100 + Google SEO

Source: ht tps: //zyppy.
com /seo-success-fac tors /

Contents
Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
SECTION 1: Critical Factors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1. Content that Targets User Search Queries. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6

2. Crawlable + Accessible to Search Engines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7
3. Quality & Quantity of Links . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8
4. Satisfies User Intent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8
5. Uniqueness of Content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
6. Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (EAT) . . . . 11
7. Freshness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
8. Click-through Rate (CTR). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
9. Speed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
10. Built for Multiple Devices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
SECTION 2: Important Factors . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
1. Layout & Design. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

2. Use of Relevant Keywords, Phrases, & Topics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
3. Use of Optimized Images and Video . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
4. Personalization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
5. Authority + Trust of Links . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
6. Relevance of Links . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
7. Social Sharing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
8. Page Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
9. Content Depth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
10. Topical Authority . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
11. Structured Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
12. Hreflang for Internationalization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
13. Volume of Brand Searches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
14. AMP. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
15. HTTPS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
100+ Google SEO Success Factors, Ranked 2

Contents
SECTION 3: Influential Factors . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
1. User-Friendly URLs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
2. Parameter Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
3. Quality of Supplemental Content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
4. Real World Business Information. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
5. Robots Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
6. Link Velocity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
7. Sitemaps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
8. Linking Out to High-Quality Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
9. Site Architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
10. Pagination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
11. Domain Age . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
12. Website & Business Reputation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
13. Use of Semantic Content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
14. Domain Extension . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
15. Server Location . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
16. Multiple Sources of Traffic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
17. Readability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
18. Factually Correct . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
19. Author Reputation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
20. Accurate & Consistent Registration Info. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
SECTION 4: Myth Factors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
1. Using Google Analytics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

2. Domain Expiration Length . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
3. Google Adsense. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
4. Keyword Density . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
5. W3C Validation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
6. Multiple H1 Tags . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
7. SEO Site Submission . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
8. Dedicated IP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
9. Meta Keywords . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
10. Magical .Edu and .Gov Backlinks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

Contents
SECTION 5: Negative Factors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
1. Spam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
2. Manipulative Links . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
3. Thin Content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
4. Non-unique Content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
5. Cloaking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
6. Meta Noindex Errors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
7. Canonical Errors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
8. Robots.txt Blocking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
9. Keyword Stuffing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
10. Hidden Text or Links . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
11. Piracy / DMCA Notices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
12. Rich Snippet Spam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
13. Blocking Important JS / CSS Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
14. Overly Long / Complex URLs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
15. Linking to Bad Neighborhoods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
16. Slow Speed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
17. Aggressive Ads / Intrusive Interstitials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
18. Over-Optimized Anchor Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
19. High Quantity of Crawl Errors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
20. False / Misleading / Offensive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
21. Porn / Explicit Content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
22. Redirect Chains . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
23. UGC Spam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
24. Sneaky Redirects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
25. Bad Domain History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51

Overview
anking factors are awesome—and sometimes—a little bit dangerous.
R That is, chasing minor ranking factors can lead to a dangerous waste of
resources, while at the same time neglecting holistic seo that actually leads to
higher rankings and better traffic.
Google uses 1000s of signals to rank web pages. Nobody knows what they
all are (and anyone who claims otherwise is fibbing). In fact, since the rise of
machine learning, not even Googlers can tell you all the elements that influence
rankings and how they interact with one another in search results.
What matters is success.

SEO Success Factors are those elements you can take action on to improve
your rankings, traffic, and visibility in Google search. Many Success Factors—
but not all—are based on ranking factors, and a number of them deliver bigger
results than others.
As an example, while meta descriptions aren’t a Google ranking factor,
crafting well-composed descriptions that improve your click-through rate (CTR)
can have a positive, outsized impact on your SEO efforts.
Using a combined analysis of:

• Ranking factors studies
• Experimentation data
• Expert opinion surveys
• Patent filings
• And statements from Google
… we’ve aggregated the most popular SEO Success Factors in one place. Our
goal is to show you not only what works, but how to use these factors to
improve your rankings and traffic.
Use this information is to prioritize the most critical factors first, while
working your way towards less important elements. You can safely ignore the
“Myth” factors, while being sure to stay away from the “Negative Factors.”

SEC TION 1
Critical Factors
Sites at the top of Google search results typically score well in most, if not all,
of these critical seo success factors.
1 . Content that Targets User Search Queries

In essence, this is the very heart of SEO. The magic that makes it work.
Instead of traditional marketing where you push your message upon a user
(think television commercials), SEO allows you to deliver exactly the content
the user is searching for, at exactly the moment they search for it.
To make this happen, you need data on what users are searching. This is why
almost all SEO starts with Keyword Research.
Keyword Research takes many forms, but it typically consists of 3

types of data:
1. Query: What are people searching for?
2. Volume: How many are searching for it?
3. Difficulty: How competitive is it to rank for this term in Google?

Critical Factors
Once you know what terms are worth pursuing, you can create content that
targets those topics. We’ll cover this in later success factors.
How to Leverage:
There are 100s of guides on getting started with keyword research.
A few of the best include:
• Keywords and Keyword Research
• How to Do Keyword Research
• Keyword Research for SEO: The Definitive Guide
2 . Crawlable + Accessible to Search Engines

All the keyword research in the world means nothing if search engines can’t
crawl or understand your website.
Not surprisingly, technical crawling and accessibility issues often represent
both the biggest SEO challenge and biggest opportunity for a majority of sites.
From making sure your robots.txt file doesn’t block important pages or
resources, to providing machine-readable text, building machine accessible
content is a critical SEO success factor.
A few technical areas that SEOs must master:

• Making sure search engines can discover + crawl all important URLs
• On page content is readable by search engines
• On-site signals the relative importance and uniqueness of each page
How to Leverage:
Most Technical SEO Audits cover crawling and search engine accessibility
as priority #1. One of the best resources is Benjamin’s Estes’ Technical SEO
Audit Checklist for Human Beings and Annielytics Site Audit Checklist.
Most major SEO audit tools uncover a number of crawling issues

very effectively. A few well-respected tools you can use/try for free:
• Google Search Console
• SEMrush
• Ryte

Critical Factors
3 . Quality & Quantity of Links

When Googlers Larry Page and Sergey Brin wrote the original PageRank
patent in 1996, they had a novel idea: Instead of ranking web pages based on
human editors, why not rank pages based on the number of links pointing at
them from other web pages?
Links are votes.

Today’s Google goes far beyond simply counting the raw number of links a site
receives. Factors that play into this popularity contest are believed to include
factors like trust, relevancy, position, and many more.
And while internal links (links from your own website) may not be as pow-
erful as links from trusted external sites, internal linking and site architecture
play an outsized role in your SEO efforts.
Although many speculate that the power of links has declined, or that
Google may someday drop them altogether, Google statements and many
experiments continue to prove their value as one of the strongest SEO success
factors that we know.
A link is more than a navigational element. Each individual link on the web
conveys multiple signals that Google can interpret for ranking purposes.
These include:
• The Authority + Trust of the Link
• The relevance of the Link
• Anchor Text
• … and Many More
How to Leverage:
If you want to rank, you need good links—from both inside and outside of your
site. For external linking strategies, we highly recommend the resources at Point
Blank SEO, in particular, Link Building Strategies — The Complete List. For
insight into internal linking, check out the linking resources at Hobo Web.
4. Satisfies User Intent

The pieces are coming together. So far we’ve:
1. Targeted content with relevant user search queries
2. Made your site crawlable and accessible to search engines
3. Obtained relevant links pointing to your content

Critical Factors
But now, perhaps one of the biggest questions of all: Does this content satisfy
user’s intent?
It’s not enough to target your content with keywords and phrases (more on
this later). The important question Google wants to know is “does the content
give the user the most satisfying answer they are looking for?”
Google doesn’t want to simply deliver answers to users; they want to
deliver the best answers and experiences, ones that satisfy user intent without
requiring additional searches.
SEOs refer to this in different ways: dwell time, the long click, return-to-
SERP, and more. In essence, they all mean this: Does the user find the most
satisfying answer to what they are looking for without searching further?
If the user has to click the back button, modify their search, or spend more
time with results from other websites, this may be a sign that your content
doesn’t deliver the best experience.
How to Leverage:
Delivering content that satisfies user intent is one of the most challenging
aspects of SEO, in part because it’s difficult to measure.
That said, there are a number of practices that can improve your
chances significantly.
1. Deliver content with the format and features Google expects. E.g., if the top
ranking sites for your keyword in Google all contain video results, it’s a good
indication that users (and Google) are looking for videos to satisfy intent
2. Answer the query as completely as possible, giving the user zero excuses to
hit the back button. A good way to do this is to incorporate the answers to
additional questions, i.e. “people also ask” into your content.
3. Measure and work to improve your engagement rates, including:
• Bounce Rate
• Time on Site
• Pages per Visit
• Goal Conversion Rate
Rand Fishkin has covered the topic of user satisfaction in depth. For
better understanding, check out his articles:
• Is the New, Most Powerful Ranking Factor “Searcher Task Accomplishment?”
• How to Beat Your Competitor’s Rankings with More *Comprehensive*
Content

