Google uses over 200 ranking factors in its algorithm. We do not know all of them, and above all they do not have the same impact — as optimising Core Web Vitals would compare to a website’s authority.
We do, however, benefit from better visibility thanks to the Google Leaks article. This article was written before the information leak but remains complementary.
That is why we will dive into what really counts.
I recently conducted a study to find out whether embedding a video improves SEO ranking. If you want to know the answer, go take a look!
The 3 SEO optimisation categories
Allow me to split SEO into 3 distinct types of optimisation: on-page SEO (which also includes technical SEO) and off-page SEO.
On-page SEO is, as its name suggests, optimising search engine ranking at the page level (and site level):
- Choose a primary keyword for the page and three or four associated keywords.
- Include the primary keyword in your URL.
- Make sure your title tag, meta description and H1 contain your primary keyword.
- Content must be of quality and written at a reading level comprehensible to a 14-year-old student.
- Vary the content structure to make it scannable (for example, use H2 and H3 headings correctly, bullet point lists, bold text, etc.).
- Make sure internal links use effective anchor text.
- Add images and videos
- …
Technical SEO refers to technical on-page optimisation, such as optimising crawl budget or page experience which includes Core Web Vitals among other things.
- Crawl and indexing optimisation
- Core Web Vitals
- Schema markup
- sitemap.xml
- robots.txt
- Canonical tag
- HTTP status codes (1xx – 5xx)
- Meta robot tag (noindex)
- …
Off-page SEO is everything related to SEO that cannot be directly optimised from your own website (in practice, since offering good content is itself a netlinking strategy). We could mention link building — creating links to your site, called backlinks — or social signals (social media). But there are other so-called off-page optimisations:
- Backlink building
- Social media
- Branding
- Local SEO
- Podcasts
- …
If you want to optimise your site’s SEO, I have detailed all these techniques on this blog by category. They are all direct and sometimes indirect criteria, but important nonetheless for ranking your site on the first page.
The 5 most important ranking factors
Let us look concretely at the SEO optimisations that will have the most impact.
SEO optimisations differ depending on a site’s topic and its current position in the search results. This is partly due to Google’s algorithm called Learning to Rank.
But broadly, we will look at what has the greatest impact on website rankings on Google.
1. Website authority
A site’s authority, called “juice”, refers to PageRank. PageRank is like a fluid that is transmitted between sites, increasing relevance for Google.
The links made between sites allow this juice to be transmitted. It is not just a question of “links”.
What I mean is that a whole host of things need to be taken into account when evaluating a good link:
Host Value: The Host Value or the popularity of the site (domain) that sends the link
Host Trust: Or CF for Majestic (citation flow) measures the level of trust of the page
Semantic Value: The Semantic Value is a popularity measure in which transmission is modulated by the semantics carried by the backlinks. When the link profile is perfectly thematised, this value is very close, equal, or in very rare cases superior to the Host Value.
Link anchor: An anchor targeting exact keywords is extremely powerful. Also, some people do not think of it or do not know, but it can also allow Google to understand the semantics.
TLD extension: a domain name extension like .gov or .edu is more powerful
Link placement: This relates to the reasonable surfer model. The placement of a link affects the distribution of PageRank. An optimised link should be in the content of a page, and as early as possible.
Outlinks: The number of links placed on a page dilutes PageRank. Conventionally, a maximum of 8 links in the main content.
Visibility: If the page is ranked on keywords and gives you a link, that is much better.
2. Internal linking
There are two things to say about internal linking. The first is that it allows Google to understand how your website has been structured. If you have a clear and logical structure, it is a ranking signal for Google.
Even if your site covers different but complementary topics, this helps to classify them.
The second thing: internal linking is closely related to link building, i.e. your site’s authority. Intelligently linking your pages allows you to optimise your site’s “juice”.
But internal linking is much more than that. For example, in the semantic cocoon principle, through internal linking we optimise user experience, better target our personas, prioritise pages, SEO keywords complement each other, search intent is naturally optimised, and much more besides.
