There are two major classes of factors:
- On-the-page SEO: These are factors largely within the control of publishers.
- Off-the-page SEO: These are factors influenced by others or not directly tied to a publisher’s site.
Within these two classes are seven categories of factors, which are:
- Content — Factors relating to the content and quality of your material
- Architecture — Factors about your overall site functionality
- HTML — Factors specific to web pages
- Trust — Factors related to how trustworthy and authoritative a site seems to be
- Links — Factors related to how links impact rankings
- Personal — Factors about how personalization influences rankings
- Social — Factors on how social sharing impacts rankings
Overall, there are 35 individual factors, which range from making use
of descriptive HTML title tags to whether a site has success with
visitor engagement. Here’s a close-up of the table, focusing on just the
factors:
How to understand the table
Each factor has a two letter symbol. The first letter represents the
category a factor is part of, such as “A” for Architecture. The second
letter represents the element itself, such as “m” for Mobile, giving
“Am” its symbol.
Each factor also has a weight. This is a relative guide to how
important it is to focus on a particular factor versus others and
overall. Those with a +3 are most important, with +2 and +1 indicating
factors of lesser importance.
It’s also important to understand that the factors work together. No
single factor guarantees success. But several factors working together,
even if they are minor ones, can increase the odds in your favor.
Violations are negative factors, spam activities that can harm your
visibility. Don’t do these! Violations, unlike the other elements, all
begin with “V” regardless of what category they are in, so that they can
more easily be identified as violations. Factors marked -3 are
considered worse than -2 and -1.
Factors with weight increases: Mobile, speed & direct answers
Am: Mobile — Google continues to push for content to be mobile-friendly, no surprise given that more than
50 percent of Google searches are done on mobile devices. In addition,
by the end of this year or in 2018, Google will use a
mobile-first index, even for desktop users.
All of this made us feel the mobile factor should increase to +3, a rise over the +2 it had in 2015 and the +1 when it was
first added to the table in 2013. Those surveyed agreed, giving it a 2.8 average weight.
As: Speed — Google has
continued to emphasize the importance of speed as a ranking factor, including widely implementing the
AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) format that it backs. AMP didn’t even exist when our SEO table was last updated in 2015.
With so much attention on speed, it made sense to increase this
factor’s weight from +1 to +2. Those surveyed gave it an average weight
of 2.6, but we decided to be conservative with our increase.
Ca: Direct Answers — Both Google and Bing are
increasingly showing direct answers that are culled from web pages above
regular listings, something Google calls
featured snippets.
Some publishers worry these are harmful, because if an actual answer
is shown, why would people bother clicking to the source page? However,
many others compete to be an answer, finding they do indeed drive
traffic. Google’s featured snippets also serve as the single spoken
answer that’s often given by the Google Assistant on mobile devices or
in Google Home.
This factor was added in 2015 with a conservative +1 weight. Given
the increasing prominence of direct answers, it made sense to raise the
weight to +2. That also matches up with survey respondents, who gave it a
2.1 average weight.
Factors with weight decreases: Site and personal search history
Th: History — Google seems to have downplayed, in
public statements or a lack of them, the importance of a site’s age or
history versus years past. Given this, we felt dropping this factor from
+2 to +1 made sense.
The factor was raised to +2 for the first time in 2015, when we
agreed with the average survey response of 2.0. This year’s survey saw
that drop to 1.8, giving us further reason to feel a decreased weight
was in order.
Ph: History — Someone’s personal search history also
felt to us like a factor that has decreased in importance. That’s why
we’ve dropped it from +3 to +2. Survey respondents put it at 1.7,
further reassuring us that the decrease was justified.
Factors that were dropped: Site identity and personal social sharing
Ti: Identity — We heavily debated dropping site identity as a factor when doing the 2015 edition, because Google had ended support for
Google Authorship,
which was the primary way identity seemed to be having an impact.
However, those surveyed then gave it a 1.6 average score. Google also
suggested that authorship was still being determined in other ways.
Since then, Google has
backed away from authorship entirely.
This year’s survey also saw it drop slightly to a 1.5 average. To us,
there seemed little reason to continue listing this factor at all. We
decided to drop it.