Critical Factors
5 . Uniqueness of Content
If your content is exactly the same as multiple other copies on the web, why
should Google rank it above all the others?
Put another way—if your content isn’t uniquely valuable, it doesn’t mean
Google will necessarily punish you for it, but it does make it much, much harder
to rise to the top.
When your content isn’t unique, two things happen:

1. Google has to filter out all the duplicate content to deliver the best result –
and there’s a good chance your content will be in the filtered group.
2. Duplicate content can’t target those unique topics and answers that the com-
petition isn’t targeting
Duplicate content issues generally take two forms. First is content that actually
copies content from another site or page. The second is caused by duplicates of
your own content when 2 or more URLs create the same (or very close) content.
Content that directly copies content from another site is obviously

problematic. But also consider the problems created with your own
original content when you have URLs like these:
• https://example.com/product
• https://example.com/product?color=default
In theory, both of these URLs may create the exact same page. Not only does
Google need to crawl each one (which could waste precious crawl budget) but

Critical Factors
the two pages may split link equity and other ranking signals. This makes it very
difficult for Google to decide which page—if any at all—to show in search results.
How to Leverage:
1. Make sure your content, including all text, offers unique value from all other
sites and pages across the internet.
2. Control duplicate content on your own site. Tools and techniques include
canonical tags, parameter handling, robots.txt, redirects, and more. These
guides should help:
• Duplicate Content (Search Console Help)
• Duplicate Content Advice from Hobo Web
• Duplicate Content Best Practices
6 . Expertise, Authoritativeness, and

Trustworthiness (EAT)
You can target keywords, build links, and maybe even satisfy user intent – but
do you have a site both Google and users should trust?
In the earlier days of SEO, it was easier to game the search engines, and low-
quality pages flooded the results. To combat this, Google introduced Panda into its
algorithm, which uses machine learning to separate high and low-quality pages.
According to Google’s Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines, the principal
qualities that define a high-quality page are Expertise, Authoritativeness, and
Trustworthiness (EAT). It’s believed that Google uses the results from its
human quality raters as training data in its machine learning algorithms.
Other qualities that define a high-quality page—according to

evaluator guidelines—include:
• A satisfying amount of high-quality content
• A clear indication of who is responsible for the content, i.e., author informa-
tion, “About Us” and contact information
• A positive reputation
How to Leverage:
A good place to start is Google’s own published Panda questions, which
many assume form the basis of their machine learning model.
Since you likely don’t have an army of Search Quality Raters at your dis-
posal, Distilled created a helpful Panda Survey that you can use with your
own test group.

Critical Factors
7 . Freshness
Does fresh equal success?
Since the early days, Google has filed patent after patent on evaluating con-
tent freshness for its search results. This typically involves two parts.
First, Google devised a system known as “Query Deserves Freshness” to
determine the types of search terms that most benefit from fresh results.
Examples include:
• News and current events – “Seattle protest” “Grammy Awards”
• Recurring events – “Full moon” “World Cup Schedule”
• Frequently Updated – “iPhone Specs” “Mac Reviews”
• Topics with a recent spike in search volume or social media coverage
Other systems determine how fresh and relevant your content is for
the search query. Signals which may indicate fresh content include:
• Age of the content
• Updates to the content, including which sections were updated (important or
unimportant) and how much content was updated
• How frequently your content is updated
• How often people link to your content (lower link frequency may indicate
content that has grown stale)
• Changes in engagement metrics (worsening engagement may mean content is
out of date)
Fresh content isn’t always better, but the idea is to deliver the most relevant
content.
How to Leverage:
Updating your content for the sake of freshness isn’t necessary, but keeping
your content relevant and up-to-date is.
Updating old content is also a way to earn new links and fresh
engagement. A couple of resources to help:
1. 10 Illustrations of How Fresh Content May Influence Google Rankings
2. Evergreen Content: How Updating An Old Post Boosted Pageviews by 468%

Critical Factors
8 . Click-through Rate (CTR)

For ages, SEOs and Googlers have debated if Click-through Rate is a ranking
factor.
On one hand, SEO experiments show that when more people click your
result in Google search, then your rankings typically rise. Google, on the other
hand, usually argues that CTR would be a “noisy” signal to use for ranking
(without actually denying it.)
The truth? It doesn’t matter.

While there may be convincing evidence that earning higher a Click-through
rate may improve your rankings, it simply doesn’t matter if Google uses it as a
direct—or even indirect—ranking signal.
The truth is that when you improve your CTR, you get more traffic.
Period.
There are potential downstream benefits as well. A higher CTR means more
people are looking at your content, which means more potential shares, more
potential links, and more potential opportunities for engagement. All of
these may have a positive influence on your Google rankings, either directly
or indirectly.
How to Leverage:
Fortunately, influencing CTR is one of the areas you have the most control over
as an SEO. That is, at least you have the opportunity to experiment!
The three main tools you have to help raise CTR are:
1. Title Tags
2. Meta Description
3. Rich Snippets
The good news is that all of these are under your direct control, at least par-
tially. Google may choose to display your information however they want in
search results, but you can greatly influence this with your copy and structured
data markup.
A few resources to help you master the game:

• My Single Best SEO Tip for Improved Web Traffic
• 11 Ridiculously Effective Ways to Boost Your Organic CTR
• Google’s Rich Results Test
• Rich Results Gallery

Critical Factors
Optimizing for Featured Snippets is another option, which we’ll cover in the
next section.
9 . Speed
Fast is in.
Speed is a confirmed ranking factor. When Google first announced it in 2010,
they said it only applied to a small number of slow-loading pages.
Since then, multiple studies have shown a significant correlation between
speed and rankings across all sites, not only the slow ones.
Additionally, Google announced site speed as a ranking factor for mobile
results.
How to Leverage:
For many, improving your page speed can be a technically challenging experi-
ence. Plus, there are so many factors (time to first byte, waterfalls, download
time, etc.) it can be difficult to know what to optimize for.
Fortunately, Lighthouse is a free tool that both Google and the SEO commu-
nity have rallied around. Its Performance Audit scores your page speed into a
single metric and breaks it down into actionable steps.
Another easy option for improving speed is utilizing a Content Delivery
Network (CDN) which can speed up delivery of images and files to your users.
Cloudflare offers a highly recommended starter plan which is both free and easy.
10 . Built for Multiple Devices

How big is the device you are reading this on?
Whether it’s a desktop computer, tablet, or phone, hopefully everything is for-
matted okay and you can read it with ease.
Today, most modern content is built to be multi-device and mobile-friendly,
but this factor can still play a huge in influencing your SEO performance.
Yes, mobile-friendliness is an actual Google ranking factor. But more than
that, your mobile (and desktop) design can influence engagement, sharing,
satisfaction, and quality metrics. A poor mobile experience can have a negative
cascading effect on your rankings and visibility down the line.
Likewise, a positive experience can help.

Google recently rolled out its Mobile First Index. The upshot is that Google
will now mostly rank your pages based on your mobile site. So if your mobile
site is missing content from your desktop site, you may be in trouble.

Critical Factors
How to Leverage:
Put simply: at a minimum, you should have a mobile-friendly site. Most modern
platforms today do this by default with ease, but some older and many custom
Content Management Systems may struggle.
Additionally, with Google’s Mobile First Index, you should make sure your
mobile site doesn’t strip out important content. Here’s a tool from Russ Jones
that can tell if your mobile site is stripping out any links (beta): http://www.
thegooglecache.com/mobile-links.php
Additional resources:
• Google’s Mobile SEO Guide
• Mobile SEO: The Definite Guide
• Mobile-Friendly Test
Feel free to use this infographic with proper attribution. Click here for high-res version.

