11 Major Google’s SEO ranking factors in 2020

1. Impact of HTTPS on SEO

In July 2018 Google update, the company has started flagging websites without an SSL certificate as unsafe in Chrome and its network website. Subsequently, it has also stated that websites with HTTPS will rank moderately higher than non-secured sites. That is because Google is focused on making online browsing safe with complete protection of user data.

As we already know that SSL prevents hackers from snooping on personal data of users while browsing a specific website. Without an iota of doubt, the SSL certificate affects SEO ranking in 2020.

2. Mobile Friendliness

On April 21, 2015, Google has announced the Mobilegeddon update and urged website owners to create mobile-friendly sites to improve user experience. Since then, mobile-friendliness has become an important SEO ranking factor for websites to rank higher on small screen devices.

As we all know, the number of mobile users has already surpassed desktop ones across the globe. With more mobile users worldwide, if a website isn’t optimized for small screen devices, the ranking is likely to take a beating. Sites optimized for mobiles are more likely to rank higher in the mobile search result.

3. Schema Markup

Schema markup is a method of putting semantic vocabulary of tags (microdata) on a website to help search engines deliver more information to users. The structured data on a website has become more critical after the Hummingbird and RankBrain updates on Google’s ranking.

It has been found that websites submitting schema markup are likely to enjoy more click-through-rate than others. It is also an essential factor that helps to interpret the quality of a website before showing in a search result.

Other essential aspects of technical SEO optimization include submission of site architecture to search console to inform about the company.

4. Web Page Content-Length and Quality

The web page content is written primarily for our human audiences, but it also matters how search engines perceive as well. It is a known fact that the quality of web page content impacts the performance of a website on the search result.

Content quality and length are critical factors affecting how search engine crawl, index, and show on search result later. Google is likely to rank quality content with words above 2000 better than small copies. It further evaluates content based on trust factor, comprehensiveness, clarity, and engagement possibility with customers. Creating content for human readers and search engine robots need much evaluation!

5. Page Speed

In July 2018, Google officially announced page speed as one of the ranking factors for a website in the search result. The speed update has impacted a small percentage of queries on Google results, especially for those websites not optimized for mobile search. In other words, websites not optimized for mobile search will rank lower than the desktop results.

That is because, today, users want answers and at a real fast rate. Websites taking more than four seconds to open are likely to witness a higher bounce rate than sites taking lesser time. Improving the page speed of the whole site improves traffic retention and reduce bounce rates.

6. Social Signals

Google has denounced social signals as a direct ranking factor in an official update. However, the white paper of Searchmetrics says otherwise, stating a strong correlation between search engine ranking and social signals of a website. The study encourages to have strong content with full of values, information, and entertain audiences than the low-quality content to increase social signals.

7. Quality Backlinks

Links are considered the most crucial SEO ranking factor in Google. It impacts website accessibility and informs search engine robots about the site. Higher the link profile of a site, and higher is the chance of ranking higher. But there is a catch!

Quality backlinks are the most important ones for a website that influence ranking immensely. As the name suggests, the quality backlink is a do-follow link that has anchor text mentioned on the body. Quality links add value to your business and increase website visibility and ranking in the search result. That is because linking back to your website passes link juice and improve your website’s position.

It is thus essential building links with high-authority and relevant sites to consider quality by Google algorithm. Instead of using an automated tool, the manual link building services work better for websites to enhance the ranking and avoid penalties.

8. Optimized Images

In 2018, Google updated its image guidelines to show in the search result. The update holds importance for firms trying to rank higher in the image search results, given the fact that more people are using Google image search to find information nowadays.

To boost ranking in the image search result, you must do the following optimization:

• Choose the right image format, preferably in the PNG or JPEG
• Compress large image file that slow down page speed
• Give the image file a suitable name
• Write SEO friendly ALT text
• Create an image file structure and submit the URL in the sitemap
• Write image title and description

9. Domain Age

Although Google hasn’t confirmed domain age as one of the ranking factors, many SEO experts think that older domains do rank better than new ones. Many experts believe that a new website is kept in a Google sandbox to check its trustworthiness, credibility, and usability for visitors. It means it is difficult to rank a new website higher than an older site.

10. User Experience

User experience has a powerful impact on the SEO ranking of a website. Google evaluates how users interact and engage with a website. Thus, the website having high page speed, mobile-friendliness, menu layout, and user-friendly site architecture are likely to score higher in the metric of usability and navigation. As a result, they are likely to get preference from Google to get top ranking than other sites.

10. User Experience

You may have heard the “Content is King” reference many times before. This quotation still holds the same value and importance in a successful SEO campaign, as fresh and quality content is the second most important ranking factor, according to many industry experts.

The in-depth, simple, and quality content with factually correct information are likely to create engagement with the audience more than a spammy and incomplete resource. But, the content should be simple, concise, and free from grammatical mistakes while answering the question of visitors. Websites that have such quality content in the blogs and articles are likely to witness a surge in organic traffic and ranking in the search result.

Content marketing is a proven technique of promotion and informs the potential audience about business products and services. The content calendar includes resources to share information about a specific product or service to bringing potential customers into the conversion funnel.

Although content marketing is a different form of marketing, businesses can still use it in the SEO campaign to maintain a steady flow of blogs, articles, and guest posting on authority sites. It is necessary to have an official blog and publish fresh content to boost ranking as well as traffic inflow into a website. The content should have natural placement of business keywords instead of stuffing that may degrade the ranking. Even the guest posting on relevant and authority platform is a vital way to acquire quality links as well as increase organic traffic.