Top 10 Factors That Impact Your Google Rankings in 2024

Google is constantly updating and changing the different factors that contribute to your organic ranking. This can include anything from your content, backlinks, and website site speed. It’s important to keep up-to-date with the different factors, as these will all influence how successful you are in the organic rankings.

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This article will cover the top 10 factors that can contribute toward your Google rankings, as well as provide actionable recommendations that you can apply to your website.

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Factor 1: Page Experience

Page experience at its core, involves anything to do with how the experience is for the user once landing on your website. Some of the key elements here are your Core Web Vitals, having a secure website, as well as how well your content is displayed on mobile. Google will always prioritise websites that are quick, easy to use, and have minimal dead pages.

Some tips:

• Ensure your website loads quickly with efficient coding and use image optimisations that allow images to load in a quick manner.
• Ensure a secure connection for your users through HTTPS.
• Avoid the use of pop-ups that can detract from the user experience.
• Ensure any 404 pages are redirected to the most similar page, allowing users a more seamless journey throughout your website.

Factor 2: Mobile-Friendliness

With the shift away from desktop use to mobile use, it is ever so important to ensure your website is mobile-first. This involves having a website that is designed with mobile as the priority, has a responsive design, and speed, and is easy to navigate.

Some tips:

• Ensure your website has simple navigation, with a very clear direction on what you want your users to do (fill in a form, give you a call, purchase your product through your online store etc.)
• Test your mobile performance yourself. Go through your website on several different mobile devices, and see if any elements look out of place, load slowly, or can be improved.
• Use a responsive web design, that can adapt to different device screen sizes.

Factor 3: Content Quality

Content is any piece of text on your website that provides more information about your product or service. Google is constantly trying to match the best content, with the user’s search query. Ensuring you have high-quality and relevant content, gives your website the best opportunity to be ranked higher in Google's Search Engine Results Page (SERP). Content is judged based on EAT (Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness), along with including relevant keywords, and content that is updated regularly.

Some tips:

• Ensure your content is relevant to your website, include keywords relevant to the topic, as well as help answer questions. This can involve including answers to FAQs, which can help users with their search queries.
• Update older content to ensure information on your website is up-to-date, ensuring users are given the most recent updates.
• Regularly conduct keyword research, or research what your customers are asking. This will help build out future content plans for the website.

Factor 4: Backlinks

Backlinks are any links from external websites that point back to your website. This can be through blogs, articles, or other pieces of content where your website is mentioned. Backlinks are a signal to Google that your website is authoritative, credible, and can be trusted. 

Some tips:

• Ensure any links generated are organically: as Google prioritises quality links over quality. Quality links should fit your niche, for example, a gardening blog linking to a wheelbarrow website.
• Build content that would attract backlinks. If other users find your content helpful, they are more likely to share your website with other people.

Factor 5: Core Web Vitals

Core Web Vitals are metrics used by Google to judge how a user would interact with your website. These include different elements such as Largest Contentful Paint (LCP, Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS), and First Input Delay (FID). These factors are largely completed by a web developer or someone who is more versed in how websites work.

Some tips:

• Ensure images and other large elements on your website are optimised, to improve LCP.
• Minimise the use of Javascript, which can help reduce FID.
• Avoid unexpected layout shifts through visual stability.

Factor 6: User Engagement

User engagement is an indicator to Google that your website is a strong match with your user’s search query. There are quite a number of elements that can be used to judge how good your site is from a user engagement standpoint, including bounce rate, dwell time, and click-through rate.

Some tips:

• Ensure your content is engaging, relevant, and user-friendly. This helps keep your audience on your website longer.
• Create internal linking from one piece of content to another. This allows users to explore more of your website.
• Update your meta descriptions and titles with relevant keywords and copy. These will lead to larger click-through rates (CTRs), which show Google that your organic listing is worth clicking on.

Factor 7: Technical SEO

Technical SEO covers all technical aspects of your website. This includes things like your XML sitemap, robots.txt files, and more. Having a technically sound website makes it easier for Google to rank your website, leading to more efficient rankings.

Some tips:

• Create an XML sitemap and ensure it is up-to-date. This allows Google to crawl your website, and better understand what each page is about.
• Implement structured data and schema markups to allow Google to better display information about your website directly on its SERP.
• Implement canonical tags, to ensure that any pages that may not need to be crawled multiple times, are kept to 1. This allows efficiency with Google and ranking your pages.

Factor 8: Local SEO

Local SEO is important if you operate within a local area, and want to be visible to your immediate surrounding audience.

Some tips:

• Ensure your Google Business Profile is kept up to date with accurate information such as opening hours, phone numbers, descriptions and other important information.
• Create or ensure the use of suburbs or other keywords that are relevant to your local area on your website.
• Encourage reviews on your website and Google Business Profile, as this will act as a vote of confidence from previous customers.

Factor 9: Site Security

Site security prevents your website from being subject to malware and other viruses for users.

Some tips:

• Ensure your site is secure over HTTPS.
• Keep an eye on your security certificates and ensure these are kept up to date.
• Protect user data to avoid being subject to attacks.

Factor 10: Content Structure and Readability

Your content structure and readability should be considered every time you post something new. This allows for users and search engines to easily understand what your content is talking about, as well as keep engagement rates by users high.

Some tips:

• Make use of strong, clear headings and subheadings
• Ensure content is not too long. Break this up with bullet points, short paragraphs, images, videos, and other elements to enhance engagement.

Conclusion

In summary, there are several different factors that all contribute to your Google rankings. These are constantly changing and evolving, so it’s important to ensure you keep across the above factors. Implementing some of the above can have significant impacts on your organic rankings.

As all the above factors can take away precious time from your day-to-day, you can always leave it to the experts at Sillyfish to ensure your time is spent on what you know best. Contact us today and let’s talk about how we can drive success for your business through SEO.

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