SEC TION 2
Important Factors
Not only are the following factors important, but combined, they are hugely
important. It’s possible not every factor will apply to your site, but the vast
majority will have a big influence your rankings and visibility.
1 . Layout & Design

Appearance matters. So does page layout.
In SEO, everything is connected.

Not only is page layout a confirmed Google Ranking Factor in more ways than
one (aggressive ads and page segmentation, to name a few) but having a clean,
modern design with clear navigation and site elements can lead to:
1. Better engagement
2. More shares + links
3. Increased conversions
How to Leverage:
While there no single “right” way to design and organize a page, a
handful of guidelines go a long way in helping to get your message
across, and to rank.
1. Clear navigation
2. Prominent main content – typically above the fold
3. Helpful supplemental content
4. Clean UX and design
5. Non-aggressive ads
6. Legible Text (at least 16px)

Important Factors
2 . Use of Relevant Keywords, Phrases,

& Topics
Well, duh. If you want to target users who search using specific words and
phrases, it’s 100% helpful to include those phrases and topics in key sections of
your site.
In the early days, “keyword stuffing” might have been your entire SEO
strategy. Today, the importance of individual keywords has fallen dramatically
while Google has gotten amazingly better at figuring out the meaning of your
content, including synonyms, variations, topics, entities, and intent.
Keyword stuffing is out, but it’s still helpful to include phrases, synonyms,
and topics that your audience is looking for in key places.
These areas include:

1. The page title
2. Meta descriptions
3. URL
4. Domain name (sometimes)
5. Page headings

Important Factors
6. Body text
7. Image alt attributes (when appropriate)
8. Metadata
How to Leverage:
1. Use on-page SEO best practices to target your content towards specific
phrases and topics:
• A Visual Guide to Keyword Targeting and On-Page SEO
2. Move beyond keyword to optimize for complete topics and entities:

• https://moz.com/blog/7-advanced-seo-concepts
3 . Use of Optimized Images and Video

It’s totally possible to rank in Google without using images or videos. That said,
sites that use different forms of visual media, on average, typically outrank
sites that don’t. Images and media can make content more engaging and share-
able, and the data they add through optimization can be used by search engines
to help with rankings for relevant terms.
How to Leverage:
Aside from adding original and unique images and video in your text, it’s
important to ensure the media both ads to the user experience, as well as fol-
lows basic optimization guidelines.
Here are a couple of guides covering both video and image SEO:
• Wistia’s Guide to Video SEO
• Image SEO: Optimize images for search engines
4 . Personalization
In 2009, Google turned on personalized search for everyone. If you visit a site,
and Google thinks you had a good experience, they are more likely to surface
that site again in your search results.
Other factors that influence personalization include:

• Location
• Mobile App use

Important Factors
• Email history
• Shopping history
• Maps history
• Device
• … and many more (rumored to be over 2000+ signals)
The basics of personalization are two-fold:

1. The more a user interacts with your website + brand, the more likely Google
may surface you in the users search results
2. The more relevant you are to a user’s immediate need (i.e., location + intent),
the more likely for Google to connect you
How to Leverage:
For websites, increasing engagement through all available channels is the
key to increasing visibility through personalized search. This means posi-
tively engaging your visitors/customers through all points of possible contact
including your website, emails, app installs, and even your physical location,
when applicable.
To put it simply: make sure they want to engage with you again!
For a business with physical locations, local intent is a huge factor in personal-
ized search. Make sure your Local SEO is dialed in as tight as possible.
5 . Authority + Trust of Links

Authority and trust are subsets of link quality.
Link Authority may encompass many things. While we don’t know all the ingre-
dients in Google’s secret sauce, Link Authority is mostly thought of as the raw
power all the links pointing to a page.
The more high-quality links a page has pointed to it, the more authority it
has to pass to other pages through links. For example, Wikipedia has signifi-
cantly more link authority than a typical personal blog.
Link Authority is often referred to as PageRank.

Trust is another aspect of authority worth considering. A spam website may have
a ton of links pointing at it (through manipulation), but because Google wants to
factor out spam, it can take the trust of the website into consideration.
It may do this by starting with a set of trusted seed sites (government, uni-
versities, newspapers, etc.) and measuring the number of link “hops” between

Important Factors
sites. Sites further away from trusted sites are more likely not to be trusted.
How to Leverage:
Many types of links are valuable, but generally, you want to seek links from
trusted, high authority sites.
Many SEO tool providers offer link metrics. Both Moz and Majestic
offer link metrics (although limited at the free level)
• Majestic: Important metrics are Trust Flow and Citation Flow
• Moz Link Explorer: Important metrics are Domain Authority and Spam Score
6 . Relevance of Links
Imagine you own a pizza shop in Honolulu. If you were Google,
which of the following would you give more weight?
• A German plastic manufacturer links to you with the word “website”
• A Hawaiian restaurant critic links to you with the words “best pizza in Hawaii”
Hopefully, you chose the latter. Google would too.
Link Relevance may be influenced by many things, among them:

1. Anchor Text
2. The relevance of the linking page (through means such as phrase-based
indexing)
3. Local interconnectivity, i.e., links from pages that rank well for your term can
help you to rank
How to Leverage:
By researching your link targets properly, work to secure links that are relevant
to your topics.
Remember the Golden Rule of Link Building: Will this link bring
engaged, highly qualified visitors to my website?
Read: 7 Illustrations of How Topical Links Impact Rankings

Important Factors
7 . Social Sharing
If you want to watch SEOs argue, bring up social sharing as a ranking factor.
But we’re not going to argue today because this isn’t about ranking factors. This
is about success factors.
On one hand, Google has consistently stated they don’t use raw social counts
in their ranking algorithms. On the other hand, study after study shows a
strong correlation between social sharing and higher rankings.
It doesn’t matter how it works. It’s widely agreed that broad social sharing
can help a page to rank, either directly or—more likely–indirectly.
The reason is simple: regardless of algorithms, social sharing can put your
content in front of more eyeballs. Marketing 101. Content with wide social
sharing enjoys greater distribution in front of influencers, and social sharing
aggregators can often create downstream links to the page.
How to Leverage:
No magic bullets here. They key is to build your social influence and create
content that encourages social sharing. It’s not a strategy everyone can master,
but it’s powerful.
8 . Page Structure
Similar to Layout and Design, Page Structure helps you to organize your con-
tent in ways that Google can better understand it and display in search results.
How to Leverage:
Best practices for Page Structure include:
1. Organize your content into clear hierarchy of titles, headings (h1, h2, h3, etc.),
body text, lists and tables
2. Use subheadings when called for
3. Group thematically related ideas together, i.e., within the same content blog,
paragraph, list, etc
4. Use an Inverted Pyramid style of writing
5. Optimize further for Featured Snippets

Important Factors
9 . Content Depth
Consider these two seemingly opposed concepts:
• Content length likely isn’t a ranking factor
• Longer content tends to rank higher
SEOs have been debating this for years, and empathetically stress that content
doesn’t need to belong to rank. Case in point: Consider this page from the US
Navy, which ranks for 1000s of searches a month. It doesn’t need extra content
because it satisfies the user intent.
On the other hand—all things being equal—longer content tends to rank
higher. Nearly every SEO correlation studies ever performed confirm this.
Why? Longer content typically:

1. May have a better shot of showing topical relevance
2. Has a better chance of containing content that satisfies the user’s query
3. Is likely to contain more images and video
4. On average, tends to earn more links and shares than shorter content
How to Leverage:
In reality, it’s not the length of your content, but the depth of your content that
matters. Content that fully explores a topic, including related questions, is
likely to earn more visibility that content that only lightly covers a subject.
More: The Google Ranking Factor You Can Influence in an Afternoon

[Case Study]
10 . Topical Authority
It’s hard—typically—to rank for a competitive search query with only a single
page website. Sites that do well in Google search results tend to publish reg-
ularly in specific areas of expertise over time, building content, links, and
authority.
We don’t know if Google uses a specific authority metric in its algo-

rithm, but several possible mechanisms may make this concept work:
• Internal Linking
• URL Structure
• Topic clusters
• Author authority

Important Factors
Sites that rank well for a particular topic often find it much easier to rank new
content on that same topic, even with few external links.
How to Leverage:
• Become an authority on a topic by covering the topic thoroughly over time,
creating multiple posts/pages, and earning topically relevant links.
• Organize your topic using smart URL structures, i.e., if you were writing
about “link building,” place all your link building post in the /link-building/
folder, so that Google can associate these posts together.
• Build Topic Clusters, leveraging smart internal linking. HubSpot created a
great overview of how to accomplish this: https://research.hubspot.com/top-
ic-clusters-seo
11 . Structured Data
While Structured Data isn’t an explicit Google ranking factor, it can add
content+context to your page to not only help it to rank, but also become
more visible in search results.
Structured Data is the content behind your content, and provides search
engines with explicit information as to what your content is about.
For example, Product Schema is extremely popular in eCommerce. With
Product Schema, you can define aspects of your product such as price, photos,
and availability, so that there is absolutely no confusion to search engines.
Other popular schemas include:

• Offer
• WebPage / Website
• Rating / Review
• Event
• SearchAction
The SEO agency Distilled has repeatedly shown through testing how adding
various types of structured data has helped in rankings. (It doesn’t help in all
cases, but often does.)
Aside from adding clarity to your content, the other way Structured Data
improves your visibility is by triggering Rich Snippets in search results, which
we covered earlier.

