A guide to Google’s Search Engine Ranking Factors in 2026

Author: Ryan Walsh
Date: 11/02/2026

When you’ve just received your brand-new website back from the web design agency, you might then be startled by how much SEO work is needed from the get-go.

For example, it’s not just a matter of pulling a few levers; there are over 200 ranking factors that make up Google’s secret sauce which need to be improved!

However, before you decide that it is a mountain that you do not want to climb, do not despair.

Batman is here; 200 ranking factors can often be broken down into wider categories.

For example, in content marketing, the quality of this work (Google EEAT + On-page SEO factors) can gobble up a huge number of those ranking factors.

Therefore, if your business’s organic traffic has tanked, your marketing manager is pushing to invest in search engine optimisation in 2026, then this is the guide for you.

 

Content marketing quality is massively important.

When you think about it, what’s the purpose of your company’s website?

You might instantly put your hand up and say it’s all about selling goods or services, right?

Well, that is true to an extent, from a commercial point of view.

However, Google sees the website differently; it doesn’t really care that the price of the kettle you sell is £10.00 higher that a direct rival.

So not about price; instead, it’s about the quality of the content.

Does the content satisfy search intent?

That’s marketing lingo for, “does the page offer a sufficient answer to the question”?

Better still, does it knock it out of the park in terms of how you’ve answered the question?

And offer a far better answer?

That’s where content quality comes into the equation. That’s where everything from Google RankBrain is working out, well, what’s the average dwell time of that page compared to the direct competitors? What’s the bounce rate? Is the shopper popo-sticking around when they land on your e-commerce website?

Are they staying on that e-commerce website and, on average, viewing 7 products, whereas on a competitor’s page, they’re only viewing 3 products on average?

 

Long form content + dwell times

You could write an article, or a product description that has so many words it resembles the Magma Carter. This will send the shopper to sleep, they may way up a few hours later after a snooze, but not bought anything! So its not about word count, its about quality of the answer and persuading the customer to buy.

The copywriter might have written thousands of words, placed a few links to the page, and said, well, that ticks all the relevant boxes in terms of on-page SEO.

However, if you truly want to improve your business’s SEO in 2026, you have to make sure that the work answers the original question that brought the shopper from the SERP’s onto your page. This means retaining the shopper’s interest, so that falls under improving the U.X.

 

Improving the U.X means

– Making the website simple to use
– Making it fast
– Making it logical and simple to use on smartphones
– Making the text simple to read
– Working on improving your business’s Google Core Web Vitals, for instance

 

Semantic web

Then, if the content marketing is written by someone who hasn’t got a clue what they are writing about, this will be clear as day to Google’s algorithm and Google RankBrain.

This is why so much work written by SEO agencies, which have copywriters who must adhere to strict timeframes, often doesn’t have enough time to write the article correctly. Its shallow work, which SEO consultants call “content thin” as its often just marketing waffle.

This results in weaker semantic SEO, fewer entities, and fewer points in the written work for Google’s algorithm to cross-check.

This means that many agencies produce really content-thin work. This results in, when you check, say, the businesses’ Google Search Console accounts at the end of the year, rather than a huge number of indexed pages, something else occurs.

That something else is a rise, sometimes a huge rise in the number of pages which are “crawled but not indexed by Google”. Meaning there’s not enough information; the work is half-baked and doesn’t meet the standard of even being ranked in the first 10 pages of Google’s index!

So you might ask, well if its not indexed, if it doesn’t appear anywhere on Google, what’s the point in creating it?
And the answer is, well there was not point. The only point is often that the copywriter can tick a box off at the agency that they have spent 2 hours writing, well, marketing waffle.

The solution, therefore, is simple: in 2026, your work must be comprehensive, detailed, and well-researched.

Making the content marketing useful and the page structure

Googlebot has a relentless job.

Googlebot is like a delivery driver who’s drunk way too many energy drinks.

Its job is to be on the move, crawling, indexing constantly, and sometimes de-indexing pages.

The work doesn’t come to a stop day and night Googlebot is at it.

This is why businesses have “crawl budgets” placed on their websites, because, well, Googlebot is busy, very busy doing what it does best. It can’t wait around on one particular e-commerce website for very long.

Therefore, as SEO boffins, our job is to write helpful content marketing so the work gets indexed.

However, that’s not good enough.

The work must be structured in accordance with the best white-hat search engine optimisation standards.

This means thinking about things like page structure, H1-H6 tags, meta titles and descriptions, internal links, keyword density, semantic SEO, etc.

 

Google EEAT and being unique

So we have talked about Googlebot: how it’s Google’s job to constantly check businesses’ websites for new content and deleted pages, and then report back to Google’s algorithm where that page should be ranked in the index or sometimes not indexed if the quality does not meet the required quality standard.

Now, imagine this: it’s true in 2026, as it has ever since Google developed “PageRank”.

That is, is your content marketing unique?

Has it got the edge?

Because, guess what, let’s say that you’re an SEO company, and you’re writing an article about, say, “how much you should be paying for your SEO services in 2026”.

Great, relevant content that is likely to drive organic traffic.

But guess what, every business that’s in the business of selling SEO services will have most likely covered the same topic.

Google’s index is, therefore, jam-packed from position 1 to position 100 with agencies of all shapes and sizes writing about the same thing.

So what makes you stand out from the crowd?

What makes this work worth ranking number 1? Well, often it boils down to Google EEAT and, in particular, backlinks. (That’s if the content marketing is good enough to be indexed).

 

Backlinks- you can never have enough (of the right type)

Why do so many agencies set up and then fail?

Why do so many businesses not get onto page one?

Well, often it’s because they make a hash of building the backlinks.

Backlinks are important; they are the fuel that can move your website up Google’s ranks to position 1.

However, if the backlink profile is analysed in a tool like Ahrefs and there are a ton of toxic links, that will hold you back.

Agencies all over the land often say, ” Well, low-quality links are now discounted. They don’t matter and are not taken into account when computing where the business should be ranked.

But is that true?

We think no. If it’s clear as day that the agency or the business has been trying to use low-quality spam methods to fool Google into thinking the website’s SEO is better than it actually is, well, Google is no fool.

It spots spammy link-building activity from a mile off.

Just as you have a sniff of your milk in the morning to see if it’s good to splash in your cup of tea, Google will have a sniff of your backlinks. If the backlinks smell of spam, a big fat penalty could be coming their way.

This is why so many agencies go bust and why so many businesses drop down Google’s ranks: quite simply, they have built backlinks the wrong way.

 

On-page SEO

Getting on-page SEO right is a bit like creating an oil painting.

If you know what you’re doing, you will know where to place the paint on the canvas.

If you haven’t got a clue what you’re doing, you make a mess, and the canvas will be a complete shambles, with oil paint all over the place.

You could always call it modern art, we guess?
Therefore, you need to learn how to write page titles, H1-H6, and you need to learn how to structure the content. However, to interlink the work, use internal links and drive link equity to the right places.

Add alt text and anchor text. You need to learn Google EEAT. Make sure the authors’ expertise is reflected in the work.

Then the word count needs to be high enough to answer the query. Don’t go too mad adding keywords; if you repeat the same words like a broken record, it is spammy and will actually damage SEO.

There you have it, that’s the basics of how to improve your SEO in 2026

We are currently taking on new SEO clients for 2026. Our minimum monthly pricing for local SEO is £1000.00 and e-commerce packages or national SEO start from £2000.00 per month.

For sales enquiries please call Ryan Walsh on : 029 21 760777.