What are Google search engine ranking factors?

Author: Ryan Walsh

Date: 11/09/2025

 

Introduction

For a business to reach the top of Google’s organic results can give that company a serious competitive advantage.
Being top of Google can help to drive more visitors and more clicks, which ultimately can help ramp up sales for that business.

 

Most businesses in 2025 realise that to reach the top of Google, they need to either put serious effort into improving their search engine optimisation themselves or hire an agency to do this work on their behalf.

However, what many businesses appreciate is that, in the background, to improve a company’s search engine optimisation, they need to enhance approximately 200 ranking factors!

That’s a tremendous amount of work!

There is a 39.8% click-through rate for the number one organic result in Google. This means that the first position on Google obtains the majority of clicks; this is why businesses are in constant competition with each other to secure and hold onto this top organic position on Google.co.uk.

 

 

Why does Google use so many different ranking factors?

Google (Alphabet) uses over 200 ranking factors in its algorithm- the reason being that Google checks the quality of a wide range of SEO ranking factors to determine how strong your business’s search engine optimisation is. This is why getting any business to position number 1 involves a tremendous amount of optimisation work.

Google, therefore, uses well in excess of 200 various ranking factors to determine how strong a business’s SEO is. These are like a scorecard that’s used on each business’s website to calculate how strong the business’s organic SEO is.

However, we fully appreciate that not many people who are interested in improving their organic search engine optimisation will have the time or even the patience to learn about all of the 200 various ranking factors.

We do understand you want to know about the more important ranking factors, the ones that can really start to nudge your business closer to that goal of ranking number 1 on Google in your industry.

Here at Walsh & Partners, we have covered- let’s begin explaining what some of the more important ranking factors are:

Let’s dive in and start to look at some of the more important ranking factors in 2025.

Here’s what Google’s algorithm looks at when working out how strong your business’s SEO is.

 

Content marketing quality (Google E-EAT)

A book that has no words is not very useful; there’s nothing to decipher what that book is about!

This is the same idea as a company website; without high-quality content marketing to define the services or products it offers, Googlebot can’t get a clear idea of what the business is offering to its customers.

Therefore, Google’s algorithm won’t have a clue what the business is selling.

 

 

 

Googlebot

 

Therefore, every page of your website must feature high-quality content marketing that has a high Google E-EAT score.
For those who do not know what content marketing means, it’s just a rather complicated way of saying written text applied to a page or blog post.

Googlebot is an automated bot that works for Google to find new websites and index changes made to existing pages.

What happens is that Googlebot crawls and indexes the page. If that page is of excellent quality, offers crystal-clear advice, and is well-written, it will rank higher in Google’s index.

 

Answers someone’s query

When you visit a marketing agency’s offices and you start to discuss various search engine optimisation topics, your head might begin to spin.

You might get baffled and disoriented by the staggering amount of marketing jargon that’s being used.

Here at Walsh & Partners, we strive to simplify wherever possible.

Now, one of the main ways to simplify search engine optimisation is to think about this: all Google wants to do is to answer someone’s query in the best possible way. Whether that’s the best kitchen blender for under £50.00 or what time the local ice rink opens.

Now, the way that Google answers any query is through content marketing. Therefore, it’s a benefit and also the duty of the SEO consultants to constantly be thinking about how they can engineer more quality into the page.

Therefore, the copywriters must be thinking about:

• What is the Google E-EAT score for that page?
• Does the page offer beneficial information to answer the shopper’s question
• Can Googlebot crawl and index the page?

 

Good page structure

Good page structure is like the spine of your written work, and on-page search engine optimisation. Without a page structure, the page can be a mass of text; therefore, it becomes hard for Googlebot to decipher what the page is about.

Therefore, good page structure, also commonly referred to as good on-page SEO signals, can offer cues to Google and to the shopper what that page is about.

Therefore, the page is often split up into manageable sections of text, using header tags. If you use visual illustrations, such as infographics, this can clearly convey the page’s content.

