In an interview, Google Webmaster Trends Analyst Martin Splitt answered the question of which are the 3 most important factors for ranking first on Google
We have talked before about how you can promote your website on search engines, but this is the first time someone from inside Google has answered.
How Google gives you relevant pages in search
The first question put to the Google analyst was how Google shows results based on their relevance to each user.
To this question the Google analyst said something we already know: Google checks 200 different factors before giving a page a higher ranking on Google.
What he answered next, though, was something nobody expected!
He was asked what the most important factor for ranking on Google is.
What are the most important factors for ranking first on Google
In short, they are the website’s content (text, articles, photos), the structure and metadata of the website in general, and finally the website’s speed!
How to check your website’s ranking quickly, easily and for free
1) Your website’s content matters for its ranking on Google
What a website contains is extremely important for how it ranks on Google. That was the answer.
When we talk about content, we don’t only mean the text of a website. We mean every element of the website. Besides rich text that is relevant to the website’s subject, every site needs the right multimedia content, properly structured.
Your website’s content as a whole also needs to serve the user and give them the information they are looking for. It shouldn’t be copied and pasted from other websites, and it needs a sound structure.
So if your content answers what the user is searching for, you will be rewarded.
Take an online shop, for example. You could say that the purpose of a product page is to give accurate information about the specific item for sale. Sometimes, for a better user experience, this could also mean letting the buyer compare products.
For some search queries, where the subject is a topic rather than a specific product, Google tends to rank pages a little differently. In these cases, businesses come to us for help with their SEO!
It can be hard to take your mind off keywords and look clearly at the purpose of the page, but if you do, you will also climb in Google’s rankings.
In your texts it is very important to spot the problems a user may have, describe them in your article so the reader can relate to it, and finally, of course, give an answer to the user’s problem. That way your article will be genuinely useful and will end up ranking high on Google!
If you want to see how to write an article for your blog, read the article we wrote on the subject.
2) The metadata factor
When the analyst was pressed a little further, he gave the second factor, which didn’t surprise us either.
The factor Google looks at to give websites a better ranking is having CORRECT metadata on the site. In other words, each page should have its own meta title and description that describe that page of the website accurately.
We shouldn’t try to cram lots of keywords into a page’s title or meta description. They need to describe the page and be unique to each page of our website.
If you use a CMS such as WordPress, this can be done very easily through automation!
3) Website speed
Until now we only suspected that a website’s speed plays a part in getting it to the top positions on Google.
In passing, the Google analyst gave the answer: what matters a lot to Google is a fast website .
The speed of an e-shop or a website again comes down to keeping the user happy. A user is very pleased when the page they pick on Google loads very quickly, and Google rewards that.
A website’s identity
What we take from the above is that, when it comes to promoting a site, instead of focusing on a website’s keywords we should put more emphasis on the website’s identity.
To give our own view of how important it is for a website to have an identity, beyond just keywords, here is a comparison. Asking which keywords will get us a better ranking is like asking a doctor, when we are ill, which pill will make us better!
What we mean is that, depending on the goal we want to reach through a website or the audience our e-shop is aimed at, we need a different design and a different approach overall.
A simple example is an e-shop for luxury clothing compared with an e-shop selling clothes that cost up to 60 euros. They can’t have the same identity, the same set-up and the same design! Their blogs can’t carry similar articles either, because each speaks in a different way and to a different audience.
If you want more than just a pill to make you better, simply get in touch with us about your online advertising through Google Ads and Facebook or about promoting your website on search engines.
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