3. Quality content
Content optimisation — title tags H(n), images, videos, keywords (co-occurrences / metamots) to add to the page, among other things — is very important.
But I would like to raise the following point. Everything in SEO is about links. Creating excellent content, epic content, allows you to convert every visitor. These visitors can become customers of course, but it also allows you to create a community, and every eyeball satisfied by your content will talk about you. This is purely indirect natural link building (netlinking).
Moreover, if you offer excellent content, it will tend to be naturally optimised for SEO, for search intent and for the word count required in your text.
4. Page experience
Page experience is an SEO criterion encompassing a huge number of criteria.
Here is what Google tells us to improve page experience:
That is to say:
- A site with HTTPS
- A secure site
- A site with no pop-ups
- A Core Web Vitals-friendly site
- A responsive site
Do not forget to think about page load speed. I sometimes see sites with very good CWV scores but very poor load speed. Yet a site’s speed will prevent a high bounce rate (a ranking factor) and will help improve crawl budget. Moreover, just like the principle of creating excellent content, site speed will improve “UX”.
5. Local SEO
Google always geolocates your mobile or computer to determine the best results to display, even if you do not have geolocation enabled. This is why, when you search for something that can be associated in any way with a local business, Google can suggest businesses near you. Even search results outside the local pack that seem “classic” are treated differently due to proximity.
This might be to find a plumber, a design agency (even if the location does not matter) or anything else.
In numbers? 46% of Google searches are aimed at finding a local business. Is this relevant for you? If you want to see more staggering figures, head to the local SEO chapter.
Several “classic” optimisations come up again, such as on-page (H(n), internal linking, etc.).
But here are those specific to local that carry the most weight:
- Having and completing your Google Business Profile as fully as possible
- NAP citations (Name / Address / Phone) — NAP present on the site and consistent (also present in structured data) and NAP in citations (external sites) with or without a link
- Social signals — being present on social media (a direct local ranking factor according to Moz)
Ranking factors based on position
If you do not know where to start, or if you are trying to climb from fifth to second place, there are optimisations that are completely specific depending on your position. The most notable would be optimising featured snippets via schema markup (structured data) for sites competing on the first page.
Here is a short list of optimisations based on the position of your pages in a competitive niche:
From TOP 50 to TOP 20:
- Domain authority (Host Value)
- Vocabulary diversity
- Text optimisation
From TOP 20 to TOP 10:
- Vocabulary diversity and text optimisation
- Page authority itself
- Semantic Value (link thematisation)
From TOP 10 to TOP 5:
- Strong authority, strong Semantic Value, and not too many over-optimised anchors
- Ultimately, everyone on the first page has strong authority — what matters most is avoiding SEO danger and having a “clean” site.
From TOP 5 to TOP 3:
- BERT – search intent
- Anchor diversity
TOP 3 to TOP 1:
- BERT
- Optimise CTR: Structured data (schema markup) and title tag
- Core Web Vitals
Based on a study conducted by IX-LABS (Peyronnet brothers — also the creators of Babbar, YourTextGuru, and other tools…).
If you want to see the data, it is just below!
Semantics
TOP 50 refers to the fifth page of Google, and so on. TOP 3 and TOP 5 therefore refer to the third and fifth positions on the first page.
The number shown in the circles will have no relevance for us. To simplify, do not take it into account — it was merely the result of complex calculations.
Finally, (ALL) refers to the entirety of ranked pages, and therefore non-competitive or average niches. As for (COMP), it refers to competitive SERPs.
One small clarification: if you are in the TOP 10, i.e. on the first page, you are also in the TOP 50…
Content optimisation:
Here we have the SEO Optimisation Score. In other words, a semantic score related to content optimisation (in particular through co-occurrences and repeated lexical fields).
We can see that pages ranking on the first page (TOP 10) are pages that have done text optimisation. Nothing more, nothing less.
Which is far more drastic compared to a competitive niche.
Furthermore, if you have a showcase / e-commerce site as a hairdresser in your region, optimising your texts will be very powerful. Conversely, if you are in a competitive niche, it will not be enough to rank you.
