The top 10 Google Ranking factors and how to optimise your company website for them

Author: Ryan Walsh

Published: 30/04/2025

Introduction

You’re a consumer, a customer to multiple businesses, so how do you find enterprises you want to buy from?

Who do you turn to when you want an answer to a question on your mind on a wet Tuesday afternoon?

How do you read reviews on products, films, and services?
That’s right on Google.

For most of us, Google is now very much part of our everyday lives. The negative individuals among us, who say that SEO is dead, are very much mistaken.

Google is where we all go to find information, from the weather tomorrow to where I can find a place to give my pooch a trim.

This is why search engine optimisation is a multi-billion-dollar industry.

Therefore, Google is the boss, the experts at sorting out the billions of pages online and rearranging them in a well-organised order, where we mere mortals can find answers to everyday pressing questions.

Behind the scenes, there’s Googlebot crawling and indexing, there’s mind bogglingly complex mathematical formulas being computed on massive servers, to do what, to “find us, well what time does the local chippy close!”- go on you know you’ve asked that.

Yet, business owners often have a question that’s on their mind: What about the free section of Google, the organic results, and how do I get my business to the top?

How can my business reign supreme and occupy the number one spot on Google?

Well, it’s not easy and not straightforward, but as the old saying goes, it wouldn’t be worth it if it were that easy.

We are simply the SEO experts here in the old city of Cardiff. We know our stuff and are the best, so why can we say that with such authority?

Because of “Ryan Walsh”.

Who?

Some of the best have mentioned Ryan, the brightest and most knowledgeable SEO expert globally, such as the grand and what we think is the best in the business: Barry Schwartz.

Barry regularly contributes to Search Engine Land, one of, if not the most respected, reliable SEO resource globally. And, we have had our work mentioned on Search Engine Land Recap several times (yes, we are that good).

So, in this article, we will give you more insight into how Google’s algorithm works and why it’s still the most widely used search engine here in the U.K.

We talk about ranking factors, the 10 most important factors that Google calculates to work out, and how good your business’s SEO is.

Table of contents:

• What exactly are Google Ranking Factors?
• What are the most important Google Ranking Factors?
• What are the most important on-page SEO ranking factors?
• What are the most critical technical SEO ranking factors?
• What are the most important off-page SEO ranking factors?

 

What are Google ranking factors?

Let’s start right at the beginning.

What are Google ranking factors?

Google ranking factors are the elements that Google uses to decipher how weak or strong a business’s search engine optimisation is. Whether the keyword is “organic dog food” or “wedding rings”, it doesn’t matter; Google will have already worked out how good your company’s SEO is if the website can get indexed.

 

Keywords

What are keywords?

So, keywords are words that describe products or services.

Some will have a higher search volume than others. So, for example, regardless of which business sector you operate in, there will be keywords that more people type or ask Google to find. Therefore, if your company can appear on the first page for these keywords, you can drive more organic traffic, that is, free visitors to your company website.

Sounds like a piece of cake.

Well, no, not really, because the businesses that occupy the number one position on Google could be raking in millions in sales per month for some business sectors.

They will not let competitors overtake or move them aside without a good fight.

 

Of course, not a physical fight, but one in which the on-page, off-page, and technical SEO is so blooming good, well overtaking them, can feel as though you’re trying to scale a wall so high, well it’s raining, and your hands are covered in grease, get the picture? It’s not straightforward at all.

 

What does “organic” mean?

So, organic in terms of search engine optimisation means getting visitors from the free section of Google.

You’re probably familiar with PPC advertising?

Many businesses invest in this type of marketing; you can obtain sales straightaway. However, businesses often want to get free traffic; this is where we come in and where we can offer our organic Seo services. This process takes a substantial amount of time. Therefore, it is very different from PPC. For example, regarding local SEO, it can often take 6 months or longer to start seeing results.

However, for example, a local business, a dental practice, or a solicitor’s practice, often cannot afford not to invest in improving their organic search engine optimisation.

The reason is that they may be paying for Google AdWords at the moment, yet they can’t afford not to be on the first page organically.

Because unless they rank there on the first page organically as well, they could be missing out on a lot of traffic. These organic visitors are going to competitor websites instead, which means they could be missing out on sales.

Therefore, today, mainly if they operate in highly competitive business sectors, they want to appear in the Google AdWords, organic, and Google Business results.