 

Here are just some of the ways that you can improve the on-page SEO for your business:

• Write page titles that improve your CTR
• Use H1-H6 to split the page and describe accurately what each section of the page is about
• Use alt text to describe the image
• Use a well-written meta description to improve your click-through rate
• Use internal links to improve dwell times
• Look at pages’ sky-high bounce rates and see if you can improve them

 

Be unique

Whatever your business is writing about, what you need to understand is that there is an overwhelming amount of content marketing that has already addressed the same question.

Therefore, whether you’re writing about how to remove a wine stain from a rug or which is the best hypercar to buy in 2025, what you need to understand is that Google will have hundreds, if not thousands, of pages written about the same topic.

Therefore, what makes your content marketing unique?
Why should it rank on page one of Google?
Well, that’s the question that marketing agencies must ask, because content marketing that ends up landing on page 7 of Google.co.uk is not going to generate any organic traffic.

Content marketing, such as blog posts, that have over 3,000 words can earn three times more traffic, four time more shares, and then three and half times more likely to have more backlinks than average-length content marketing.

Therefore, you have to look at your competitors and how they have written their content marketing, and then think about how you can do a better job.

• How can you make the content marketing better?
• How can you make the content marketing more useful?
• How do you write a piece of content marketing that knocks it out of the park, in terms of offering a better answer
• How can you offer a better UX?
• Can the page be crawled?

When it comes to Googlebot or the bots used by other search engines, such as Bing, can they access, crawl, and index the page?
Incredibly, some businesses will invest hundreds of hours in producing content marketing, yet that work can sometimes fail to get crawled and indexed by Googlebot.

This means that it will never, ever appear in Google’s organic results, simply because it can’t be crawled and indexed.

Therefore, utilise practical SEO tools, as well as your business’s Google Search Console, to identify any indexation issues.

If there are any indexation issues, this can stop Googlebot from crawling and indexing the page. If Googlebot can’t access the page, and it keeps getting, for example, “no-index” instructions, then that means the page can’t get indexed.

It also means that your business is simply wasting its crawl budget as well. The reason is that Google, which is Alphabet, will only allocate so much time for crawling and indexing a website. If Googlebot keeps crawling and indexing pages that are written with no-index instructions, yet you actually want the page indexed, this means that you’re wasting your crawl budget.

Therefore, what you want to do is make it super crystal clear to Google which pages you want indexed and which ones you do not. Thus, ask your SEO agency to set up an XML sitemap. This will provide Googlebot with clear instructions on which pages to index and which ones to exclude. There are actually free plugins, if you have a WordPress content management system, such as Yoast SEO, which make it an absolute breeze to add an XML site map to your website.

 

Mobile friendly

Mobile devices account for a whopping 62.54% of global organic search traffic. This means that the vast majority of visitors now come to a company website via smartphones. This is why it’s so crucial to have a well-designed mobile version of your company website.
What you need to do is ensure that your website looks good on smartphones, run a test, and check how it appears on Android smartphones.

 

What does it look like on iPhones?

Do basic checks, such as checking:

• Does the website work on Android devices?
• Does the website work on Apple devices?
• How fast is the website?
• Is the website user-friendly?
• What’s the bounce rate of the mobile version of the website like?
• What is the dwell time like?

 

Number of backlinks

Now, the most critical ranking factor, which Google uses to determine the strength of your business’s search engine optimisation, is assessing the quality of your business’s backlinks.

Reliable statistics show that the top-ranked pages on Google have an average of 3.8× more backlinks than pages in positions 2-10.

This shows that backlinks are the most critical ranking factor, and have been since the days of Google PageRank.
Are the backlinks of good quality?

Now, we are a well-known and respected SEO agency, and we will tell you that building backlinks, super high-quality backlinks, is no easy task.
It takes a tremendous amount of time and energy; you could spend hours upon hours working through various Excel spreadsheets and examining backlink checking tools, such as Ahrefs, and you might walk away from the desk feeling tired, having not even built one backlink.

The reason is that backlink building is hard work, as other businesses need a reason to link to you. They won’t link to your website unless they have reason to. Of course, you can cheat, cut corners, and build a ton of spam links, but what’s the point if your business is going to receive a link penalty in two months?

Trust us when we say, no business wants to receive a link penalty. It can mean that your rankings drop like a lead balloon, and that you could even be potentially de-indexed, which means totally removed from Google.