Vocabulary diversity:
Did you read the paragraph at the start of the content saying that pages should be comprehensible for users at a 14-year-old reading level? In data, here is what that looks like:
We can clearly see that the simpler your text is to understand, the better your pages will rank. Users should not have to look up the definition of a word to understand your sentences. For example, if you are a construction company, avoid technical jargon from your sector — terms like “cladding” which are incomprehensible to the average person, when it simply means you offer an external wall covering.
Competitive niche:
There is not much more to say — it is the same conclusion.
Text length (on average):
Two fundamental things to understand when reading this graph:
The first is that average text length is just an average. But the length of a text should only be relative to the average length of the content that is ranking and to the search intent. If your page targets the keyword “How to cook pasta”, nobody will want to see content with more than 1,000 words.
Second interesting point: the more semantically optimised the content, the better it ranks. But the higher you go in rankings, the shorter the text. This means you need to create pages with as little text as possible for the highest possible semantic optimisation score. In other words, not very natural, since normally a text with a high natural semantic optimisation score is naturally a long text.
Competitive niche:
Same for text length in highly competitive niches, though the break here is spectacular. In other words, offer long content, but not too long.
BERT:
This is a competitive dataset (COMP)
BERT is a Google algorithm which, briefly put, tries to understand humans. It is this algorithm that affects search intent and the understanding of content more broadly.
What we can observe is that search intent optimisation will not be finely analysed for sites not ranking in the TOP 10. Whereas it will be paramount for pages in the top positions.
Beyond search intent, we often believe we are creating content that is logical when Google cannot make sense of it. Making content understandable for a machine is complicated.
The search intents provided by tools like Semrush analyse the overall search intent — to know for example whether it is commercial or informational. But they say nothing about the content you should write after analysing this “global” intent.
So, to optimise for “BERT”, the best approach is to answer PAA (People Also Ask) questions, displayed in the search results. If you answer them, you inevitably become relevant in Google’s eyes. You can also structure your content around these questions.
But to truly respond to search intent, I strongly invite you to consult our guide on the subject.
That covers semantics.
Website authority
As you have understood, SEO is mainly a question of links and therefore authority.
Here is a graph of the impact of link building:
I will not go into detail on every metric. I will instead explain simply.
What to note here is that your site needs many backlinks to rank on the first page. The second takeaway is that if that is not enough — if you want to be among the best in the top 10 — building links to a specific page on a site will play a decisive role.
Reading the graph, particularly domain authority (Host Value): if you are in position 20+, getting backlinks to your main page allows you to climb to the first page.
Then we see a break. This means that to climb to the top positions on the first page, it is pointless to continue increasing domain authority. In a second phase, if you want to compete with other sites in the TOP 10, you need to build links to specific pages:
A classic netlinking strategy consists of building many links to your homepage so that the juice is transmitted to all your pages. But that will not always be enough.
For competitive niches, the conclusions are relatively the same:
If you do not know what Host Trust and Page Trust are (the graphs below), assume that they are not very important regardless. What matters is the “Value”.
Link semantics:
Thanks to thematic PageRank, which evaluates the power of a link based on the thematic proximity of the linking page, the link will be more powerful.
This is what the Semantic Value tells us.
Here is what the position graph looks like:
We can see here that semantically close links are decisive for climbing from TOP 10 to TOP 5.
But we can see that at the page level, people do not make much effort.
You can also calculate the best backlink to obtain to optimise thematic PageRank with the induced force at Babbar.
Competitive side:
Here we can see that link semantics are always important, and increasingly so depending on the ranking position. But also that semantics are important at the level of links built to a specific page.
If you look at the difference, in competitive niches the score is 44 even from TOP 50, whereas it is 45 to be in the TOP 3 in a non-competitive niche.
Host Trust vs Semantic Value:
If we take the ratio between a site’s backlinks (Host Trust) relative to link semantics (Semantic Value) — i.e. whether links are thematised or not — we see that competitive niches pay much more attention to this.
This therefore also means that if your niche is not competitive, thematising your links could be very effective since people do much less of it.
