Where’s the first place people go when they need an answer, idea, product, or service? Not to the Yellow Pages. Not into town. Not even to family and friends at this point. They go to the Goog. And most of them do not go past the first page of results.

And it is for this reason that SEO, or search engine optimization, is a multi-billion dollar industry. SEO is the practice of getting a website to align with Google’s ranking factors. So what are those ranking factors and how can you optimize your site for them? Read on to find out.

Table of contents

What are Google ranking factors?

SEO is the process of optimizing your website to rank as high as possible in organic search engine results (and yes, you can aim for the first page). When talking about search, we use the term “organic” to refer to search results that are unpaid. This is different from paid results, which come from PPC advertising.

Organic rankings on Google are determined by an algorithm that takes into account various characteristics and SEO metrics —and these are your ranking factors.

There are over 200 Google ranking factors, and while we will never know all of them, we do know many. We also know that while ranking factors and algorithms may shift, the characteristics Google is trying to parse out through them are expertise, authority, and trust (E-A-T).

E-A-T is not a ranking factor; rather, ranking factors are a way for Google to measure of E-A-T.

Types of Google ranking factors

Before we get into the top 10 Google ranking factors around which you can optimize your website pages, let’s first go over the different types.

• On-page ranking factors refer to the quality of the content on the page and the keywords its targeting.
• Off-page ranking factors are like endorsements from other pages on your site or other websites, and primarily involve backlinks.
• Technical ranking factors measure your site’s ability to be crawled, indexed, and render content quickly and safely for searchers.
• Local ranking factors involve all three of the above, with a special focus on reviews, reputation, and listings.

There isn’t one single ranking factor that will make or break your SEO. It’s the combination of all your technical, on-page, and off-page efforts that work together to help you rank higher on Google, get more traffic, and build trust.

The top Google ranking factors according to First Page Sage are as follows:

On-page Google ranking factors

The above technical search engine ranking factors have to do with your website as a whole, while these next ranking factors are more page-specific—hence the term on-page SEO.

1. Relevant, high-quality content

The single most important Google ranking factor is the quality of your content. This correlates to the consistent publication of high quality content, user engagement, and niche expertise in the chart above. So what makes relevant, quality content?

• It’s trustworthy. The information is in-depth, accurate, useful, and free of spammy links and/or comments.
• It’s readable. That means organized logically, written conversationally, and not stuffed with keywords (Google will actually penalize you for this). Incorporate it naturally into your page and use it interchangeably with related keywords.
• It’s fresh. Even the most evergreen content loses relevancy over time. So in addition to writing net new content, you should also be updating outdated pages with new information and new keywords that are relevant to today. This is the key to maintaining a good freshness score.
• It matches the intent of the keyword. In addition to using keyword research tools to find out what your ideal audience is searching online, make sure to search the keyword on Google itself to make sure you understand what users are seeking when they perform that search.

In a recent survey conducted by Directive, 78% of marketers identified keyword research as a high-impact practice for driving new traffic. The research process allows you to better understand what your audience is searching for and create content that directly addresses these search queries.

2. Keyword placement

Once you know which keywords you want to rank for, it’s important to insert them into specific places on your page. This includes:

• Title tag: aka meta title; the title that appears on the SERP
• H1 title: title that appears on the page
• H2 headings: aim for at least two
• URL: keep your URL short and clean as well.
• Naturally in the body: and also in the first 100 words
• Meta description: the blurb that appears below the title tag/meta title. Make sure it accurately sums up your page and gives searchers a reason to click. Google doesn’t always use the meta description you provide, but it’s still important to include.

Keywords in the title tags are, by far, the most important, followed by H2s and URL.

3. Image optimization

This is an important one—not only because of Google image search but also because regular search results are getting more and more visual—especially on mobile. Here’s how to optimize your images for SEO:

• Assign alt text: This is the text alternative of an image, and the only way that Google can “see” them. Be short but descriptive and include the keyword. This also makes your website accessible to visually-impaired readers who rely on screen readers to browse the internet, and will show if the image fails to load.
• Compress and resize: Use an image compressor (tinypng is my favorite) to keep your image file sizes to 70-100KB or less if you can. Often, saving as JPG instead of PNG helps. Also, images rarely need to be more than 1,000px wide. Though a responsive website will resize the images automatically, the less requests your site needs to make to the server, the better for page speed.
• Add value: If you can, avoid using empty stock images and graphics in your blog posts and instead use screenshots, examples, charts, and illustrations that depict concepts. This improves the quality of the content and keeps users engaged longer.
• Include the keyword: Not just in the alt text, but the file name. And replace spaces with dashes in the file name, otherwise your CMS will replace them with “%20” which creates an untrustworthy-looking image link.