Therefore, the businesses which have good quality links, relevant backlinks, built with whit hat way, then rank on Google.

Businesses with top-quality backlinks have a significant competitive advantage.

Take a business sector that you like, the business that currently occupies the number one spot on Google.co.uk or Google.com, and they will be there because they usually have top-quality backlinks.

As soon as you put those businesses into a backlink checking tool, you can instantly see that they will have a very high domain authority score. The DA could be over 90, and have links from household brands, and well-known newspaper publications which have linked to them.

This could be because the business has engaged in charity work, won awards, or has a very innovative product, which means that it has naturally accumulated top-quality backlinks from a diverse range of websites.

These backlinks form part of what is called the backlink profile. Businesses which have top-quality backlinks will rank at the top of Google.

 

Site loading speed

Reliable data states that 53% of users / shoppers will abandon a website if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. This reinforces the point why you business will need to invest in super fast web hosting.

What you don’t want to do is invest hundreds of hours into writing top-quality content marketing, only to be let down by how slow the website is.

If your website is slow, it’s like being on a very slow train; it’s frustrating, so much so that you will want to travel on a different transport next time.

This is the same with a website; if it’s prolonged, you will likely leave the website and visit a competitor’s website, which is faster. In SEO, we refer to this as increasing the business’s bounce rate.

If a website has a high bounce rate, for example, the homepage bounce rate is particularly high, which suggests that the website may be slow.

People are getting frustrated by the website’s speed and are therefore leaving to go somewhere else, where they can buy the product quickly.

This is referred to as having a high bounce rate because the company’s website is too slow.
So, invest in fast hosting.

 

Google Core Vitals

Businesses which have pages which load faster, through fast hosting, will have stronger SEO.

Keywords

A very important ranking factor is keywords, and how they have been blended into your business’s content marketing.

Now, what should happen is that the content marketing should have good on-page SEO. This means that keywords should be incorporated into both the page titles and the content marketing, for example. However, you need to implement white-hat SEO and follow the advice of

 

Google’s E-EAT guidelines.

You may add keywords too many times, in an excessive manner, which is known as keyword stuffing.

This can actually significantly damage the business’s SEO.

Instead, the keywords need to be added to the URL slug, the H1 tags, and the meta description, and everywhere else on-page in a white hat way. Don’t over-optimise the page, as you will end up moving down Google’s ranks and not up.

 

Google RankBrain

When you talk to most digital marketing agencies about how to improve a business’s SEO, they often speak at great length about backlinks and content marketing.

Both are very important; however, what SEO agencies talk about much less is Google RankBrain.

Now, it’s essential when discussing ranking factors to mention Google RankBrain, as many SEO consultants believe RankBrain is used by

Google to determine how satisfied shoppers are with your company website.

For example, RankBrain uses the data to work out:

• How long did the average shopper spend on the website
• Is the bounce rate very high?
• Did they go on to visit another company, or does your website answer their question?
• Did they visit pages on the same website or just one?
• What is the dwell time?

 

Google RankBrain is, therefore, like a consumer satisfaction survey after you have bought an item.

Google wants to know how satisfied you are with the content marketing.

For example, did it answer your original question?

Did it mean that you ended up buying an item from that company?

Did it mean that you are a returning visitor, returning because you know that the company offers good quality information, or the product that you want to buy?

 

Content marketing freshness

What you might have noticed in business is that you had one main competitor who ranked right at the top of Google for an extended period of time.

Yet then, after a central core Google algorithm update, they suddenly moved down the ranks massively.

They may have moved from the 1st position on Google that they occupied for some time, then moved to position 7 in the blink of an eye.

Now, there can be many reasons why Google’s algorithm decides to move your business down the ranks. However, what you have to acknowledge is that sometimes, this is because the company is not updating its website.

The information has therefore become dated, and there may now be no fresh content marketing being applied to the website.

This means that Google knows that the content marketing could no longer be relevant and is therefore out of date.

For example, if someone is willing to spend in excess of 3k on a new bike, do they really want to read an article about the best mountain bikes that was written over four years ago? Therefore, the content marketing needs to be kept up to date.

