Ranking top on Google’s first page is what all SEO veterans aim but is website ranking really that important? Let’s understand — You know for Google everything revolves around its users. Therefore, Google search results show only the most relevant results to its users. The better search engine optimization you do the higher your website’s google search ranking will get.
But, what’s the catch here? Well, it’s the google SEO ranking factors, that can help you yield higher engagement, quality traffic, and better conversation rates. Most importantly ranking your site as the number one result on the first page of Google search results without making you pay a single penny unlike Pay-Per-Click (PPC).
Nothing is better than earning skyrocket organic leads than the paid ones. So, with that said let’s first understand-
What are Google Ranking Factors?
If you’ll ask any SEO expert to define the term “Google Ranking Factor” we bet they’ll surely turn their conversation to organic search engine results. And why not! Organic search is one of the most challenging yet rewarding marketing techniques that aid users’ websites with loyal customers and top google ranking.
This is because the organic ranking on google is determined with the help of the google algorithm that counts various SEO metrics and characteristics that end up becoming the google ranking factor.
In simple words, google ranking factors are the criteria followed by Google to evaluate web pages and determine to rank them, putting them in order as per user search relevance. Therefore, giving equal weightage to google search queries is important.
Every year Google makes changes to its algorithm that make Google SEO ranking factors count over 100+. Knowing every factor and keeping track of all is not possible in a practical way. However, when you take your actions as per YMYL (Your Money Your Life) keep E-A-T (Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) into it. This will surely keep your website and its content standing in front of google.
Google Ranking Factors To Focus on in 2024
Keeping YMYL and EAT under concern, here were are defining some of the most valuable sources of traffic i.e. top six google SEO ranking factors that you must consider in the year 2024.
1. On-page optimization
Google promotes those websites that are properly optimized. Things like header or meta tags help Google to analyze the content on your website and help it reach the right audience. When you do the right On-page SEO, it allows you to optimize the web pages of your website which will directly improve the user ranking and experience. Additionally, specialized SEO for photographers services can help professionals in the photography industry rank higher and attract more clients through targeted SEO strategies.
On-page SEO factors such as title tags, HTML code, internal links, On-page content, URL optimization, user experience, and images help you in increasing your site’s organic reach by optimizing and updating all in a timely manner.
The site’s meta titles, meta descriptions, and H1 can make a measurable difference. As of the year 2024, the Google algorithm considers passage indexing that works to rank individual passages within a web page on the basis of user search queries.
So, ultimately google read out the body of your website’s content considering meta tags. Therefore, one must keep crafting clear and on-point meta tags and titles for each web page.
We could say that following the above-mentioned on-page SEO factors will make a major impact on the upcoming year. Thus you must keep on optimizing the website as this can help the existing highly informative and relevant content get found faster by google search engines as well as users.
2. Highly Helpful & Relevant Content
You must be hearing this for ages that content is king! And in 2024 it still remains the king. The quality of content present on your blog and website is still a crucial thing.
2024 is the year where SEO experts globally welcome Google’s content update and kept it under concern to build websites more engaging. This turned out most amazing factor to make the content reach on top of google rankings.
Keeping keyword-stuffed, promotional, and short-form content lost their rankings with this update and informative, educational, longer-form thoughtful content climbed to the top of Google rankings and this is what 2022’s google content update was all about.
As per Google’s Fred and Panda algorithm update, a web page or a website containing no real value or informative content makes no sense. Every content that has been posted on a website should contain valuable content that must be read-worthy.
Highly helpful & relevant content is something that has the ability to increase reader visibility, add user time to web pages and lower the bounce rate delivering the right content to the user.
Top or high-quality content such as website blog pages or guidelines are something that every user searches for. Targeting and writing high-quality content pages can do wonders in today’s SEO than writing long-form content.
3. Website Architecture and UX/UI
Posting high-quality web content does not make an impact if the website becomes impossible for Google site crawlers and users to navigate. Therefore, to make a website appear in SERPs and be loved by Google, providing a good user experience and building an easy user interface are important. As this ensures users or visitors get stuck around to explore the site for longer.
This will act as a positive sign for Google that your site is helpful and will be rewarded with a high ranking. Therefore, focusing on such is crucial. Make sure to build your website around a clear hierarchical structure and make your focus on aiding the best user experience.