A properly saved, tagged, sized, and compressed image.

4. Niche expertise

It’s not just the quality of your content that indicates expertise in your niche, but also the quantity of that quality content. For example, WordStream has been publishing high-quality content about PPC for a long time now, so Google has come to see us as a trusted source in this niche. But if we were to publish a super high-quality post about, say, robotic process automation, our chances of ranking for that keyword are slim.

To build out your niche expertise, you can use the hub and spoke method (also known as pillar page and cluster content). With this method, you create a hub/pillar page on a particular topic, usually a broad, high-volume keyword. This serves as the main resource for that topic, and your various H2s cover different child keywords within that topic.

Then you have your spokes, or cluster content, which are the additional pages that dive deeper into each of the aspects (child keywords) covered in the pillar page.

In addition to demonstrating your expertise within this niche, this method also helps with your site structure, which we’ll talk about later. Since the cluster pages link to and from the pillar content, as well as to each other, this keeps all of your links tightly organized around the same topic.

✅ Is your site optimized to rank on Google? Get an instant SEO audit with our free website grader. ✅

Technical Google ranking factors

Since it involves knowledge of website structure and content management systems, technical SEO is commonly a joint effort between marketing and development teams. But although this may seem complicated, once your website is in good working order, there’s not a lot of ongoing maintenance required in terms of SEO. Here are the technical strategies for improving your rank:

5. Page speed

Users expect a pain-free browsing experience, which is why page speed is an important ranking factor. If your pages take too long to load, your bounce rate will increase and your ranking will decrease. You can check yours with GTmetrix or Google PageSpeed Insights.

6. Mobile-friendliness

Back in 2019, Google told us it would be using mobile-first indexing on all new sites. This means that it makes its ranking assessment based on the mobile version of a site rather than the desktop. Then, in 2020 it told us plans for this to be the case for all sites, and as of 2021, all sites are now subject to mobile-first indexing.

In other words, even if the desktop version of your site is flawless, your search engine ranking could take a major hit if it isn’t optimized for mobile. Most content management systems allow you to make preview and adjustments for mobile/smaller screens. You can also use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test.

In addition to these tests, you should still always preview and test your web pages on an actual mobile device because there are some things that code just can’t pick up.

7. Core Web Vitals

While SEO trends ebb and flow, ranking factors don’t often change. But in 2021, Google did introduce a new ranking factor—Core Web Vitals—as a part of the page experience update. Core Web Vitals quantify a person’s experience on your page, which dictates whether and how they engage with it. They include:

• LCP (Largest Contentful Paint): how long it takes for the visible elements on a page to load.
• FID (First Input Delay): How long it takes for your page to register the first click or tap on the page.
• CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift): whether there are unexpected movements or disruptive popups

You can improve your Core Web Vitals with lazy loading, code minification, image compression, and more.

8. Website architecture

As mentioned earlier, search engines work by crawling and indexing different pieces of content on your website. Internal links refer to any hyperlink that points to another page on your same website. The more organized and tightly-knit your internal linking structure is, the more points of access you create to any given page, and the easier it is for search engines (and users) to find what they’re looking for.

Ideally, any given page on your site should be accessible in three clicks or less.

To do this, you must be mindful of what pages you’re linking to each time you create a new page or a new piece of content.

It makes it so that search engines can easily understand and index the content. Topic clusters are also beneficial from a user experience perspective. It makes your content easier to navigate and readers will realize that they don’t have to go to multiple sites to find what they’re looking for.

It’s likely that your website already undergoes regular maintenance to check for things like bugs or server errors. For SEO purposes, it’s a good idea to do a technical SEO audit of your site every couple of months to check for things such as 404 errors, redirect loops, and broken links.

9. Site security

Ever wonder what the s stands for in https (as opposed to just plain old http)? Well it stands for secure. And the way you get your site to be an https site rather than an http site is to get an SSL (secure sockets layer) certificate. There are a few different routes to getting an SSL, and the cost depends on the level of security you need as well as your hosting setup. HubSpot, for example offers free SSL through its CMS.

