders to improve your search rankings.