Top Google Ranking Factors

Many different factors influence your web site’s ranking among Google search results. Here are some of the top factors you should take into consideration, in no particular order:

- Inbound Links: Google is more likely to give your site a top ranking if other relevant web sites link to it, especially if they are well-known sites.

- META Tags: Description and title tags are also among the top factors to consider; they ought to be optimized with search keywords and appropriate text lengths. Be sure not to use the same tags on different pages.

- Spider Accessibility: Your site’s pages must be accessible to Google’s automated “spider” (or “robot”) system so that it can index them. Adding a “Site Map” will help make this possible.

- Creation Date: New sites generally receive low ranking levels in Google results for several months, while they are in the “Supplemental Index”. New pages are also at a disadvantage.

- Keywords: Web pages rank better when the search keywords being targeted are used repeatedly (but not too much) in the text, esp. if they coincide with the title and file name.

- Outbound Links: Linking to the wrong kinds of web sites (like bad neighborhoods) or exchanging links with unrelated web sites may harm your Google search ranking, especially if you do this more than once.

- File/Domain Names: Google also factors in the relevance of words within your web site’s URL, which includes its file, top level domain, subdirectory, and subdomain names.

- Outdated Links: It is best to avoid leaving links on your site that lead to URLs which no longer exist (this occurs when the linked pages have disappeared or changed their URLs).

These are some of the top factors which affect your site’s ranking on Google. Others also play a role, like image ALT text, time between updates, and the wording of inbound links.