Google’s ranking factors in 2024 are a complex ecosystem, evolving constantly. While pinning down the exact “ranking algorithm” is impossible, several key factors hold significant weight in determining a website’s position in search results. 

As a content marketer, knowing Google’s latest ranking factors and how to implement them is key to ensuring that you stay on top of your game with your content and give your sales funnel a kick.

Google ranking factors determine how many people you can reach through organic searches. These ranking factors are constantly updated by Google to ensure an improved user experience for users.

Most Essential Ranking Factors that You Need to Consider in 2024:

1. User Experience

User experience is at the forefront of SEO, with features like fast load speed, mobile-friendly design, easy navigation, and content relevance firmly woven into SEO practices for SERP rankings.

What is User Experience in SEO?

User experience (UX) describes the experience web users have when interacting with your site. SEO and user experience go hand in hand to ensure smooth search time for users and site maximization for web owners.

The focus of user experience in SEO is centered on the users, but it hasn’t always been so. Web designers were more interested in creating designs fit for search engines rather than for users. 

The change of focus for search engine algorithms with updates like RankBrain, broad core update that target improved user experience changed the trend of web designing. 

For Google, user behavior is used in determining the quality of sites in terms of user experience. So, a higher bounce rate can indicate a poor user experience, while a lower bounce rate may indicate a good user experience and can improve SERP. 

2. High-quality Content

A significant user experience focus for Google SEO ranking factors is content quality. 

Content is the most vital aspect of SEO because it determines what is indexed by Google for search results. This is why optimized content is a serious business in SEO content marketing.

Google is interested in providing the most helpful and relevant results to search queries. This means the quality of your content heavily influences your page rankings. How well your content serves the search intent of your users is an indication of the quality of your content. 

Google uses E-A-T (Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) signals to access the quality of content, websites, and content sources. However, other factors affect the relevance of content in SEO ranking. This includes readability (The use of H2, H3 tags, and paragraphs), keyword placements, content length, and so forth.

Google has a content quality guideline that tells content marketers what to avoid and what to implement. This gives content marketers insight into how content as a ranking factor for SEO works.

How to Improve Content Quality

• Avoid keyword stuffing and auto-generated content
• Break texts into small paragraphs
• Make content engaging to read
• Use descriptive and specific titles and text
• Avoid thin content
• Avoid hidden links and texts
• Create original content to prevent scraped content penalties

3. Core Web Vital

Core web vital is a confirmed Google ranking factor that targets interactivity, visual stability, and load speed of pages. The focus, like most Google ranking factors, is to ensure a great web experience for users. 

Core Web Vitals Uses 3 Metrics to Measure its Main Focus; 

1. The First Input Delay (FID)
2. Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS), and 
3. The Largest Contentful Paint (LCP).

First Input Delay (FID):- To measure interactivity, signal to determine how long a page takes to respond to the first input of a search. 

Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS):- Measures the frequency of unexpected shifts of content, image, and layouts on the page to determine visual stability.

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP):- Measures page load speed to determine if it means the ideal mark of 2.5 seconds or less.

 

Google’s web.dev provides useful information on improving your FID, CLS, and LCP to improve your web page rankings under core web vitals.

Here are Some of the Tricks to Improve Core Web Vitals

• Make use of web-safe fonts 
• Optimize your CSS to avoid large JavaScript libraries 
• Take out unused JavaScript to maximize execution time.
• Include size features to images and videos in next-gen formats
• Use PRPL patterns for instant loading

4. Mobile Friendly

Mobile-friendliness is another confirmed Google ranking factor. It focuses on the functionality of a website on mobile phones. 

Internet users spend about 155 minutes per day on their mobile devices, which is the majority of their internet time. 

This points to the importance of mobile-friendly sites as it affects the user experience of many internet users.

As a ranking factor, Google determines your usability on mobile devices to rank your SEO performance. The implication is that a site that is not optimized for mobile use will suffer in SERP rankings.

Google provides a mobile-friendly test for web owners where you can put your URL or code to check your website’s compatibility with mobile devices. 

To check how well your site is doing, type the URL of your site in the box and click on “run test.”

Your site has to pass this test if you hope to improve your mobile-friendliness ranking.

What to do to Enhance Mobile-friendliness

• Check the navigation of your site to include a mobile view
• Use an easy-to-read web layout and font
• Avoid too many pop-ups
• Avoid crappy designs.

5. SEO-friendly URL

As an SEO practice, URL optimization mainly involves using SEO-friendly keywords on URLs. 

For example, an article on restaurant furniture can have an URL that includes restaurant + furniture, in order to improve the SERP rankings of the page for “restaurant furniture search.”