The best way to do this is by ensuring to build the website site structure is SEO-friendly by following website architecture basics that is – keeping the URLs short, better using the right keywords, eliminating duplicate content pages from the site if any, implementing simple and intuitive navigation with a better sitemap.
4. Google Core Web Vitals
Before the year 2021, everything was considered constant continuing with not much change in google’s ranking factor. However, in 2021 Google introduced new ranking factors including “Core Web Vitals” as a part of the webpage experience update.
Google Core Web Vitals is an excellent website report representing tool that shows how your webpage performs on the basis of real-world usage data. This includes the user experience on your web page, which showcases how and whether they engage with your website.
According to studies, the better your Core Web Vitals are the more improved user engagement and business metrics you have. The Core Web Vitals includes-
- LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) – LCP shows how long the elements on your website take to load.
- FID (First Input Delay) – As the name speaks for itself FID shows how long it takes your webpage to get registered on the first tap or click on the webpage.
- CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift) – CLS showcases whether there are any disruptive popups or unexpected movements.
With the help of Core Web Vitals, you can do code minification, improve your website’s lazy loading, make image compression, and much more.
5. Mobile Optimized and Mobile Responsive Website
If you search on Google for the term “Mobile Optimized Website” or “Mobile Responsive Website” you will find thousands of results displayed on your screen suggesting — The Importance of Mobile Optimized Website or Why your website should be mobile optimized?
And why not, around 59.5% of website traffic comes from mobile devices, and whooping around 92.1% access the internet using mobile. So, building a mobile-optimized and mobile-responsive website is a must for every e-commerce or service-delivering site.
Simply, the answer is that you need a mobile-friendly website, and that is because it is something where the future of online business lies. Since desktops have become a less used mechanism due to the increased usage of smartphones. Smartphones have become the new wave of connectivity that every business must become a part of.
Therefore, it is essential that a website must be mobile-optimized. You can do it by adjusting the content of your website. This way you will ensure that visitors who access your site via mobile devices should get the best user experience customized according to their device.
Optimized content flows easily between mobile and desktop devices to provide the searcher with what service they are looking for. Most importantly building content as per user requirements will be appreciated by Google also.
6. Inbound, Outbound, and Internals Links
Links might not be a hot topic for you, however, it still plays an important role as a Google ranking factor. Linking to the sites that google respects and knows is a great way to enable and boost E-A-T.
Google considers inbound links as a signal of how authoritative the published content is. The more reputable site you link to your content the better Google put value to your webpage and the more your site will rank on SERPs.
Simply, when you go with high-E-A-T sites and businesses you will get benefited too. The best part is your site could get linked too.
There are many tactics to get backlinks — that typically include, blogger outreach, guest posting, etc. Outbound links help your website readers to get high-quality content on the referred website. The main focus behind adding outbound links is to aid value to users that directly help your website rank higher. Whereas, the internal links on your site help users and Google easily navigate your content and introduce them to other helpful pages.
Implement Google Ranking Factors and Monitor Them Effectively
Even when you are confident enough in your SEO skills and executing SEO improvements considering Google Ranking Factors. Making considerable adjustments, and monitoring your website progress is undoubtedly a time-consuming and long-term commitment.
So, going forward with a trusted SEO agency would be a smart move. LionBear Media is a trusted San Diego digital marketing agency that understands the business well and delivers the business what it deserves to reach on top of Google search results.
The Top 6 Google SEO Ranking Factors For 2024 in Nutshell
Now that you know some of the most crucial google SEO ranking factors you should start working on 2024 to rank your website. We recommend you keep your focus on having strong brand visibility on search engines as it is crucial to earning trust, increasing traffic to your site, building brand awareness, attracting loyal customers, and most importantly driving higher revenue.
In addition, things such as quality link building, mobile-friendly optimization, and adding featured rich snippets still hold a lot of significance as Google page rank factors. So, you must consider them in your comprehensive SEO strategy for 2024 too.
Frequently Asked Questions
Despite the fact that Google isn’t the only search engine people use to search and explore things. However, following google ranking factors to optimize your website would be enough to boost and make your website stand out even on other search engines as well.
Besides all, the major google SEO ranking factor that helps push the SEO ranking results are mobile-optimized websites, high-quality relevant content, and core web vitals. Understanding, user behavior search intent would also be the major factor that could be the next big thing in SEO.