Off-page Google ranking factors

Off-page ranking factors have to do with entities outside of your website, such as social media platforms, influencers, and other websites, but there is one focal point to any off-page SEO strategy:

10. Backlinks

Last but most definitely not least, we have backlinks. A backlink is a link to your page that comes from another website. A page with a lot of links pointing back to it indicates to Google that the particular page is providing exceptional value, and is coming from a credible website.  But one link from one quality domain is much better than multiple links from several low-authority websites.

From our page on link building

So how do you get backlinks? Here are four link-building strategies.

• Original, quality content: If your content is high-quality, unique, and provides value to your audience, it will generate backlinks on its own. Go for the irreplicable content like thought leadership content and original data-driven pieces.
• Cold outreach: It takes years to build this kind of authority, so you’ll also want to build backlinks by finding related content and pitching your pieces to the author for a link.
• Guest posts: Another method for building backlinks is by guest blogging. Rather than just asking for a link, offer to write a post for that site. You can include a backlink to your site in the post or in yoru author bio.

The top 10 Google ranking factors [recap]

With a strong presence in both paid and organic search engine results, you can increase your visibility—and no matter what kind of business you run, having visibility on search engines is critical if you want to earn trust, build brand awareness, increase traffic to your site, attract customers, and drive revenue. The top 10 Google Ranking factors include:

1. Quality content
2. Keyword placement
3. Image optimization
4. URL structure
5. Page speed
6. Mobile-friendliness
7. Core Web Vitals
8. Site architecture
9. Site security
10. Backlinks

Just remember, when it comes to real SEO, there’s no such thing as a silver bullet. The most important note to keep in mind is that climbing the search results pages takes time. If you optimize your website for several ranking factors today, it’s not going to magically appear in the number one spot tomorrow.

The optimization process requires ongoing effort to keep your site as fresh and relevant for your audience as possible. As long as your website is functional and optimized with your target buyer in mind, you’ll start to see organic growth.

For more opportunities to optimize for Google’s ranking factors, follow our easy 10-step SEO audit, or you can use our free Website Grader tool to do it for you. Or, check out our full range of digital marketing solutions to learn how we can help with your SEO.

PPC and SEO are each important elements of any digital marketing campaign. Very often, rather than working cross-channel, we see them operating in silos, causing inefficiencies and resulting in missed opportunities.

Cross-channel synergy is often talked about, seldom achieved, but genuinely possible.

When PPC & SEO teams collaborate it enables your business to work towards achieving more from the search results and across the web. If you are able to secure both ad placements and organic search rankings, you increase your visibility and credibility. This all results in more awareness, higher website traffic and in turn more conversions.

In this article I will share 10 ways in which you can integrate your SEO & PPC marketing to strengthen your strategies with collaborative research, testing and learning.

1. Keyword Research

A building block of both PPC and SEO, there are time and cost savings in integrating the task of keyword research between the teams. Through collaboration you can:

• Save time through by not doubling up tasks
• Identify gaps in keyword coverage where you are weak organically that can be plugged through paid advertising
• Share insights and data on search volume and keyword competitiveness
• Share research tools

A combined approach will benefit you with better search term visibility, and a knock-on effect of higher website traffic.

2. Page plans & Quality Score

Once you’ve identified your keyword targets for both paid and organic, you can use the SEO page plan to map out the best ad landing pages for each of your keywords. As you know what terms each page in the plan will be optimized for, you will see benefits in your quality score. Your landing page relevance and experience should increase.

3. Landing Page Analysis

You can use Google’s Keyword Planner for more than just keyword research. The tool has a URL function to help find new keywords which can also be used to understand what content Google identifies on your page.

If Google Keyword Planner returns a high volume of irrelevant keyword suggestions it may indicate the page content does not align with the terms users are searching. You may want to review the on-page content and factor this into your on-page SEO optimisations.

4. Search Term Data

Through PPC and SEO synergy you are able to gather a large amount of search term data. This can be collected through both search term reports, Search Console and your on-site search results.

By sharing this search term data across your channels you can identify what terms a user is searching for to get to your website, as well as what they are looking for when they get there. By understanding these elements you can develop better ad strategies to target what customers want before delivering them to the most relevant page.

