Mobile Optimized: With more than half of all searches done from mobile devices, Google wants to see that your site is optimized for mobile users. Google states that: “Google Search uses breadcrumb markup in the body of a web page to categorize the information from the page in search results.” Thanks to Hummingbird, Google can now better understand the topic of a webpage.ĭuplicate Content: Identical content on the same site (even slightly modified) can negatively influence a site’s search engine visibility. Google Hummingbird: This “algorithm change” helped Google go beyond keywords. Use of AMP: While not a direct Google ranking factor, AMP may be a requirement to rank in the mobile version of the Google News Carousel.Įntity Match: Does a page’s content match the “entity” that a user is searching for? If so, that page may get a rankings boost for that keyword. That way, they can measure how quickly a page actually loads to users. Page Loading Speed via Chrome: Google also uses Chrome user data to get a better handle on a page’s loading time. Indeed, one recent ranking factors industry study found that content length correlated with SERP position. Google likely uses a sophisticated version of TF-IDF.Ĭontent Length: Content with more words can cover a wider breadth and are likely preferable in the algorithm compared to shorter, superficial articles. The more often that word appears on a page, the more likely it is that the page is about that word.
TF-IDF: A fancy way of saying: “How often does a certain word appear in a document?”. Along with your title tag, Google uses your H1 tag as a secondary relevancy signal, according to results from one correlation study: Keyword Appears in H1 Tag: H1 tags are a “second title tag”. However, your description tag can impact click-through-rate, which is a key ranking factor. Keyword in Description Tag: Google doesn’t use the meta description tag as a direct ranking signal. Title Tag Starts with Keyword: According to Moz, title tags that starts with a keyword tend to perform better than title tags with the keyword towards the end of the tag.