Ranking Results How Google Search Works
A technically sound website is more likely to be crawled and indexed efficiently. Create content clusters that combine long-form pillar content with shorter, supporting pieces. This allows you to comprehensively cover a topic while catering to users with varying content consumption preferences. While long-form content can be valuable, keep in mind how long users can pay attention to things. Structure your content strategically to deliver key information early in the text and keep users engaged throughout. You can also define the best content length with WebSite Auditor’s Content Editor.
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The first stage of ranking is to understand the user’s query. The easiest way to define between system and signal is to say Google’s ranking systems can be thought of as the machine learning layers that are applied to refine search results. Mobile-friendliness has been a ranking factor on mobile since 2015. When Google moved to mobile-first indexing in 2019, it became a ranking factor on desktop too. That’s why the top results for “netflix new shows” are quite new, but the results for “how to solve a rubik’s cube” are old. First Page Sage began conducting a continuous study of Google’s algorithm 15 years ago, publishing its results publicly. Page speed has been cited as one of the leading SEO ranking factors for years. Google wants to improve users’ web experience, and fast-loading web pages will do that. While we’ve tried to list the most common and important ranking signals, there are definitely many more. But, if you master these fundamentals first, we guarantee you’ll see a major improvement in Google rankings and organic search traffic. All in all, backlinks from high authority websites are more valuable, and will boost your rankings more, than links from lower rated sites. Acquiring these links sends a signal to Google that your content is trustworthy, since other high-quality websites vouch for it. While this is not a hard rule, out of millions of websites, few have managed that type of ranking within the first 12 months of existence. With that said, the right content can see your site climb the ranks quickly. With a greater tendency toward using mobile devices instead of desktops, mobile compatibility has become an essential factor to Google’s search algorithm. This means all sites should have complete mobile optimization. Uphold a consistent content strategy that delivers valuable, informative content. This establishes your website as a credible source within your niche, making it more likely to be shown to users regardless of personalized results.
Title Tag
In this article, we’ll analyze all of the known, confirmed, rumored, and absolute myth-level Google ranking factors in an easy-to-read, highly condensed way. It might sound like semantics, but “best practices” don’t just automatically translate into confirmed ranking factors in and of themselves. A modern version of meta tags, schema markup is code that you can add to your website’s pages to help Google serve more visual search results such as snippets. Google ranker favors pages that use schema markup because it makes those pages’ search results more useful to searchers. As a bonus, they also cause search results to stand out from the rest of the others on the page. 
If your website handles any sensitive information, display security seals and trust signals (e.g., SSL certificates) prominently on your homepage. This reassures users that their data is secure and protected. Structure your homepage content with a clear hierarchy, highlighting the most important content sections and linking to relevant sub-pages within your website. Users should easily understand the breadth of information you offer and navigate seamlessly to the content they need. Create compelling hero content on your homepage that showcases your website's value proposition and core offerings.
What is On-Page SEO and Off-Page SEO?
E-E-A-T is made up of a series of refining signals that underline everything that Google has been trying to achieve with better user experience and fighting misinformation. E-E-A-T is part of the Google Quality Search Raters Guidelines and not so much a ranking factor, but it is a guideline. Most content will see some level of decay over time in search results if it isn’t updated.