Google confirms SEO-friendly URLs as a ranking factor. However, it is described as a lightweight ranking factor. This means it is one of those SEO ranking factors that affect very little about a site’s ranking and can be overlooked.

John Mueller explains how SEO-friendly URL works as a ranking factor works and why it is not a major ranking factor but can help.

According to him,

This means that after Google spiders crawl through your page content, there may not be any need for an optimized URL anymore.

Useful Tip:

Optimize your URL anyways, no matter how minimal the benefits are.

To do So;

• Use keywords
• Remove special characters and numbers
• Use lowercase
• Match URL with page title

6. Google Recommended UX and UI Website Design

Google is keen on user experience and user interface. This is why ranking factors in SEO are heavy on website design. 

Also, Google is the highest ranking search engine, so web designers and developers work with Google tools to ensure compatibility with ranking factors. 

To help web designers in this regard, Google has a couple of useful developing tools that web developers can rely on to check and improve their website design’s UX and UI performance.

Some of These Tools Include:

1. Lighthouse
2. Polymer
3. Google GitHub
4. Google API explorer
5. Flutter
6. Design Sprints

Also, Google provides a UX design course that is helpful to beginners and intermediate web developers and designers at a considerably affordable rate. 

The kicker to this Google UX design course is that users get a Google UX design certificate after the course and can work with it anywhere.

7. Page Experience

In 2021 page experience signals were announced as one of Google’s ranking factors. According to Google, “Page experience is a set of signals that measure how users perceive the experience of interacting with a web page beyond its pure information value.”

Page experience as a google ranking factor incorporates other user experience signals like core web vitals, HTTPS, mobile friendliness, and no intrusive interstitials. 

This makes it one of the most important ranking factors for Google. 

But Google’s John Mueller says that page experience can sometimes be eased off. 

According to him, although page experience is helpful as a ranking factor if there are lots of similar search results, when the user intent shows a preference for a specific site, the page experience signal can be eased off.

What to take away from this is that page experience may not have so much effect on your site if you already have the user experience design aligned with this SEO ranking factor. If you don’t, take heed and change your web design.

Ways to Improve Page Experience

Page experience works hand in hand with core vitals and other ranking factors for SEO like mobile-friendliness, secured HTTPS website address, and intrusive interstitials.

So, to improve page experience,, you must also work on these SEO factors.

• Work on your load speed
• Work on your website security
• Work on your web layout and design
• Do away with excessive above-the-fold pop-ups.

8. Engaging CTA

A call to action (CTA) is usually a button that directs your audience to take further action on your page content. However, it can also come in the form of a single sentence or an image, or any other engaging format. 

Websites typically use a CTA to ask audiences to buy products, sign up for an email list, or even make contact.

CTA is an essential SEO tool if you intend to direct users to other areas of your site. This can do wonders for your bounce rate, and we all know that bounce rates affect SEO rankings.

                                               (Source)

The issue of CTA as a ranking factor is related to above-the-fold pop-up CTA buttons and how that can affect SERP rankings. Mueller addresses this concern in a Reddit response. According to him;

This means that CTAs are not directly a ranking factor. However, it can affect interactions with your website which can indirectly affect your rankings.

How can CTA Affect Your SEO Performance?

1. An engaging CTA is a step closer to conversion rates
2. Further user interaction on your website indicates you have relevant and helpful content
3. Engaging CTA can improve user experience and prove that your website is high quality.

Helpful Tips for Creating Engaging CTA

1. Make simple CTA designs
2. Use catchy action words
3. Place at least one CTA on every page to encourage more interaction
4. Less is more; place CTAs strategically and orderly.

9. Perfect Balance Text with Image and video

An on-page SEO tactic that content marketers rely on for optimized content is image and video insertion. 

According to a Buzzsumo survey, articles with an image between every 70-100 words get double the amount of shares of articles with fewer images. 

                                               (Source)

Also, 27.9% of search queries are returned with images, while videos are 50% more likely to get organic rankings than texts due to low competition and users’ visual interest.

These are juicy stats to entice content marketers into adding more images and videos to content. However, images and videos within text content may impart rankings adversely.

This can happen if the visual contents affect the load speed of your website. To avert this issue, avoid large-sized images and videos, or use optimization tools that ensure your page load speed isn’t slowed by images and videos.

Useful Tips

• Use the proper format for size, quality, and Google crawlability
• Compress the file to reduce content overall weight
• Use SEO-friendly Alt texts
• Define dimensions to prevent CLS issues

10. Genuine Reviews and Ratings

Reviews and ratings fall under sentiments which google algorithm does not recognize. This is because of the possibility of falsehood that can be attached to some reviews.

