Clients regularly ask what I believe to Googles top search ranking factors. The top two are my frequent response, generally because once I get into the third or fourth it becomes too technical. Recently Google announced its top three.
First and foremost – Content, that would be relevant content. How does the content of each page articulate the business, project or organization with regards to page title, image titles, alt text, captions and keyword phrases. Are the pages well written and have substantial quality content? This is why I say “Content is King!”.
Second would be links. Inbound (external) Outbound (internal). An inbound link is a hyperlink back to your site from another Web site. It is a consistent strategy in search engine optimization where sites with a variety of high quality backlinks rank higher in the search engine results. Outbound links are essential as to how you have organized your sites pages linked internally. It’s all about site structure.
Third is RankBrain. RankBrain is an AI machine developed by Google. It helps process and evaluate search results and provide more relevant results to users. It’s interesting to understand how this AI machine works. The general consensus is that RankBrain interprets the user searches to find pages that may not have contained the exact words that were used in the user search query. When offline, RankBrain is given batches of past searches and learns by matching search results. Once RankBrain’s results are verified by Google’s team the system is updated and goes live again. FYI Google process over 50,000 requests every second.
Contact us to learn how we can help with your ranking.