We adjusted landing pages, clarified calls to action, and refined the flow. Over time, the conversion rate increased from 1% to 3%, which made a significant difference in revenue. If your SEO efforts do not boost conversion rates, it is time to reassess your strategy.

Research from Moz shows that exact-match domains deemed relevant, valuable, and high-quality can see a ranking boost because of it. However, if you already have an established website, you don’t need to go looking for an exact-match domain for your business. Unsurprisingly, the first of our SEO ranking factors has to do with having the right kind of URL.

• Algorithms are adjusted based on human reactions, not by machine metrics.
• That’s why, after no changes to your page or its backlinks, it could decline in rankings if searchers’ behaviors indicates they like other pages better.
• The more high-quality backlinks and accurate citations your business has, the stronger your Google Maps ranking.
• For that reason, you should begin by brainstorming and listing the services you offer.

A Google ranking factor is a criterion used by Google’s algorithm to determine the relevance, quality, and authority of a webpage for ranking in search results. Examples include keywords, backlinks, mobile-friendliness, and page speed. These factors collectively influence a site’s visibility in search engine results.

#5 – Link Sentiment

Internal links help search engines index and understand your site giving information about what pages are more important for your business. An overall seamless user experience (UX), which includes easy navigation, fast loading times, and mobile responsiveness, can boost search rankings. Google rewards websites that prioritize user satisfaction by improving their visibility in search results. This blog breaks down what Google ranking signals 2025 look like, how SEO ranking works, and what role E-A-T plays in search rankings. Ranking for local searches requires focus on a combination of different local SEO ranking factors. With Google’s local algorithm relying on so many different signals, it can be hard to know where to spend your time to maximize your chances of ranking highly.

Domain History

Regularly updating your content signals search engines that your site is active and relevant. A recent Statista report shows that Google controls 95.32% of mobile searches and 81.95% of desktop searches globally. These figures reveal just how influential Google is in shaping online search behavior, making it the platform of choice for businesses looking to capture online traffic and potential customers. It’s much harder to stop visitors from clicking the back button on your website when they don’t find what they were looking for. Satisfaction is very difficult to game; perhaps that’s why search engines place so much emphasis on it. On the web, over-optimization like this doesn’t appear naturally, unless an SEO deliberately puts it there.

However, relying on low-quality or irrelevant backlinks can hurt your SEO ranking factors. Focus on building organic, relevant backlinks from reputable sites. Guest blogging, influencer collaborations, and high-quality, shareable content are effective strategies to attract the right kind of links that boost your SEO. Google ranking factors refer to the elements that influence a website’s position in search engine results pages (SERPs). These are signals Google evaluates to determine the most relevant, high-quality SEO Anomaly content for a given query. While Google uses hundreds of ranking signals, not all carry the same weight.

Google loves fast websites since they reduce bounce rates, so they keep users on their sites. Slow websites will be ranked adversely since they tend to frustrate users. Besides publishing original content and getting backlinks, one of the most well-known ranking factors is the use of keywords on websites. As you’ll see, that’s usually a combination of great content (see the next tip) and off-page SEO signals like inbound links and social shares. And thanks to E-A-T, it can also include the authority of the content’s creator.

We believe that enabling this change will trigger a fundamental shift in the way that search engines, such as Bing, retrieve and are notified of new and updated content across the web. But this search engine has a much stronger reliance on social signals than Google. For small businesses, this might sound overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be. Many SEO tools, like SEMrush or Ahrefs, integrate AI-powered features that simplify the process.

Search engines like pages based on different factors to confirm users get the best answers to their queries. Although Mobile-first indexing is not a ranking signal, the content on your website will be analyzed and ranked by Google according to the mobile version of the site – not the desktop one. Optimization for mobile devices started to be a ranking signal in 2015 when Google announced a mobile-friendly update. Not if you mean there’s some technical thing like with speed that we can measure directly.

This is due to the fact that many people click on the first few results because they are perceived as the most relatable to a user’s search inquiry. If these businesses mention your name, but don’t link back to your site, you can reach out to them and ask them to link to your site. You can do this through Google Alerts, which tracks mentions of your business. This enables you to find those mentions and get them linked back to your site.