Important Factors
How to Leverage:
First of all, if you are unfamiliar with Structured Data, how to imple-
ment it, or the types of content you should mark up, here are a
couple of resources to get you started:
• Google’s Introduction to Structured Data
• What is Structured Data? And Why Should You Implement It?
Be sure to test your markup using Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool.
12. Hreflang for Internationalization

If you serve various versions of your website across different countries or lan-
guages, hreflang implementation is a must.
Hreflang doesn’t necessarily boost your rankings (though many report that
it does exactly this in many situations) but it helps Google to show the right
content to the right audience, which can have a profound impact on your search
performance.
Check out these case studies, all with search visibility improvements:
• Case Study: The Impact of hreflang Tag
• 3 Hreflang Case Studies
• HREFLang Fix Results in 58% Increase in Local Traffic
Hreflang isn’t appropriate to all circumstances (i.e., you only target web con-
tent to a single language and country) but if you want to expand across dialects
and borders, it offers a great opportunity.
How to Leverage:
Hreflang implementation is straightforward, but the specifics can be daunting
even to the most experienced SEO.
After you get everything set up, be sure to test using the Sistrix tool
below, and checking Google Search Console for hreflang errors.
1. Overview: Use hreflang for language and regional URLs
2. Generate: The hreflang Tags Generator Tool
3. Test: hreflang Validator

Important Factors
13 . Volume of Brand Searches

It sounds like a chicken and egg scenario, but it’s actually much more than that:
When more people search for your website and/or brand, you tend to show up
more frequently in search results.
There are several different ways searchers can search for your brand
and associate it with specific keywords:
• Brand: Nike
• Navigational: nike.com
• Brand + Keyword: nike running shoes
• Brand + Navigation: running shoes nike.com
Many marketers have wisely observed that when the volume of these branded
searches increases, the brand tends to show up even when searchers aren’t spe-
cifically looking for it.
Part of the reason, many SEOs believe, is that brand searches create an entity
relationship between the brand and the keyword, i.e., “nike” is an entity associ-
ated with “running shoes,” so it tends to show up more when running shoes are
searched.
The other reason is much more obvious: brand searches influence Google’s
auto-suggest. The more people search for “running shoes nike,” the more likely
Google will suggest that exact phrase when people search for “running shoes.”
How to Leverage:
Building your brand so that searchers actually seek you out by name (and don’t
simply stumble upon you in search results) is one of the strongest drivers of
traffic there is. It also helps build a defensive “moat” around your business. The
more people looking for your website, the less likely for Google to push down
your site in rankings.
Building up your brand is hard work, but there are clever shortcuts
many savvy marketers have tried. For example:
• A television commercial that encourages viewers to search Google for “Chick-
en by Bob” can create branded search around those terms.
• An email campaign that includes a link to a specific Google search containing

the brand + the keyword.

Important Factors
14 . AMP
Google likes to say that Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) isn’t a ranking factor.
And SEOs equally like to point out that AMP is indeed a visibility factor.
The primary advantages that AMP affords are:

• Pages become eligible for Google News Carousels and other features
• Faster load times, which can improve engagement
• Mobile search results are flagged with the AMP symbol, which can increase
CTR
For publishers, these advantages can add up quickly. A Google sponsored

Forrester study showed a 10% year-over-year increase in traffic and 60%
increase in pages per visit for AMP sites.
AMP, despite the advantages, isn’t for everyone. Publishers may find that the
technical standards are hard to maintain, and some non-news sites may find
that any traffic gains aren’t worth the trouble.
How to Leverage:
Setting up AMP can be tricky for smaller sites, but available tools
get better each month. Check out these resources:
• Accelerated Mobile Pages Project
• AMP Optimization for Success: SEO Steps, Tips & Tools
• How to Properly Setup Google AMP on Your WordPress Site
15 . HTTPS
Even by Google standards, that the actual ranking boost from HTTPS is small.
One Googler called it a tiebreaker.
Even so, the SEO benefit from HTTPS is bigger than the sum of its
parts.
Part of the reason is the way browsers display HTTPS sites as secure. Cur-
rently, most browsers grace secure sites with a trusted green bar, while Chrome
aggressively labels certain pages “insecure” if they don’t have HTTPS.
Going forward, browsers may do away with green bars altogether and stated
plans to issue warnings for all non-secure pages. In this case, non-HTTPS
pages might soon be considered a negative ranking factor by default.
For now, it’s a good idea to implement HTTPS.

Important Factors
How to Leverage:
Fortunately, making your site secure through HTTPS is easier than ever. Many
web hosts even offer it free through services like Let’s Encrypt and Cloudflare.
Otherwise, we recommend this handy HTTPS migration checklist from
Aleyda Solis.
FOCUS ON THESE
15 Important SEO Success Factors

While not as critical, mastering the important success factors remain essential for high Google
rankings and search visibility. Technical SEO skills, content crafting, and marketing required.
1 Layout & Design 9 Content Depth
2 Use of Relevant Keywords, Phrases, & Topics 10 Topical Authority
3 Use of Optimized Images and Video 11 Structured Data
4 Personalization 12 Hreflang for Internationalization
5 Authority + Trust of Links 13 Volume of Brand Searches
6 Relevance of Links 14 AMP
7 Social Sharing 15 HTTPS
8 Page Structure
Source: https: //zyppy.com/seo-success-factors/

SEC TION 3
Influential Factors
Influential success factors aren’t always required for successful SEO, but they
can give you the edge over the search competition. Frequently, they make a
huge difference.
1 . User-Friendly URLs
Good URLs can make a big difference in all areas of SEO: crawling, ranking,
CTR, and sharing.
A few rules for URLs that SEOs have found true through testing and
performance:
1. Shorter URLs > Longer URLs
2. Keywords in URLs help, but not too many
3. 1-2 folder levels, tops
4. Generally Avoid: Numbers, special characters, and keep parameters to a minimum
Example of a good URL:

• https://example.com/seo-success-factors/
Example of a mostly terrible URL:

• https://example.com/foo/5bbf54687s-641/i/i/?ref_=bb8?usid_=44null
Learn More:
• URL Best Practices
2 . Parameter Control
Too many parameters can cause a lot of work for search engines, and also
create a ton of duplicate content issues. The number of new URLs created by
parameters can add up fast.