Businesses can suffer unfair low rankings by false bad reviews. Conversely, they can also unfairly enjoy high rankings through false good reviews if reviews were to be a google ranking factor. 

Google’s Daniel Sullivan has also confirmed that Google’s algorithm doesn’t recognize sentiments like reviews and ratings as ranking factors for Google.

However, there is a good reason why people believe this user experience tool plays a role in SEO ranking, and they are not wrong. 

Users’ interaction with your site and possible conversion can be influenced mainly by reviews and ratings from other users. 

This can affect your site performance because constant disruptions or low engagements resulting from bad reviews may be interpreted as a low value for your site, which will cause a drop in ranking.

Also, one of the ways Google measures the quality of a webpage is through a reputation analysis. Customer reviews are recognized by Google as one of the factors used by quality raters in a reputation analysis.

The implication is that, although reviews do not have a direct effect on Google algorithm SERP rankings, they can affect other important areas of SEO marketing which produce adverse ranking effects.

Useful tips

• Provide excellent service and products to your users
• Get genuine reviews and ratings from reputable users
• Opt for customer testimonials

11. SSL (HTTPS) Secure Website

HTTPS encryption has been confirmed as a ranking factor by Google as far back as 2014, and it doesn’t look like much has changed since then. 

You may wonder why HTTPS matters over HTTP, – it’s simply because it is secured. Part of Google’s focus on improving user experience is pushing up secure websites. 

Anyone using the internet long enough will know the risks of opening an unsecured website. It could expose you to lousy content and could be harmful, if not useless at best, to your search query.

Google knows this, and it warns its users. If you open an unsecured site on chrome, it indicates the “not secure” warning sign on the tab. This can instantly throw off any user, even ones without much information on SEO.

This makes HTTPS encrypted sites highly valued, and a ranking factor to pay attention to when encrypting your website.

According to Google’s Gary Illyes, HTTPS affects a sizable percentage of search queries enough not to be ignored.

Valuable Tips to Secure Your Website with HTTPS

• Use a dedicated IP address for hosting
• Buy, request, and install an SSL certificate
• Update your website to enable HTTPS

Benefits of Implementing Google Recommended Ranking Factors in SEO

After analyzing ranking factors in SEO, the next best thing is implementation. It is easy to see why user experience SEO practices are beneficial. 

The most glaring benefit is a higher ranking which means you can get exposure and leads. 

If you need more convincing, here are three reasons you should start implementing the Google recommended ranking factors now;

• Beating the Competition

Chances are, your competitors are already ahead of you in the process. Why not dive in too? 

Also, optimizing your website and content to improve user experience can put you ahead of competitors in your industry through higher rankings.

                                            (Source)

• Organic Result Targets

Ads are great and effective for marketing your brand, but SEO marketing is even better for quality traffic results that are organic.

While PPC ads usually appear above organic SEO results, 71.33% of users click on organic search results on the first page.

This means you can get the exposure and benefits that usually come from ads without paying to run any ads, thereby saving cost.

• Lasting Conversion

SEO marketing is a gift that keeps giving. With regular updates, you can continue reaping the benefits of your SEO content.

Also, high rankings establish you as an authority in your industry in the eyes of users, and this can build enough trust to improve your conversion rate, brand PR, and brand loyalty.

Get Started

Google SEO ranking factors are easy to follow. Google further provides guidelines to help content marketers, web designers, and owners to improve their SEO practices. 

It’s time to take advantage of it!

FAQ

1. What is the approximate number of Google’s ranking factors?

Google has never openly revealed their ranking factors. On the behalf of its guideline, there are over 200 ranking factors which Google considers in ranking for their SERPs. 

2. What are the important Google ranking factors in 2024?

There are 10 most important google ranking factors which considered in ranking on SERPs are as follows:-

1. High-quality, informative, and engaging content
2. User-experience
3. Mobile-friendliness
4. Website speed
5. Core Web Vitals
6. High-quality backlinks
7. User engagement metrics
8. Domain authority
9. Local SEO optimization
10. Technical SEO factors

3. How many ranking factors does Google use?

As per “John Muller” statement, they never declared or revealed any ranking factors to rank websites on SERPs. There are 3 Most Important ranking Factors in SEO as per SERPs analysis that are:-

• Publishing High Quality Content (creating content for people, and not for search engines)
• User Experience ( Easy to access, user-friendly functions and action points) 
• Mobile-Friendly (Responsive Website)