 

How many ranking factors are there?

Google uses over 200 ranking factors, yet they are all weighted differently. For example, a backlink from the BBC is worth more than a well-written alt text on a homepage.

Google, therefore, weights the ranking factors very differently; some are more important than others. Yet, as you would expect, SEO agencies want to optimise as many ranking factors as possible, to give the business the strongest chance of ranking high not just for one keyword, but multiple keywords.

 

Can the ranking factor be split into broad categories?

They most certainly can be split into broad categories, yet before we tell you more about the different SEO categories, it’s essential to know about Google EEAT.

So, Google EEAT is not a ranking factor; it is more guidance that Google has offered to businesses who want to improve their organic SEO.

Google quality raters are real people, not AI, who are used to decipher if business websites are high quality or not. They decide on characteristics and features that make a website quality or not.

Their input and findings, if you like, as to what makes a page and website of high quality, are then inserted into Google’s algorithms.

Now, Google EEAT is essential, and before you embark on improving any of your on-page or off-page ranking factors, such as backlinks, you need to read about Google EEAT. We recommend reading some articles about Google EEAT. Why it’s so essential is that we have written numerous articles on this subject at this agency, as they give you obvious insight into how Google deems a page high-quality or not.

So, for those who do not know, Google EEAT also stands for experience, expertise, authority and trustworthiness.

Now, if you like, these are broad areas that Google uses to decipher whether that page is of high quality. Again, this is not a ranking factor; it is more broad-brush advice, yet it’s crucial advice that all businesses and SEO consultants must know about.

Let’s explain it in a nutshell: if your page can demonstrate that you have genuine expertise and experience in what you are talking about, that page will rank higher in Google’s results. Then, it’s a matter of improving the page’s trustworthiness and authority, which often involves building quality backlinks. Then, for trustworthiness to improve, the business must have quality business reviews and be mentioned on high-quality websites.

 

Now we can come to explaining the broad SEO categories, which are:

 

On-page ranking factors

This can be the page or the blog post itself. This can include how the website has been optimised for various keywords. For example, how has the business used H1-H6 titles, alt text, internal links, and much more?
So, each marketing company will have its methods, yet ours is that we always start by improving the on-page SEO ranking factors first.

Why do we start with this first?

You want to tell Google exactly what products or services you are selling. You don’t want Googlebot to crawl and index a page, then leave without knowing what the page is about, what it’s selling, what it’s talking about.

Therefore, what on-page SEO is all about is giving strong clues as to what is being sold, what the page is about, and what it’s talking about.

However, here is something worth remembering: you can optimise a page and over-optimise it. Therefore, it’s a fine line between helping Google understand what the page is about and what you are selling and over-optimising the page, whereby Google’s algorithms deem the page spam.

Here’s a golden rule regarding organic search engine optimisation: put your customers first. Offer your customers the best advice you can, think about creating a good user experience, basically design and build the page around helping your customers.

This way, your organic search engine optimisation will improve naturally.

If, on the other hand, you force the process, you try to keep hammering home what the page is about, to the point where the customer is not going to find an answer they want, they may leave, causing the bounce rate to increase substantially.

So, over-optimisation is a real problem, and it often stems from businesses or even SEO consultants not understanding how Google’s algorithm works exactly.

 

Off-page ranking factors

Now, what unites businesses globally that have succeeded and occupied the number one position on Google is that they often tend to have powerful links.

Now, it could be that your business is in a small village or town, with very little competition. In this case, often backlinks are not needed.
However, when you face a lot of competition, what differentiates the companies that rank number 1 from those that rank number 100 will be backlinks.

The companies that have strong backlinks and have been built using white hat techniques, well, it’s these companies that rank higher on Google.

 

Technical SEO

For any business to appear in Google’s results, it needs to be crawled and indexed on page 1, page 3, or page 7.
This means that Googlebot needs to crawl and index the work. Therefore, it is arguably essential that the page can be crawled and indexed by Googlebot.

If there is an indexation issue, the page won’t appear in Google’s results.

What would you say is the most critical ranking factor?

 

For your business’s SEO to succeed, you need quality backlinks.

However, to obtain backlinks, there must be a reason other companies and websites want to link to your business in the first place.

Therefore, content marketing needs to have a high Google EEAT score to earn top links.