Influential Factors
Consider this URL:

• http://www.example.com/?price-category=couch-furnature&sort-by=manu-
factuer&sort-order=asc&availability=null
Google provides a specialized tool within Search Console to deal with URL
parameters. While the URL Parameter Tool is very powerful, configuring it
correctly can be confusing for anyone other than expert users. For many mar-
keters, it’s simply easier and safer to control parameters using rel=canonical.
3 . Quality of Supplemental Content

Main Content is the part of a webpage that focuses on the main goal of the
page. It can be a blog, product, news article, video or other content. When we
think of “content,” we typically think of Main Content.
Supplemental Content is the extra part of a webpage that is outside or only
related to the main goal of the page.
Google’s Search Quality Evaluators Guidelines spend a lot of time dis-
cussing Supplemental Content. The quality of Supplemental Content can have
an impact on user experience and how Google evaluates the page.
Low-quality Supplemental Content—such as annoying ads and poor navi-
gation—work to frustrate the user, is often unrelated to the Main Content, and
can lower engagement.
Good Supplemental Content adds value for the user, encourages

exploration, and improves engagement. This can include:
• Navigation
• Related articles
• Additional products
• Comments
• Advertisements
• …and more
Learn More:
• All About Supplementary Content in the Google Quality Rater’s Guidelines

Influential Factors
4 . Real World Business Information

Websites associated with verifiable, real-world businesses often
have a leg up in Google Search Results. There are a number of rea-
sons for this:
1. Business citations help establish trust, and often links, for real-world
businesses
2. Users interacting with maps and voice search are more likely to engage with
real businesses
3. Having verifiable Wikidata for your business entity can be helpful
If your website is associated with a real-world business, it’s often helpful to build
business citations to support it. This is even more critical if you do Local SEO.
5 . Robots Control
While making your site crawlable and accessible to search engines is a critical
ranking factor, often telling Google what not to index and where not to crawl is
just as important.
Some areas where you may want to restrict search robots from
crawling or indexing your site:
1. Duplicate content
2. Low-quality content
3. Low-value search results pages
4. Administration pages
5. Members only areas
6. Pages with privacy concerns
While robots.txt is often the first choice to bend bots to your will, it’s also a
very blunt tool that lacks the refinement of robots meta directives, canonical
tags, HTTP headers, or other methods of robots control.
Learn More:
• The ultimate guide to controlling Crawling and Indexing

Influential Factors
6 . Link Velocity
A common scenario: You build and launch your excellent content, earn a bunch
of links and sail into rankings and traffic glory. Then, over time, your rankings
start to slide. Eventually, even though you have far more links than your com-
petitors, your content is relegated to the 3rd page of Google.
Link Velocity is often thought of as a Freshness Factor. The concept is the rate
at which sites link to you can indicate how fresh and relevant your content is.
If your link velocity slows down or stops altogether, your content may no
longer be fresh or worthy of ranking. If your link velocity speeds up over time,
it may indicate your content deserves to be pushed up in search results.
7 . Sitemaps
While sitemaps probably likely an actual ranking factor, using sitemaps effec-
tively can play a role in SEO success, especially for larger sites.
Sitemaps can help Google find and prioritize content on your site, in ways that
may help them to do it faster or more efficiently than they otherwise would.
Aside from cataloging the important pages on your site, sitemaps

can also highlight specialized content, including:
• Images
• Videos
• Alternate language pages (hreflang)
• Google News
While most people think of XML sitemaps, HTML sitemaps can add additional
value. For a cool example, check out the New York Times HTML sitemap.
Learn More:
• Learn About Sitemaps
• What is an XML sitemap and why should you have one?
8 . Linking Out to High-Quality Sources

In the past, Google has both indicated that external links are a ranking factor…
“
In the same way that Google trusts sites less when they link
to spammy sites or bad neighborhoods, parts of our system
encourage links to good sites.”
– Matt Cutts

Influential Factors
While at other times, Google implies something more opaque:
“
Our point of view, external links to other sites, so links from
your site to other people’s sites isn’t specifically a ranking
factor. But it can bring value to your content and that in turn
can be relevant for us in search. And whether or not they are
not followed, doesn’t really matter.”
– John Mueller
Sometimes, SEOs are scared of linking out, fearing they’ll transfer authority
elsewhere. The truth is, Google wants to reward sites that offer good experi-
ences. What’s more, multiple SEO experiments and correlation studies show
that linking out to high-quality resources is correlated with higher rankings.
9 . Site Architecture
Site Architecture refers to the organization of your website, navigation, and
how the pages are linked together. An example would be “Homepage > Catego-
ries > Products” while defining how all of these different elements link to one
another.
A clear Site Architecture not only helps Google with crawling, but
also helps distribute topical link authority while helping users with
navigation. All of these elements are important.
1. Cross-linking to related categories/products/pages
2. Flat architecture: No more than three clicks to the deepest level
3. Breadcrumbs
Learn More:
• Smart Internal Linking for SEO
• Successful Site Architecture for SEO
• Google Guide to Breadcrumbs
10 . Pagination
Pagination is another aspect with assists Google with crawling and indexing of
your site, though it is not itself a direct ranking factor.

Influential Factors
When you have multiple pages that run in sequence—such as category

pages that list products or blog posts—proper pagination setup can help
search engines to find all the relevant content, and signal that these pages are
related to one another.
Pagination is especially important when the sequential page system isn’t
clear, like a page with infinite scroll.
Learn More:
• Google’s Guide to Paginated Content
• Pagination: link rel=”prev” and rel=”next”
11 . Domain Age
One one hand, Google has clearly stated that Domain Age isn’t specifically a
ranking factor. On the other hand, Google has also stated that they may look at
the date when they first crawled a website, or the age of links pointing to a site.
SEOs have often noted the difficulty in getting a newer site to rank for com-
petitive terms, and called this period the “Sandbox.”
So while there’s nothing specifically stopping a new site from ranking, it’s
typically easier for older sites to rank because they’ve had longer to build up
link and authority signals. In fact, almost all SEO correlation studies find a rela-
tionship between older domains and higher rankings.
Learn More:
• How does Google determine domain age, and is it important for ranking?
12 . Website & Business Reputation

In Local SEO, we know that citations and reviews make up two huge pieces of
the ranking puzzle. It’s important for a business to get high-quality citations,
and it’s important to earn authentic positive reviews to rank higher.
The concept of reputation extends to regular search results as well. Google
Quality Rater Guidelines consistently score sites on perceived reputation. We
know Google has included analyzing customer experience into its algorithm.
For any online business, real-world customer signals can have a positive or
negative effect on rankings. This is especially relevant now that Google can
measure, through phones, what stores people visit and how long they stay.
Earning quality citations, positive reviews, and delivering excellent real
world and online experiences can make a difference to your online visibility.

Influential Factors
13 . Use of Semantic Content

Previously, we discussed the use of relevant keywords as an important ranking
factor. But what about the rest of the content, i.e., the words, phrases, and
topics Google expects to find with a specific piece of text?
SEOs debate, test, and argue about specific methods for determining what
Google may use to score topic “aboutness,” or relevance. These include TF-IDF,
LDA, Proof Keywords, Co-Occurrence, Entity Salience and other concepts.
These concepts, while different, all predict that specific keywords and topics
are more commonly found together than other keywords/topics.
For example, if your search topic were “apple watch,” you’d expect to
find certain keywords and phrases more often than others, such as:
• Models
• Series 3
• GPS
• Heart Rate
• … and more
Multiple SEO studies have found that higher ranking content tends to have
more associated keywords and phrases, and adding related phrases can
improve a page’s ranking.
14 . Domain Extension
When people first get into SEO, they often ask if they should use a .com or .org
(or .marketing!) for their domain name. The general answer is that you should
choose a domain extension best suited to your business and branding, but it’s a
little more nuanced than that.
Google tends to treat all generic Top Level Domains (gTLDs) equally.
Examples of gTLDs include:
• .com – Accounts for 75% of all gTLDs
• .net, .org, info, .biz – Popular alternatives to .com
• .design, .tech, .online, app – Newer Brand gTLDs
• .edu, .gov, .mil – Restricted, Sponsored generic Top-Level Domains (sTLD)
• .london, .tokyo, .vegas – Region-specific extensions that are treated as gTLDs

Influential Factors
In the end, most evidence indicates that the domain extension you use doesn’t
really matter, with one huge exception: use of Country Code Top-Level
Domains (ccTLDs).
ccTLDs—such as .hk, .au, .fr, and .in—are used by Google to geo-target your
website to a specific region. This means that by using a ccTLD, you may influ-
ence your site’s ability to show up in search on a region-by-region basis.
Typically, if your website servers users in multiple countries, it’s sometimes
better to use a gTLD and specify language/region variations using hreflang.
15 . Server Location
Along with international targeting signals such as hreflang, and ccTLD, the loca-
tion of your server may influence your search visibility within a specific region.
Using a server close to your visitors has two distinct advantages:

1. While information over the internet can travel close to the speed of light,
there are often multiple relays, switches, and cables the signal must pass
through, especially over long distances. Having a server nearby can dramati-
cally improve page load speed, which can benefit your SEO all around.
2. Google may use your location server as a signal for geo-targeting.
Today, use of Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) and cloud infrastructure can
dampen these effects by delivering content to locations all over the world. That
said, if you serve users in a specific area, it can be helpful to have your server
physically located nearby.
Learn More:
• The impact of IP host location on your site SEO
• Working with multi-regional websites
16. Multiple Sources of Traffic

Almost every SEO correlation study that examines the issue shows a correla-
tion between direct traffic and higher rankings. These studies inevitably lead
to lots of controversy and debate.
Here’s the truth:

1. Does Google use other sources of web traffic as a ranking signal?
2. Nobody knows, and it doesn’t matter.

Influential Factors
We know that Google watches and records what websites people visit and
bookmark through the Chrome browser. It’s not a stretch to believe that they
could use this information in their ranking algorithms.
In fact, there have been many experiments and anecdotal evidence of site
seeing a boost in Google rankings after increasing site traffic through other
means, such as Facebook ads, TV commercials, and viral Reddit posts.
Regardless of whether it’s an actual ranking factor, an increase in both direct
and referral traffic helps your visibility in multiple ways. More eyeballs on your
content can lead to more links and shares, which directly helps your SEO.
Furthermore, diversifying your traffic beyond Google makes you more resil-
ient to the ups and downs of Google’s algorithm.
17 . Readability
SEOs often focus on Reading Level as a possible ranking factor, but that
misses the point.
Readability of your content is far more important.

