Google SEO Ranking Factor Tier List (2023)

fine I'll say it half of the advice you hear on how to get traffic on Google is complete garbage there's over 200 quote-unquote Google ranking factors some of them get Elon level results and will Skyrocket your website to the top of the search results and others are so freaking useless and overhyped they actually inspired me to make this video to set things straight I'm here to help you focus your time I'm going to give you a tier list of search engine optimization SEO ranking factors and I can tell you right now a lot of what I'm going to say is not what you expect if we haven't met before I'm Matt Diggity I've been doing SEO since 2009 and I'm the founder of SEO businesses lead spring the search initiative Authority Builders the affiliate lab and The Chiang Mai SEO conference I'm going to be rating these SEO ranking factors based on three different fundamentals test results I'm constantly performing single variable tests to determine what is a ranking factor and what isn't it works like this you have a set of test pages that solely exist for SEO experiments all these Pages have the same things in common they have the same word length optimization factors Etc then for half these Pages you introduce a new variable look at your different type of backlink or content strategy then you watch the results did the experimental group gain more traffic and rankings than the control I'm also drawing on experience I've managed over 500 websites so I've seen it all and I've tried it all and lastly collaboration I'm the first to admit that I don't know every single SEO Nuance but someone in my network definitely does what I'm not going to do is base my ratings off of what Google says works and doesn't work you experienced viewers know that in practice SEO is a lot different than Google's guidelines now 200 ranking factors is a lot so for now I'm only going to be digging in deep into the content ranking factors which are probably the most important anyways if enough people like this video I'll make follow-up videos on optimization backlinks user metrics domain level factors technical SEO and more and finally before we get started here's how to understand the tiers if a ranking factor is D tiered that means it's complete don't even do it it's either a useless strategy or damaging for your site seaters are not important if you're the type of person that is a completionist and likes to do all the side quests feel free to do these or if you're debugging your site after a ranking drop sure you need to check every thing off your list B tier is your standard SEO best practices these should be on the to-do list for every website a tier is home to ranking factors that will get you solid results and these are confirmed with both single variable testing and field experience and lastly we have the coveted s tier these are the pro level tactics that get game changing results so let's get cooking but before we get started I'd like to extend you an invite to my free SEO masterclass I recently put together a full 45 minute training on what's working today in Google sign up by using the link in the pin comment we have 11 super important ranking factors to look at in the content category NLP ownership proof reading level subtopic coverage topical Authority duplicate content content length search intent fresh content outbound links and grammar let's start with NLP NLP stands for natural language processing it's how Google interprets what we say as humans into code that Google can understand the name of the game is writing your content in such a way so that it's easy for Google NLP to understand it here's how you do it Echo back the main search query in your content then add the word is and then give your answer if there's any units associated with the answer then use them here too this clear and simple structure makes it super easy for NLP to understand as a ranking Factor NLP belongs in the a tier I ran single variable NLP tests on live websites and found Improvement in the number of featured Snippets average ranking as well as traffic if you want to learn more about NLP content strategy I have a module on it in my course the affiliate lab up next on our list is proof of ownership and it has to do with product review content this was first introduced in the Google product reviews update in April 2021 the product reviews update came with a set of release notes they asked content creators to show what the product is like physically proof that you own it then in December they double down on this and just straight up said you should provide evidence such as visuals audio or other Links of your own experience with the product okay so do you need to go out and buy every product if you're writing review content dude no I can't tell you how many people I know that buy all the products they review and get no bonus whatsoever they get hidden updates just like anyone else but also I've single variable tested this as a ranking factor I took a set of Articles and added unique photos with physical proof that we had the products hell we even embedded YouTube videos with the products this is what the result looked like in the SEO testing software when the black line on the right is level with the blue line on the left that means it doesn't do jack proof of ownership is a d-tier ranking Factor sure probably helps with converting your visitors but since this is a video about ranking factors this one is straight up useless real quick I want to give a shout out to the sponsor of today's video and that's SC ranking SC ranking is a top-notch SEO platform jam-packed with over 30 powerful tools that make life a breeze for seos and digital marketers alike one of my favorite features is our keyword rank tracker its accuracy in tracking keyword positions is on point plus it lets me keep an eye on each keywords rankings across all major search engines in five different locations without any extra charges this is a game changer for optimizing content for top performance in multiple regions and the best part for a sweet price you get a ton of advanced tools like competitive research keyword research website audit backlink checker backlink Monitor and much more use the link in the description to claim an exclusive two-week extended free trial of Essie ranking now let's jump back into the video next we have reading level given that the average American reads that an 8th grade reading level many people assume your content should follow suit so they'll use flesh Kincaid readability tools to try to adjust their content this is not a ranking factor is Google going to penalize Harvard Medical School because no one can understand their white papers ultimately I'll put readability in the C tier even though your readability score isn't a ranking Factor if your readers can't understand you they'll leave your page and that will affect your rankings think about your readers not your readability scores next on our list we have subtopic coverage let's say you're trying to create content for the keyword how to lose belly fat there's obviously many different subtopics related to losing belly fat exercise eating low carb foods avoiding trans fats and not drinking in 12 pack of beer every night so where do you find these subtopics that need to be addressed in your content on the sites in the top positions on Google if Google likes them and you base your content off them while adding your own additional value you can't go wrong subtopic coverage is a