So, if you were to ask our agency what a business can do to start incrementally improving and strengthening the business’s search engine optimisation, we would have to say you need to create and write high-quality content marketing.

To rank higher than your direct competitors, whether you’re an electrician, solicitor, or hairdresser, content marketing needs to be better than what they have, if you want your business to rank higher.

 

Keywords

Keywords should be naturally written into your content marketing. Do add h1 through h6 titles, yet make sure that you write these in such a way that they help the reader skim read if they want to, to get to the section they want to read more about.
You can naturally write SEO keywords into the page by adding meta titles, meta descriptions, alt text, anchor text, internal links, etc.
This will then get crawled and indexed, and Google’s algorithms will better understand what the page is about.

 

Mobile website

When you think about how you buy items, many of us do so on our smartphones.

For example, when we have finished work, we might buy items on our smartphones from the comfort of our sofa.

From an SEO perspective, the mobile design must be excellent. As a business, you should work to reduce the bounce rate of your mobile design.

You will find that your larger businesses, especially all companies, should use split testing to reduce the bounce rate over time. This is to increase the dwell time, which will ultimately help your website rank higher in Google.

 

Make your website secure.

We recommend adding an SSL certificate to your website to make it more secure.

Many SEO agencies now believe an SSL certificate can also help improve your organic and local SEO.

 

In conclusion

We will now recap the different areas discussed in this article.

 

Quality content

Why is it essential that each page has a high Google EEAT score?

Every page, whether the homepage or product page, should have a high Google EEAT score. The text should also not be duplicated; we wouldn’t recommend using AI content either.

Instead, write high-quality content marketing for your website.

 

Keyword placement

Add keywords to page titles and the content marketing, but naturally write these into the paragraphs.

This means that just as you would explain something to someone in person, write the content marketing in the same way as if you were having a conversation.

Don’t add keywords to the page to improve the on-page SEO. This is called “keyword stuffing”- it can lead to a Google Penalty.

For example, if you’re selling fireworks and unnaturally keep writing “cheap fireworks” into the text, this can look like spam. Therefore, it will be picked by Googlebot, and then Google may issue an algorithmic or a manual penalty.

 

Image optimisation

Do add alt text to the pictures. For example, if the page sells a red cat collar, add that to the alt text.

Writing this into the alt text can help Google understand that the page is selling a red cat collar.

 

URL structure

The URL structure should be well thought out. However, don’t change the URL extension; the page has been live for some time. The reason is that it could sometimes lose the SEO value that the page has earned.

However, if you have a brand-new WordPress website designed and built, how can you use URL structures to improve the on-page SEO?
For example, if the page sells, let’s say a type of make-up, let’s say it’s a red lipstick?

Why not add URL extension /brand-name-red-lipstick

Again, this will help Google understand what that page is about and what it is selling.

 

Page speed

As mentioned early on, you should work on making your business website as fast as possible.

This often means improving the design and purchasing fast website hosting.

Mobile-friendliness

Your website should work on tablets and smartphones, yet you should also determine the bounce rate for each page.

For example, does the homepage’s mobile version have a high bounce rate?

For example, is there a significant difference between the bounce rate of the homepage for the desktop version and the mobile version?

Is the mobile version difficult to use?

For example, customers might not be able to get the right page quickly.

Therefore, they may get annoyed and leave the company website, meaning the website’s bounce rate increases.

Can you improve the mobile design?

Can you make it simpler to use?

 

Core Web Vitals

Again, this is all about making the company website a bit faster.

 

Site architecture

Are you about to have a brand-new company website built?

If so, think for a long time about the site architecture, which is how the pages will be laid out.

How can you make it simple for customers to find the right product effortlessly?

How have your direct competitors set out their products or services?

Site security

Do obtain an SSL certificate and ensure you keep your website’s plugins up to date.

 

Backlinks

Build quality backlinks.

About the author:

Ryan Walsh wrote this page.

Ryan is an SEO consultant born in Cardiff. He has helped numerous businesses in the city to obtain more sales.

This has ranged from dental practices through to solicitors’ practices. We can immensely simply help any business to gain more sales.

We only use the best white hat methods.

Ryan has over 10 years’ experience helping companies in Cardiff to gain more customers.

If you would like Ryan Walsh and his team of SEO consultants to work on your company website, then do give us a ring today.