Google is good at parsing words and sentences together, and we know that
low quality or gibberish text tends to get demoted in search results. Con-
versely, content that is too condensed or advanced may not appeal to a wide
portion of the web.
Your content should match your audience. Legal and medical journals
should use appropriate jargon and syntax. Speaking to your audience is your
best bet for matching user intent.
Most of the popular web is both scannable and written at about a 7th to
8th-grade level. In fact, this is the type of text that tends to earn the most
featured snippets. In many cases, it’s also the type of content that earn links
and shares.
Finally, readability better engages your audience and simply helps your con-
tent perform better.
Learn More:
• How To Improve Content Readability And How That Will Affect Your SEO
• How to Use Yoast SEO: The Readability Analysis
• Grammarly: Free Writing Assistant

Influential Factors
18 . Factually Correct
There’s plenty of evidence that Google wants to rank sites that Factually Cor-
rect over websites that play fast and loose with the truth.
1. First, there’s a Google research paper which defines Knowledge-Based Trust,
which is a method of scoring websites on the correctness of their factual in-
formation instead of external factors like links.
2. Then, in 2017 Google updated their Quality Raters Guidelines to included
guidelines for rating pages with “demonstrably inaccurate content” as a Low-
est Quality Page. Generally, when Google includes something in its Search
Quality Raters Guidelines, it suggests they are trying to solve for it algorithmi-
cally.
3. Finally, Googlers have recently made several statements indicating their desire
to fact check web pages.
So not only can it pay to have factually accurate content, it can potentially
hurt to have factually inaccurate content. (For more negative SEO Success
Factors, see the last section.)
19 . Author Reputation
We’re reaching the end of the list of Influential Ranking Factors, and here you
find Author Reputation. Why is it near the end? To be honest, nobody knows
how big of a deal it is.
The idea that Google wants to know who authored a page, and use that infor-
mation for ranking websites, has been around a long time. In fact, most of this
information comes from Google itself.
• A Google patent titled “Agent Rank” describes a system for scoring authors
not only on reputation (based on how often the author’s work is cited by
others) but on subject expertise as well. So if you become an author-authority
on “car parts,” Google may rank your content on car parts higher. Most people
today refer to this as Author Rank.
• Google executives and engineers have frequently been quoted discussed
scoring content based on authorship.
• Authorship photos were supposed to be a step in this direction. Sadly, the
photos were discontinued, but many believe Author Rank lived on.
• Finally, Google’s Search Quality Raters guidelines state that High-Quality
Content makes clear “Who (what individual, company, business, foundation,
etc.) created the content on the page you are evaluating.”

Influential Factors
In the real world, it’s difficult to observe the impact of any Author Rank, but it
could be significant.
In any case, it’s best practice to make it clear who created your content.
1. If it’s an individual author, you can include an author byline and author page
on the site. The author can also build up expertise by writing authoritative
content around the web, and linking author profiles.
2 If content is authored by a company or group, make sure your About and
Contact information is clear and up to date, so it’s obvious who is responsible
for your content.
Learn More:
• What is Author Rank?
20 . Accurate & Consistent Registration Info

To be honest, this factor should be listed in the “Could be Important” category.
Many SEOs over the years have speculated about the impact of private
WHOIS domain registration. There are, in fact, a lot of reasons to speculate
that Google monitors domain ownership and might care about WHOIS infor-
mation.
1. For example, this Google patent:
“… illegitimate domains may be identified. For instance, search engine 125
may monitor whether physically correct address information exists over a
period of time, whether contact information for the domain changes relatively
often, whether there is a relatively high number of changes between different
name servers and hosting companies”
2. Older statements from Matt Cutts:
“…having whois privacy turned on isn’t automatically bad, but once you get
several of these factors all together, you’re often talking about a very different
type of webmaster than the fellow who just has a single site or so.”
3. Research showing a slight negative correlation between rankings and private
domain registration.
4. Recent anecdotal evidence showing the negative effects of accidental domain
privacy.
5. Experiments with expired domains showing how Google may not trust a
change of domain ownership.

Influential Factors
To be fair, Google has stated that “having whois privacy turned on isn’t auto-
matically bad” – it’s more about the combined signals that indicate manipula-
tion.
Furthermore, the effects of recent GDPR regulation throws a wrench in all
this, as more and more website registration data becomes private by default.
At the end of the day, keep the following best practices in mind:
• Keep registration information up-to-date and consistent. If public, make sure
the information is accurate, and if possible, tied to real-world information
• Frequent changes in WHOIS ownership information, including lapses during
expiration periods, could be a signal for Google to trust the domain less.
• There are many legitimate reasons for using private WHOIS, but using a net-
work of private domains to link together—especially if Google can tie them
together—may spell trouble for your rankings.
FOCUS ON THESE
s Factors 20 Influential SEO Success Factors

Influential success factors aren’t always required to win at SEO, but they can give
you the edge over the search competition. Frequently, they make a huge difference.
1 User-Friendly URLs 11 Domain Age
2 Parameter Control 12 Website & Business Reputation
3 Quality of Supplemental Content 13 Use of Semantic Content
4 Real World Business Information 14 Domain Extension
5 Robots Control 15 Server Location
6 Link Velocity 16 Multiple Sources of Traffic
7 Sitemaps 17 Readability
8 Linking to High-Quality Sources 18 Factually Correct
9 Site Architecture 19 Author Reputation
10 Pagination 20 Accurate & Consistent Registration Info

SEC TION 4
Myth Factors
Feel safe to ignore these unimportant success factors. In fact, a few on this list
may do more harm than good.
1 . Using Google Analytics

A persistent myth some folks believe is that using Google Analytics can help
your site to rank. Or conversely, that engagement metrics from your Google
Analytics account can influence your search rankings.
In fact, neither is true.

While it is important to use some type of analytics tracking on your site, you
could easily use Piwik, Adobe Analytics, or any other good analytics solution.
Google has consistently said they don’t use data from Google Analytics for
ranking purposes, and in truth, they have many other places to get the data
they need.
2 . Domain Expiration Length

An older Google Patent suggests that registering your domain for a longer
period could be helpful in distinguishing spam site from legitimate sites. The
logic behind that patent is that spam sites are rarely registered for more than a
year at a time.
While Domain Expiration Length could legitimately be a ranking factor, in
reality, any effect is very small. Moz’s 2015 Ranking Factors noted a correlation
of .04 between expiration length and rankings, which isn’t considered significant.
Furthermore, Google has discouraged site owners from worrying about it.
That said, if you plan on keeping your domain for a while, it’s a very good idea to
extend your registration. Accidentally letting your domain expire is no fun.
3 . Google Adsense
Among the newly initiated in SEO, there’s a persistent myth that using Google
Adsense may help your rankings.

Myth Factors
It’s not true. Not even a little bit.