When you reversing this process and shar from PPC to SEO, you can identify which keywords have the highest impression and click volume, as well as the ones driving the most conversions. You can then use this information to influence your keyword optimisation plan for the most valuable terms. If you can achieve higher organic rankings for these core terms you can then reduce the ad spend required to capture the traffic from them.

5. Product Feeds

The product feeds used to power shopping ads across paid platforms are built on the organic product data available on each product page. Through collaboration you can test and improve the product titles and descriptions with knock-on benefits to both PPC and SEO.

Feed optimisations in Merchant Centre, or other feed platforms such as Feed Optimize or Product Hero, can allow you test changes to product titles without changing the on-site content. This will allow you to assess the impact on performance metrics, such as ad delivery and CTR, before rolling out such changes organically.

When making changes to the product attributes live on the website it is important that your PPC and SEO teams are communicating. As the feed is directly responsible for how a product matches to a user’s search, if changes are made without consultation it can lead to a decline in delivery and sales through paid ads.

Over time Google continues to expand the use of free product listings. Previously these were only present in the shopping tab, but have now rolled out to feature in the main search page. To get these free product listings a feed needs to be submitted through Google Merchant Centre. To avoid duplication issues it is important again for communication between departments.

6. Ad Headlines

Search ads provide an opportunity to find out what messaging best attracts potential customers to click through to your website. You can use search ads to test messaging and identify angles that have a higher CTR.

By understanding the messaging that works best you can use this to guide your:

• Title tags
• Meta descriptions
• Onsite headlines
• Page content

Testing messaging through paid ads reduces the risk of unknown performance when rolling straight out to your organic listings.

In Google Ads, you can run these tests through either headline and description pinning, or through using the A/B variant experiment. These methods enable you to identify which messaging performs best. When using multi-asset variations, you can use asset insights to understand which variations Google is favouring.

7. Landing Pages

Paid ads can drive high traffic volumes in shorter spaces of time. They also offer the benefit of driving high intent traffic to your website. You can use this traffic to test changes to a landing page before rolling them out to your core site pages.

This approach helps to reduce risk and accumulate data more quickly, allowing you to be more reactive. You can use it to establish what improves or hinders conversion rates, as well as overall onsite engagement.

8. Data Analysis

Across PPC and SEO there exists a wealth of data. Through data sharing you can acquire a more comprehensive understanding of your website users, and how they behave onsite, as well as how they got to your site in the first place.

Rather than focusing on data just from the channel you’re tasked with managing, by analyzing overall performance you can uncover trends in keywords, onsite engagement and conversion rates.

If you assess where you are strong organically against the terms you are currently targeting with ads, you can begin to achieve better budget optimisation to identify superfluous spend and gaps in coverage.

9.  Site Improvements

Technical SEO helps you to identify on-site issues. By sharing what these issues are across teams it can help to put your ad performance in context. For example, are there slow page load speeds? Has there been an increase in 404 pages?

You can make use of Google Ads scripts to notify you daily if any of your ads or assets are pushing to 404’s. This information can again be shared with the SEO team.

10. Display Placements

You can use display placements through the Google Display Network and programmatic providers such as Stack Adapt to target ad placements that align with your digital PR and link building strategy. These ad placements will connect the user experience and increase your brand exposure.

In conclusion..

Whether you manage your campaigns in house, have a single agency managing both PPC and SEO, or multiple agencies, you should be challenging each team to maximise collaboration. By leveraging data from multiple digital channels you can improve efficiency, visibility, traffic and conversions.

In the modern landscape of e-commerce, ensuring your products stand out against others is crucial. Millions of shoppers turn to Google Shopping on a daily basis. The ever-increasing competition within the market means the importance of a well optimised product feed is more important than ever. Despite that it’s an area that campaign managers often overlook. 

There are many techniques that can be used to optimise your product feed to elevate your listings and maximise performance in Google Shopping. Let’s dig into 5 quick wins you can implement today!

1. Optimising for Mobile

Mobile devices have become the primary method of search. The shift towards mobile makes it important to recognise that mobile-friendliness extends to every facet of a business’s online presence. That includes product feeds. A significant portion of your traffic is going to come from mobile searches. It’s essential to optimise your product feed with this in mind. 

The priority when it comes to optimising for mobile is ensuring your product titles are suitable and clear. Screen space on mobile is limited. Lengthy titles can get truncated, hiding important features, potentially leading to lost visibility and lower CTRs. Place essential details at the start of your product titles to ensure they are fully visible on mobile searches. 

Consider using condensed phrasing or abbreviations where necessary to show information both concisely and with clarity. By doing this, you can increase the effectiveness of your listings and enhance visibility within the Shopping results, which can lead to more traffic & more conversions for your business.

2. Fill In All Attributes

The listings for your products within the Google Shopping feed are made up of numerous different attributes that allow Google to get a better understanding of your products. These identifiers give Google information that helps to accurately match your products to relevant searches they should return for, as well as being able to compare products like for like with other competitors within the auctions. While there are over 65 different attribute slots that can be filled in, the most important attributes are made up of GTIN, MPN and Brand.

GTINs & MPNs provide a unique identification for each product which allows Google to know exactly what the product is you’ a’re selling. This increases your chances of the products appearing in features like “Similar Items” as well as the “Compare with other stores.” This is good for price competitiveness and provides users with a more personalised shopping experience.

Including brand names in your product listings also helps you to gain trust and credibility. With the increase in dupes and fake products, having the brand name can help users quickly identify products and can positively influence purchasing decisions. This also helps to return your products for users searching specifically for that brand, again increasing the potential click through rate.

Although these are the most important attributes to help unlock features to give you more real estate, higher credibility and enhance click through rate, it is important to fill in as many of the fields as possible. By providing Google with this enhanced level of product metadata, the search engine will be better able to match the product to relevant search queries, improving your visibility and click through rate with qualified traffic.

3. Use Your Search Terms

One of the most insightful features of Google Ads is search reports, which provides the exact search terms users are actively typing in. You can use this data to align your product feed with the language and preferences of your target audience. By delving into your search term reports, you can gain insights into the specific terms and phrases that potential customers use when they are looking for your products. These terms may differ from your standalone product titles. That makes this a huge opportunity to gain extra visibility within the search results.

Once you’ve identified the terms your audience uses, you can begin to incorporate them into the relevant feed attributes, including titles & descriptions. This will not only help to increase visibility but also convey relevance to the user, increasing the likelihood of clicks and conversions. 

A good example is Hayes Garden World who are selling a 5ft bench. When looked at objectively, the retailer would assume that this is a relevant title for this product. However, after doing some digging into the search terms, they would find that their users are more interested in how many people the bench seats, rather than the physical size. Adapting your product titles to reflect this will help boost consumer confidence ,as well as enable you to stand out from competitors.

4. Segment With Custom Labels

One of the most overlooked features of the Google Shopping Feed is the opportunity to customise and segment your products further than Google automatically allows, by using Custom Labels. These are manual categories you can fill in with whatever you like. They provide the ability to group together products in ways that aren’t covered by Google’s own attributes, allowing you greater flexibility in subdividing product groups based on what is important to your business. 

This could be done in many different ways: by margin, by value, by availability, by bestsellers etc. Once you’ve categorised your products, you can create separate campaigns for each Custom Label. You can tailor the bidding strategy, ad copy and messaging to resonate with the specific audience that each label is trying to target.

By employing this feature within the feed, you can hone in on focus areas. This will save you time on manual segmentation, as well as giving you additional insights and aligning your marketing strategy with your business goals. 

5. Feed Rules

Feed rules are a powerful tool to optimise your product feed quickly, without the need to have access to the raw feed. They give you the ability to manipulate and transform data within the feed, unlocking many new opportunities to enhance your product listings. 

There are many different ways that you can use feed rules. The main ones enable you to change required data – if there is some missing or incorrectly formatted – add additional data to incorporate more variables, and also clean up the feed by removing redundant or irrelevant information.

Practical ways to use this could include, for example, temporarily appending “Black Friday Sale” to titles in November. You can also use the “Extract” feature to pull specific data out of titles/descriptions to fill in other attributes e.g. Colour or Size. 

Feed rules empower you by enabling you to quickly change attributes in the feed to suit your needs. With the click of a button you can enhance your feed’s relevancy, visibility and the performance of your products to ultimately drive more traffic and conversions to your site. 

These are just a few of the ways that you can improve your Google Shopping performance through optimising your product feed, giving your campaigns the best potential within the auctions. By leveraging these tools, you are able to start filling in the gaps and giving Google as much information as possible whilst also giving you more flexibility in your marketing efforts.

Anna Simpson is the Head Of Paid Media at Cedarwood Digital – a performance marketing agency based in Manchester.