This is what marketing agencies, such as SEO companies, refer to as “the content freshness”: how often is the business adding new content marketing?

Or, more importantly, how often are they revisiting old pages and updating and refining the content marketing to make it more up-to-date and relevant?

Therefore, an important Google ranking factor is how up-to-date the content marketing is.

Businesses that have blogs will obtain 97% more backlinks to their website- this is why its so important that your business has a blog.

 

Google E-EAT

When you start reading many SEO companies’ websites, where they are talking about Google E-EAT, they will tell you that E-EAT is not a direct ranking factor. However, Google E-EAT is a set of guidelines for your business to write content marketing.

For those who haven’t got the foggiest idea of what Google E-EAT means, do not worry, we shall now explain.
What Google E-EAT stands for is experience, expertise, authenticity, and trustworthiness.

Essentially, suppose the content marketing is helpful, because your copywriters or staff members within your company have poured their knowledge and expertise into writing the article. In that case, it will have a high dwell time. This basically means that, because the work is well written, it will keep the shopper reading the work for longer.

A website with a very high dwell time can help improve your business’s ranking on Google. For example, let’s say you run a successful business in the city centre of Cardiff. If the company has good backlinks, well-written content marketing, and high dwell times, what this means is the business is likely to rank very high on Google organically.

Therefore, to achieve high dwell times, you need to write the content marketing so that it is beneficial to the customer.

 

FAQ regarding search ranking factors:

What do you say is the most critical ranking factor?

The most important ranking factor, the ranking factor that can accelerate your business up Google’s ranks, is when you accumulate top-quality backlinks.

However, with that said, all of the other SEO components have to work together in conjunction with the links.
For example, there’s absolutely no point in having top-quality links, such as super-powerful backlinks from Forbes magazine, if you then direct them to a page where the content marketing doesn’t provide much information, or the page is no longer available.

Therefore, the point we are trying to make is that the content marketing, the on-page SEO and the backlinks must all be well optimised.

Everything must work together for the business to be ranked high on Google.

The good part of this is that our SEO agency has worked diligently for over a decade to help businesses achieve a top ranking on page one.

This means that we can help companies get on page one of Google by using white hat methods.

Why do you have to keep improving the SEO ranking factors?

SEO is a continuous process; if you stop at any point and leave it before implementing further work, the result is that the job becomes outdated.

Google doesn’t want to send shoppers to a page where the information is out of date.
Google always wants to supply a top-quality answer to any question; it therefore looks at whether you, as a business, are updating your content marketing.

 

Are you adding new content marketing?

Are you updating old content marketing to ensure that the information you offer remains current and relevant?

What you also have to consider are the backlinks. Does your business have strong backlinks? Also, backlinks do get deleted from time to time. This means you need to work hard to replace those quality backlinks.

This requires a lot of ongoing effort to make sure that you are adding recent content marketing, updating old content marketing and building new links.

This is why most SEO agencies are hired on a monthly recurring basis, which means that most businesses want to outsource their search engine optimisation to another company to manage on an ongoing basis.

This allows them to utilise quality tools, such as Google Search Console and possibly another reputable SEO tool like Ahrefs, to check backlinks, identify potentially deleted ones, and explore new backlink building opportunities.

 

Why does it take so long to see results from the organic SEO?

The answer to this question is relatively simple: the competition will have set a benchmark, if you like, a standard that needs to be beaten.

Let’s say they have 100 backlinks.

Let’s say they have 75 pages which rank on the first page of Google.

Let’s say we have a very high dwell time, and Google Analytics has recorded this for say the last 7 years as having a high dwell time.

This means that the website has robust search engine optimisation; therefore, they have set a high benchmark for your business that needs to be beaten.

This will require a significant amount of time and effort. Suppose that the business has been investing, working hard, and improving its overall search engine optimisation for an extended period. In that case, it’s sensible to think that it will take a lot of time to surpass them in terms of your company’s ranking.

 

 

Come to the best SEO agency in Wales.

We have been improving businesses’ SEO for donkey years; we have been improving businesses’ local and organic SEO in Wales for well in excess of 10 years.

If your business wants to rank higher on Google.co.uk to attract more visitors and customers to your business, why not give us a ring?