On the flip side, too many ads—of any kind, Adsense or not—can hurt your
rankings. It’s not unusual to see a slight negative correlation between rankings
and the amount of ad space. In 2012 Google announced it’s Top Heavy algo-
rithm which demoted sites with too many ads above the fold, along with its
Intrusive Interstitial update in 2016.
4 . Keyword Density
This is a tough one to include in “Not Important” factors because yes, you typi-
cally need to use relevant keywords, phrases, and topics in your content to rank.
That said, focusing on keyword density—the idea that your content should
contain a minimum threshold percentage of exact match keywords—doesn’t
typically lead to optimal results. It’s not that keyword usage isn’t important,
but rather there are far better ways of optimizing.
In fact, recent ranking factor studies have shown either little or no impor-
tance whatsoever with keyword density.
A better way of optimizing:

1. Include keywords and variations in important areas, i.e., title, URL, headers,
text, and images
2. Use of synonyms and close variants
3. Include related question and search phrases in your copy
4. Cover the topic thoroughly to include natural semantically related content
Learn More:
• What’s the ideal keyword density of a page?
• More than Keywords: 7 Concepts of Advanced On-Page SEO
5 . W3C Validation
The rumor that W3C validation is important for search rankings probably
started with web development firms that promised “valid HTML code.”
In fact, most websites have multiple validation errors, even Google itself.
What’s much, MUCH more important is if Google and web browsers can prop-
erly render the page. If you want to focus on what’s more important, run your
URLs through Google’s Fetch and Render tool.

Myth Factors
And if you want to be concerned about W3C standards, it’s far more helpful to
users to focus on accessibility standards.
Learn More:
• Is HTML validation necessary for ranking?
6 . Multiple H1 Tags
Like W3C validation, SEOs often get obsessed with proper heading structure.
One, and only one, H1 heading tag per page is the rule. And it is not to be broken.
Except it doesn’t matter.

What’s more important, found through experimentation, is having clear, large
text near the beginning of a page that indicates a headline of sorts. Moz discov-
ered this through experimentation, and it holds true today.
Learn More:
• Google: Use As Many H1 Tags As You Want
7 . SEO Site Submission

If you want to spot cheap, typically worthless SEO services, see if they offer
anything resembling “Search Engine Submission Services.”
This was a popular service back in the day to tell different search engines
about your website but is worthless today.
Certainly, if you have a brand new site, it’s helpful to let Google and other
search engines know, but there are far better ways of doing it.
For all types of search listings—including websites, business, digital con-
tent and more—Google offers a variety of ways to get inclusion here: Get
your content on Google
8 . Dedicated IP
Another old SEO myth that was likely propagated by web hosting companies
looking to upsell services.
This was more a problem when Google found a web server full of spam web-
sites. In this case, any other site on the same server using the same IP might
look suspicious. If you are concerned that this is your circumstance (it typically
isn’t) the simple solution is to find a more reputable hosting provider.

Myth Factors
While there were historical advantages to hosting your site with a unique IP in
some edge cases, today many hosting companies don’t even offer it as an option.
Learn More:
• Myth busting: virtual hosts vs. dedicated IP addresses
9 . Meta Keywords
Google doesn’t use the meta keyword tag for ranking purposes.
Nope, not even the meta news keyword tag.

Sorry.
10 . Magical .Edu and .Gov Backlinks

Let’s be perfectly clear: links from .edu and .gov domains can be fantastic—
especially when they are targeted, relevant, and high-authority. For years, SEOs
have pursued .edu and .gov backlinks as if they were the Holy Grail.
The myth being that .edu and .gov links might automatically carry more
weight, or because they are closer to trusted “seed” sites, they may carry more
trust authority.
Sadly, neither the evidence or the data support these claims.

Yes, .edu and .gov links carry value, and you can build an entirely successful
backlink strategy on them. But Google has frequently denied that there is any-
thing inherently special about them.
The data supports this as well. Correlation studies using data from Moz,
Ahrefs, and SearchMetrics all show that while the total number of .edu and
.gov backlinks does correlate with higher rankings, it correlates weaker than
the total number of all backlinks.
Both .edu and .gov links can be bad, as well. In fact, many webmasters
report receiving “Unnatural Link” warnings from Google after abusing schol-
arship link building practices.
Put another way: .edu and .gov links can help you to rank, but there’s abso-
lutely nothing special about them.
Build ‘em if you can, but no need to fret about it.

Myth Factors
IGNORE THESE
10 SEO Success Factor Myths

Feel safe to ignore these unimportant factors. In fact, pursuing them may
do more harm than good. This is the land of myths and outdated advice.
1 Using Google Analytics 6 Multiple H1 Tags
2 Domain Expiration Length 7 SEO Site Submission
3 Google Adsense 8 Dedicated IP
4 Keyword Density 9 Meta Keywords
5 W3C Validation 10 Magical .Edu and .Gov Backlinks

SEC TION 4
Negative Factors
Not all success factors are positive. The ones listed below possess the power to
damage your visibility. Proceed with caution.
1 . Spam
The whole point of Google is to deliver the opposite of spam, so producing
spam isn’t going to help you rank.
Spam takes many different forms. It may include, but isn’t limited to:
• Spun / low quality content
• Doorway pages
• Low quality auto-generated content
• Scraped content
• Malware
If you’ve made it this far through SEO Success Factors, you know this is not
what you want to produce.
2 . Manipulative Links
Google hates unnatural links.
To be fair, unnatural links are less of a big deal ever since Google released
Penguin 4.0, which is very granular and often likely to ignore bad links than
penalize you for them. That said, naughty linking practices remain a major cause
of lower rankings, either through manual penalties or algorithmic actions.
Learn More:
Learn to avoid link schemes and follow the rules of link building.
3 . Thin Content
Content that adds little value, uniqueness, or substance qualifies as thin content.

Negative Factors
Especially damning to Google are thin affiliate sites, which exist solely to lead
folks to affiliate sites while adding little extra value.
4 . Non-unique Content
While Google doesn’t penalize duplicate content, content that is non-unique
can get filtered from search results.
Aside from following the advice earlier in this guide on duplicate content, it’s
best practice to have at least 2-3 sentences up to a few hundred words of unique
content on each page to have a chance of ranking.
Learn More:
• Duplicate Content SEO Advice From Google
5 . Cloaking
Cloaking is generally defined as the practice of showing certain content to users,
while showing different content to search engines – typically for sneaky reasons.
Don’t do this.
Sometimes cloaking is fine if done for the right reason, but these are usually
edge cases.
Learn More:
• Cloaking
6 . Meta Noindex Errors

The meta noindex directive is a powerful tool that when used correctly helps
with both crawling and indexing, as well as duplicate content issues.
But noindex can also be abused and cause unnecessary errors. True to its
purpose, using a meta noindex on a page causes Google to drop it from its
index, and it won’t rank. In fact, meta noindex errors are one of the most fre-
quent findings during SEO audits.
7 . Canonical Errors
Another common error. If URL 1 has a canonical tag pointing to URL 2, then URL
1 isn’t going to be indexed or ranked (as long as Google respects the canonical.)

Negative Factors
Additional canonical errors include pointing a canonical to a page marked

“noindex”, which can cause both pages to be dropped by Google’s. Ouch!
Learn More:
• 6 Extreme Canonical Tricks
8 . Robots .txt Blocking

Pages blocked by robots.txt—accidental or otherwise—likely won’t rank well in
Google’s search results.
An important distinction is that while robots.txt prevents crawling, it does
not stop a page from appearing in search results. The best way to control this is
through the noindex directive.
9. Keyword Stuffing
Keyword stuffing is the art of stuffing keywords where keywords shouldn’t be
stuffed. Enough?
Learn More:
• Irrelevant Keywords
10 . Hidden Text or Links

Hiding text and links is a form of cloaking, because it shows something in the
source code to search engines that users typically can’t see.
While this was much more common in the early days of SEO, it’s still around
today—sometimes accidentally! Hiding text, and especially links, often means a
fast path to the Google penalty box.
Learn More:
• Hidden text and links
11 . Piracy / DMCA Notices

Whether you run a pirate site or not, the number of valid DMCA copyright
removal notices your site receives can lower your search rankings.

Negative Factors
A single notice or two likely won’t hurt much, but a large number of such
removal requests will likely hurt.
12 . Rich Snippet Spam

Rich snippets are awesome when you want to make your search results stand
out. Which is probably the reason so many people try to earn them with false
information such as fake reviews and falsified event markup.
But spammy structured data can get your site penalized. Google even has a
form where your competitors can report you.
13 . Blocking Important JS / CSS Files

Allowing Google to crawl your JavaScript and CSS files is part of crawling and
indexing, but one that many people overlook. When these files are blocked
by robots.txt, Google has trouble rendering the page like a browser, and your
rankings may suffer.
You can run a quick check of blocked resources using Google’s Fetch and
Render tool, and address any problems.
Learn More:
• Blocking Googlebot from CSS & JavaScript Can Hurt Google Rankings
14 . Overly Long / Complex URLs

In almost all SEO correlation studies, the total length of the URL is correlated
with lower rankings. This is also the case with the amount of numbers and
special characters in the URL, e.g., https://example.com/887600o!jshfj#-
jklsing0098019-874
The converse is also true: shorter, cleaner URLs tend to rank slightly better.
Correlation is not causation, but this could be caused by:

• Deep folder structures, often far removed from high authority pages
• Superfluous parameters
• People being less likely to copy and share long, complex URLs
Whatever the reason, it often pays to keep your URLs clean and tidy.