powerful technique that gets some tremendous results I stress it hard with my students at the affiliate lab and they get tremendous results because of this I put it in the a tier next up we have a super hyped SEO tactic topical Authority instead of just creating a handful of articles on your main topic you instead cover anything and everything you can on the topic you don't just write a pillar article in the best CBD oil you also get into CBD benefits CBD side effects CBD drinks CBD gummies CBD and pets the whole shebang once you do this Google has no choice but to consider you an authority on the subject I've used topical authority to grow this site from 2 000 to 25 000 visitors per day that's over a thousand percent increase topical is one hundred percent an S tier ranking factor and it deserves it it's a game changer once you get it down topical Authority starts with creating a topical map of every piece of content that you'll need to write if you need help generating one check out leadspring's topical map service at leadspring.org topical Dash map Dash service next up we have duplicate content that is copying content from other sites to your own site or reusing your own content in multiple places this seems like something Google would hate of course they want you to create original content but in truth they're much more lenient on it than you would assume Kyle roof prolific SEO tester found that the threshold of being able to pass Google's duplicate content filter is one in every 12 words as long as you change 1 in 12 freaking words Google doesn't care duplicate content is also completely legal in local SEO huh if you have gardening services in Culver City Santa Monica Pasadena and Burbank Google doesn't expect you to write unique content for each location if Google cared so much about duplicate content then websites would never be able to quote anyone new sites would be ruined duplicate content belongs in the seats here basically who freaking cares just don't completely plagiarize content you'll be fine next we have content length is there a magical word link that Google loves there's two ways to look at this the first is assuming that a hard number like 3 000 words is the optimal word length for every article that is not a thing in fact Google specifically said that it's not a thing in the release of the Google helpful content update are you writing to a particular word count because you've heard or read that Google has a preferred word count no we don't told you so the other way to look at it is to analyze the word length of the articles in the top positions of Google see how many words their articles are and then take an average after all these are the articles that Google loves maybe they've written the right amount to answer the query this approach definitely works Google knows it doesn't take 10 000 words to describe a meatloaf recipe it'll also takes more than 300 words to explain intermittent fasting I documented a test where I simply removed 1000 words from a piece of content in order to recapture number one rankings for a lucrative keyword so it definitely matters I left a link to that video in the description if you want to check it out later content length based on the top ranking articles is an a tier ranking Factor it gets results it's proven with testing and you should always be mindful of it the next ranking factor is search intent matching the search intent is all about presenting content that matches what the user is looking for I know that sounds super nebulous so let me explain it further we have informational search queries where people are looking for answers to questions such as when is the next season of Attack on Titan hurry up damn it if you Google the keyword and open up the first article you can see what type of article Google is expecting in this case a typical content-based article then we have transactional keywords like buy cosplay costumes and if we do the same thing again we can see that Google wants to see an e-commerce layout hot let's do one more for funsies there's also comparison search intent such as best anime for nerds who you call a nerd and for this type of search query Google is expecting to see a listicle I'll put this as straightforward as I can if you don't get the search intent correct you will not get traffic on Google search intent is a make or break s tier strategy get it right and you'll do well get it wrong and you're screwed next up is fresh content if your content is newer will it do better if your content was recently updated will it rank higher in 2017 Google released what was known as the freshness update it was designed to even things out you'd have old content that lived at the top of Google for years and it attracted so many backlinks that no one could compete with it the freshness update gives more credit to new content that might be just as good if not better than the old stuff but traditionally had no chance because it hadn't had time to grab some links here's how I take advantage of this every quarter I'll check the rankings for my articles if a keywords rankings were flat or went down then we could say that the content isn't as good as it could be it needs a Content overhaul fresh content is a c tier ranking factor it's important but I would only worry about it if you're in a debug situation like I just mentioned next we have outbound Authority links that is linking from your article to other authoritative articles in order to provide resources for your users I'm not talking about sprinkling links to Wikipedia in your articles it's more about providing references and further information on what you're basing your content off of I love this experiment I'm about to show you reboot ran a study where they added outbound Authority links to an experimental group of test pages and compared them to a control group a well-designed single variable test as you can see the pages in blue with the outbound links outperform the orange control outbound Authority links are considered standard SEO practice and thus belong in the B tier next we have grammar and spell should your articles be grammatically correct and typo free when asked this question certainly is on John Mueller said with regard to spelling errors grammatical errors I think that's something that's a bit more almost like a gray Zone in that on one hand we have to be able to recognize what a page is about in other words it depends my take is that if your content looks like it was written at 3am after a bender ultimately your readers aren't going to like it and they're gonna leave which is for sure a bad signal to Google a grammar and spell check are so quick you should just do them it's not a game changer but it's again standard SEO practice and belongs in the B tier if you like this content format and want to see more tier lists smash the like button make sure to subscribe

Channel: Matt Diggity

Views: 19,052

Keywords: seo ranking factors, ranking factors in seo, local seo ranking factors, top seo ranking factors 2023, ranking factors seo, local seo ranking factors 2023, google seo ranking factors, top seo ranking factor, top seo ranking factors, seo google ranking factors, google ranking factors seo checklist, content seo ranking factors, mobile seo ranking factors, on page seo ranking factors, most important seo ranking factors, on-page seo ranking factors, googles top seo ranking factors

Id: S40273-ftNs

Length: 11min 49sec (709 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 21 2023