Ps: Social — Google+ was the primary way Google was
using personal social sharing to influence someone’s search results.
Google+ might continue in name, but its impact on Google’s search
results seems all but gone — along with the users and brands that were
active on the service. Because of this, we decided this factor deserved
to be dropped. Survey respondents gave it an average weight of 1.6.
Factors considered but not added: App indexing and AMP
We wondered if we should add new elements for app indexing and AMP
pages. People were asked to rate these on the survey. The average for
app indexing was 1.7; for AMP, it was 1.8. We ultimately felt those were
better considered as part of the existing mobile factor (Am) and
decided not to add them as new elements.
Not changed but notable
As shown above, we don’t always go with what our survey suggests for a
factor’s weight. Ultimately, we try to be a bit more cautious than what
the survey suggests, plus we take into account things we’ve seen the
search engines say or do.
Here are some notable diversions from the survey, where factors did not have their existing weights changed.
Au: URLs — The survey had keywords in URLs at 2.1, but we felt keeping it at +1 was fair.
Ah: HTTPS — The survey had the impact of running a
secure site at 2.0, but we felt it was
appropriate with its existing
lower weight of +1. However, this could change in the future — and there
are good reasons beyond SEO to make a site secure.
Ah: Titles — The survey gave keywords in title tags a
2.3 average weight. We kept it at +3, viewing it as an easy and still
important area of focus.
Ah: Headers — The survey gave the use of header tags (H1, H2, etc) a 2.2 average weight. We felt that was too much and kept it at +1.
Ta: Authority — The survey gave the idea that a site or page has authority that helps with ranking a 2.4 weight. Google has certainly downplayed the idea of site or domain authority, as we covered recently. But it has given even further emphasis to the idea of page authority. We felt keeping this factor at +3 made sense.
Ln: Number of links — Those surveyed gave an average
weight of 1.9 to the idea that sheer number of links is an important
ranking factor. We remain conservative on this, keeping it at +1.
Pc: Country — Survey respondents gave a 2.1 average
weight to the importance of someone’s country on the impact of the
search results they receive. It’s easily demonstrated that country
location has one of the most important influences on search results.
Just ask anyone in a country different from the one you’re in to do the
same search. They’ll usually have widely different results. We kept this
at the highest +3 weight.
Pl: Locality — The survey gave a 2.3 average weight
to the importance of someone’s city or locality on the impact of search
results. As with country, we know — and anyone can easily test — that a
city or regional location can have a huge impact. We kept this
factor at +3 weight.
Ss: Social shares — The survey gave a 1.6 average
weight to the idea that the sheer number of social shares can have an
impact on search rankings. Social is generally an indirect benefit, in
terms of Google. It has repeatedly said that it doesn’t try to measure
social signals from Twitter or Facebook to rank results. But social
sharing might lead people to link to and engage with sites, which are
direct factors. Overall, we felt remaining conservative here with a +1
score made sense.
Vd: Piracy — The survey put the impact of having
pirated or copyright-infringing content at -2.6. Sites with pirated
content can indeed be hit hard by Google, but most sites don’t do this
and so don’t need to worry about it. Hence, our lower weight of -1.
Va: Heavy ads — The survey put the impact of having
sites heavy with ads or intrusive interstitials at -2.4. We agree that
Google certainly seems to be looking harder (and penalizing) for this.
Still, we decided to remain conservative and keep it at -1. However,
there’s an excellent chance this could change in the future.
Vp: Paid links — The survey average for buying links
was -2.1. We think that underestimates the negative impact on a site
that’s caught doing this. We kept this at -3.
Factors not mentioned & the importance of quality
Above, we’ve only covered factors that had changes from the last
edition or where we deviated from how survey respondents felt. There are
many more factors than these, however — so please do review them all.
More than anything else,
Cq: Content Quality,
remains the bedrock of success. It’s the first factor on the chart and
heavily weighted for a reason. If you have great content, all things
good SEO-wise flow from that. Survey respondents agree, giving it a 2.8
average.
Original Published By Danny Sullivan on June 12, 2017 at 1:00 pm on Searchengineland.com