Negative Factors
15 . Linking to Bad Neighborhoods

Just like Google’s system rewards sites that link out to high-quality sources,
the system also “trusts sites less when they link to spammy sites or bad neigh-
borhoods” (source).
A bad neighborhood is one filled with spam sites, or sites that have been
penalized. Gambling, shady pharmaceutical sites, and porn are often targets.
Linking to these sites aggressively can put a serious dent in your search traffic.
16 . Slow Speed
We’ve covered the multiple outsized effects of making your site fast, but the
opposite is also true. Slow sites can be degraded in search results.
When Google first included speed in their algorithm, it was only supposed
to impact the slowest of the slow, the bottom 1% off all pages. Since then, SEOs
have observed the speed effect as a smooth curve along all sites.
Don’t be pokey
17 . Aggressive Ads / Intrusive Interstitials

Google is an ad company, and they understand ads fund the web.
That said, there are two different ways that overly-aggressive ads
can hurt your rankings:
1. Google’s Top Heavy algorithm punishes sites with too many ads above the
fold, or in the primary content area.
2. The Intrusive Interstitial update punishes mobile sites with aggressive pop-
ups and interstitials
Feel free to use ads, but don’t be pushy about it.
18 . Over-Optimized Anchor Text

Anchor text over-optimization is too much of a good thing. Yes, it helps to have
keywords in the anchor text of the links pointing to your site. Even exact match
anchor text. But SEOs long ago observed that when your anchor text becomes
“too” optimized, rankings begin to fall. It’s as if Google can tell that your link
profile doesn’t look natural, so they demote you in search results.

Negative Factors
The best advice is to have a deep variety of anchor text links pointing at your
site, and even avoiding dictating anchor text when asking for links.
Learn More:
• Anchor Text Guide
• A Data Driven Guide To Anchor Text (And Its Impact On SEO)
19 . High Quantity of Crawl Errors

Crawling errors are entirely normal, and most won’t hurt you. In fact, Google
has specifically stated that 404s don’t hurt your rankings.
That said, a large number of crawl errors can be a sign of trouble. In the case
of 404s, when they are a result of broken links—either internal or external—
this can cause problems in the flow of link equity, create frustrating user expe-
riences, and depress rankings from their real potential.
Not every error needs to be addressed, but a rash of bad crawl errors can
spell trouble.
20 . False / Misleading / Offensive

To crack down on Fake News, Google recently updated its algorithm to demote
content that promotes “misleading information, unexpected offensive results,
hoaxes and unsupported conspiracy theories” (source).
Google uses its army of Search Quality Raters to flag false and misleading
information, and uses that data to train its machine learning algorithms to
detect fake and misleading offensive content.
God save the Queen.
21 . Porn / Explicit Content

This one’s pretty obvious, but if Google determines your site contains porn or
explicit adult content, it will be mostly hidden in search results except for a
very narrow range of search queries, and completely hidden with Safe Search
turned on.

Negative Factors
22 . Redirect Chains
301 redirects are awesome! They get people and search robots where they
need to go, and they even pass PageRank.
Seventeen 301 redirects chained together, with a 302 at the end, is

not awesome.
In general, Google is known to follow only five redirects before giving up (your
mileage may vary). Long redirect chains are also prone to break easily, leak Pag-
eRank, and generally depress rankings. For best results, shorten redirects to the
fewest number of hops possible.
23 . UGC Spam
It’s terrific when you produce great content, but not so much if you let users
submit spam to your website.
User-generated spam can include spam comments, forum postings, and
accounts on free hosts. The general rule is, if you host it on your site, you’re
responsible for it. If you let your users run astray, it can hurt your rankings.
Learn More:
• User-generated spam
24 . Sneaky Redirects
Sneaky redirection is the practice of sending users to a page they didn’t expect,
typically spam.
Google doesn’t like this, so don’t do it.
25 . Bad Domain History

Even if your site is squeaky clean (it is, right?) you may still suffer in search
results if you have a long history of spam or penalties. Once everything is
cleaned up, it can take time for Google to crawl your content and reassess
your site value.
SEOs often report that this process can take many months or more.
If your site has a bad domain history, it’s typically best to do a link audit and

Negative Factors
disavow, resolve any penalties, create new content, submit sitemaps, fix tech-
nical issues, and build new links.
If any of these negative success factors impact you and do the hard work of
cleaning up, your rankings will return, hopefully sooner than later.
AVOID THESE
25 Negative SEO Success Factors

Not all factors are positive. The ones listed here are absolute trouble. Pursuing
these tactics will condemn you to the bottom of Google search results, fast.
1 Spam 14 Overly Long / Complex URLs
2 Manipulative Links 15 Linking to Bad Neighborhoods
3 Thin Content 16 Slow Speed
4 Non-unique Content 17 Aggressive Ads / Intrusive Interstitials
5 Cloaking 18 Over-Optimized Anchor Text
6 Meta Noindex Errors 19 High Quantity of Crawl Errors
7 Canonical Errors 20 False / Misleading / Offensive
8 Robots.txt Blocking 21 Porn / Explicit Content
9 Keyword Stuffing 22 Redirect Chains
10 Hidden Text or Links 23 UGC Spam
11 Piracy / DMCA Notices 24 Sneaky Redirects
12 Rich Snippet Spam 25 Bad Domain History
13 Blocking Important JS / CSS Files

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SECTION 1: Critical Factors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

1. Content that Targets User Search Queries. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6

SECTION 2: Important Factors . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

1. Layout & Design. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

100+ Google SEO Success Factors, Ranked 2

SECTION 3: Influential Factors . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

SECTION 4: Myth Factors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

1. Using Google Analytics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

100+ Google SEO Success Factors, Ranked 3

SECTION 5: Negative Factors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

100+ Google SEO Success Factors, Ranked 4

What matters is success.

Using a combined analysis of:

100+ Google SEO Success Factors, Ranked 5

1 . Content that Targets User Search Queries

Keyword Research takes many forms, but it typically consists of 3

100+ Google SEO Success Factors, Ranked 6

2 . Crawlable + Accessible to Search Engines

A few technical areas that SEOs must master:

Most major SEO audit tools uncover a number of crawling issues

100+ Google SEO Success Factors, Ranked 7

3 . Quality & Quantity of Links

Links are votes.

4. Satisfies User Intent

100+ Google SEO Success Factors, Ranked 8

100+ Google SEO Success Factors, Ranked 9

When your content isn’t unique, two things happen:

Content that directly copies content from another site is obviously

100+ Google SEO Success Factors, Ranked 10

6 . Expertise, Authoritativeness, and

Other qualities that define a high-quality page—according to

100+ Google SEO Success Factors, Ranked 11

100+ Google SEO Success Factors, Ranked 12

8 . Click-through Rate (CTR)

The truth? It doesn’t matter.

A few resources to help you master the game:

100+ Google SEO Success Factors, Ranked 13

10 . Built for Multiple Devices

Likewise, a positive experience can help.

100+ Google SEO Success Factors, Ranked 14

100+ Google SEO Success Factors, Ranked 15

1 . Layout & Design

In SEO, everything is connected.

100+ Google SEO Success Factors, Ranked 16

2 . Use of Relevant Keywords, Phrases,

These areas include:

100+ Google SEO Success Factors, Ranked 17

2. Move beyond keyword to optimize for complete topics and entities:

3 . Use of Optimized Images and Video

Other factors that influence personalization include:

100+ Google SEO Success Factors, Ranked 18

The basics of personalization are two-fold:

5 . Authority + Trust of Links

Link Authority is often referred to as PageRank.

100+ Google SEO Success Factors, Ranked 19

Hopefully, you chose the latter. Google would too.

Link Relevance may be influenced by many things, among them:

Read: 7 Illustrations of How Topical Links Impact Rankings

100+ Google SEO Success Factors, Ranked 20

100+ Google SEO Success Factors, Ranked 21

Why? Longer content typically: