200+ Google ranking factoren

Je weet vast al wel dat Google méér dan 200 ranking factoren gebruikt in haar algoritme.

Maar wat zijn deze factoren eigenlijk?

Nou, je hebt geluk!

We hebben een lijst met méér dan 200 ranking factoren samengesteld.

Sommige factoren zijn bewezen, sommige zijn controversieel en sommige zijn pure speculatie.

Maar hier zijn ze allemaal. Let op met de ❌ factoren!

Inhoud

Website Factoren

Domein leeftijd

In {modal url="https://www.youtube.com/embed/-pnpg00FWJY"}deze video{/modal}, zegt Google’s Matt Cutts het volgende:

“The difference between a domain that’s six months old versus one year old is really not that big at all.”

In andere woorden, Google gebruikt domein leeftijd... maar het is niet meer zo belangrijk als vroeger.

Het domein bevat jouw zoekwoord

Niet meer zo belangrijk als vroeger, maar het helpt nog steeds.

In {modal url="https://www.youtube.com/embed/rAWFv43qubI"}deze video{/modal}, legt Matt Cutts het belang van het zoekwoord in de domeinnaam uit.

ZOEKWOORD IS HET EERSTE WOORD IN HET DOMEIN

Een domein die start met het zoekwoord, heeft een voordeel tov website die geen zoekwoord in het domein hebben, of die het zoekwoord meer naar achteren in het domein hebben staan.

Domein registratie duur

Volgens een Google patent worden waardevolle domeinen vaak voor meerdere jaren vastgelegd, integenstelling tot "doorway" (illegale) domeinen.

Hierdoor kan de datum, wanneer een domein verloopt, de legitimiteit van het domein voorspellen.

Subdomein bevat het Zoekwoord

Het Moz expert panel denkt dat een zoekwoord in het subdomein de posities positief kan beïnvloeden.

Domein Historie

Een domeinnaam die veel verschillende eigenaren heeft gehad, kan lager gewaardeerd worden. Dit kan leiden tot lagere posities.

Exacte Match Domein

Exacte Match Domeinen kunnen een licht voordeel opleveren, behalve bij websites van lage kwaliteit. Deze worden door de Google EMD Update lager gewaardeerd.

Publieke vs. Privé Whois

Privé Whois informatie kan een teken zijn van "verdachte" activiteiten. Volgens Googler Matt Cutts:

“…When I checked the whois on them, they all had “whois privacy protection service” on them. That’s relatively unusual. …Having whois privacy turned on isn’t automatically bad, but once you get several of these factors all together, you’re often talking about a very different type of webmaster than the fellow who just has a single site or so.”

WhoIs Eigenaar heeft een Google penalty

Als Google een persoon kwalificeert als een spammer, dan kunnen andere websites van deze persoon lager gewaardeerd worden in de zoekresultaten.

Land TLD extensie

Heb je een .nl of .be als domeinnaam extensie, dan helpt dat om goed te ranken in Nederland of België. Het kan wel leiden tot lagere posities in het buitenland.

Waardevolle en Unieke Inhoud

Google heeft aangegeven dat websites die geen nieuwe, bruikbare inhoud hebben, lager gewaardeerd kunnen worden. Met name als het gaat om affiliate websites.

Contact Pagina

Het Google Quality Document geeft aan dat Google de voorkeur geeft aan website met voldoende contact informatie. Helemaal als de contact informatie overeenkomt met de Whois informatie.

Domein Trust / TrustRank

Veel SEOs geloven dat "TrustRank" een heel belangrijke ranking factor is. Een recent patent van Google “Search result ranking based on trust”, lijkt dit te ondersteunen.

Website Structuur

Een goede website structuur helpt Google om de website thematisch te organiseren. Het kan Googlebot ook helpen bij de indexatie van alle website pagina's.

Website Updates

Veel SEOs geloven dat website updates en nieuwe inhoud ervoor zorgen dat Google de website belangrijker vindt. Google heeft echter recent ontkent dat ze "publicatie frequentie" gebruiken in haar algoritme.

Sitemap Aanwezig

Een sitemap helpt zoekmachines om jouw webpagina's beter en sneller te indexeren. Dit leidt tot een verbetering in de zichtbaarheid in de zoekmachines.

Website Uptime

Als een website vaak niet te bereiken is, kun je je natuurlijk voorstellen dat Google dit niet leuk vindt. Dit kan ten koste gaan van jouw posities in Google ( en kan zelfs leiden tot deïndexering).

Server Locatie

Hoewel dit niet meer zo belangrijk is als vroeger, kan de server lokatie nog steeds van invloed zijn op de posities van jouw zoekwoorden in Google. Dit geldt vooral voor geo-specifieke zoekopdrachten.

SSL Verbinding

Google heeft bevestigd dat het gebruik van HTTPS een ranking signaal is.

Voorwaarden en Privacy Pagina's

Deze 2 pagina's tonen aan dat de website een betrouwbare deelnemer aan het internet is.

Dubbele Meta Informatie On-Site

Dubbele meta informatie over jouw website kan de zichtbaarheid van al jouw pagina's negatief beïnvloeden.

Breadcrumb Navigatie

Google gebruikt breadcrumb markup in de body van een webpagina om de informatie van de pagina in de zoekresultaten te categoriseren.

Mobiel Geoptimaliseerd

With more than half of all searches done from mobile devices, Google wants to see that your site is optimized for mobile users. In fact, Google now penalizes websites that aren’t mobile friendly

YouTube

There’s no doubt that YouTube videos are given preferential treatment in the SERPs (probably because Google owns it ):

YouTube SERPs
In fact, Search Engine Land found that YouTube.com traffic increased significantly after Google Panda.

Gebruiksvriendelijkheid Website

A site that’s difficult to use or to navigate can hurt rankings indirectly by reducing time on site, pages viewed and bounce rate (in other words, RankBrain ranking factors).

Google Analytics en Google Console

Use of Google Analytics and Google Search Console: Some think that having these two programs installed on your site can improve your page’s indexing. They may also directly influence rankings by giving Google more data to work with (ie. more accurate bounce rate, whether or not you get referral traffic from your backlinks etc.). That said, Google has denied this as a myth.

Reviews / Website Reputatie

A site’s reputation on sites like Yelp.com likely play an important role in Google’s algorithm. Google even posted a rarely candid outline of how they use online reviews after one site was caught ripping off customers in an effort to get press and links.

Panda Penalty ❌

Sites with low-quality content (particularly content farms) are less visible in search after getting hit by a Panda penalty.

Links naar Foute Omgevingen ❌

Linking out to “bad neighborhoods” — like spammy pharmacy or payday loan sites — may hurt your search visibility.

Redirects ❌

Sneaky redirects is a big no-no. If caught, it can get a site not just penalized, but de-indexed.

Popups of “Afleidende Advertenties” ❌

The official Google Rater Guidelines Document says that popups and distracting ads is a sign of a low-quality site.

Interstitial Popups ❌

Google may penalize sites that display full page “interstitial” popups to mobile users.

Interstitials

Website Over-Optimalisatie ❌

Yes, Google does penalize people for over-optimizing their site. This includes: keyword stuffing, header tag stuffing, excessive keyword decoration.

Gibberish Content ❌

A Google Patent outlines how Google can identify “gibberish” content, which is helpful for filtering out spun or auto-generated content from their index.

Doorway Pages ❌

Google wants the page you show to Google to be the page that user ultimately see. If your page redirects people to another page, that’s a “Doorway Page”. Needless to say, Google doesn’t like sites that use Doorway Pages.

Advertenties Boven de Vouw (Fold) ❌

Ads Above the Fold: The “Page Layout Algorithm” penalizes sites with lots of ads (and not much content) above the fold.

Ads above the fold

Hiding Affiliate Links ❌

Going too far when trying to hide affiliate links (especially with cloaking) can bring on a penalty.

Fred ❌

A nickname given to a series of Google updates starting in 2017. According to Search Engine Land, Fred “targets low-value content sites that put revenue above helping their users.”

Affiliate Sites ❌

It’s no secret that Google isn’t the biggest fan of affiliates. And many think that sites that monetize with affiliate programs are put under extra scrutiny.

Autogenerated Content ❌

Google understandably hates autogenerated content. If they suspect that your site’s pumping out computer-generated content, it could result in a penalty or de-indexing.

Excess PageRank Sculpting ❌

Going too far with PageRank sculpting — by nofollowing all outbound links — may be a sign of gaming the system.

IP Address Gemarkeerd als Spam ❌

If your server’s IP address is flagged for spam, it may affect all sites on that server.

Meta Tag Spamming ❌

Keyword stuffing can also happen in meta tags. If Google thinks you’re adding keywords to your title and description tags in an effort to game the algo, they may hit your site with a penalty.

Webpagina Factoren

De Title Tag bevat het zoekwoord

Although not as critical as it once was, your title tag remains an important on-page SEO signal.

De Title Tag Begint met het Zoekwoord

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.

De Meta Description bevat het Zoekwoord

Google doesn’t use the meta description tag as a direct ranking signal. However, your description tag can impact click-through-rate, which is a key ranking factor.

De H1 Tag bevat het Zoekwoord

H1 tags are a “second title tag”. Along with your title tag, Google uses your H1 tag as a secondary relevancy signal, according to results from this correlation study:

TF-IDF ▷ “Hoe vaak komt het zoekwoord voor in een document?”

The more often that word appears on a page, the more likely it is that the page is about that word. Google likely uses a sophisticated version of TF-IDF.

Aantal woorden inhoud

Content with more words can cover a wider breadth and are likely preferable in the algorithm compared to shorter, superficial articles. Indeed, one recent ranking factors industry study found that content length correlated with SERP position.

Inhoudsopgave

Using a linked table of contents can help Google better understand your page’s content. It can also result in sitelinks:

Keyword Density

Although not as important as it once was, Google may use it to determine the topic of a webpage. But going overboard can hurt you.

Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) Zoekwoorden in Inhoud

LSI keywords help search engines extract meaning from words that have more than one meaning (for example: Apple the computer company vs. Apple the fruit). The presence/absence of LSI probably also acts as a content quality signal.

LSI Zoekwoorden in Title Tag en Meta Description

As with webpage content, LSI keywords in page meta tags probably help Google discern between words with multiple potential meanings. May also act as a relevancy signal.

Pagina Behandelt het Onderwerp Uitvoerig

There’s a known correlation between depth of topic coverage and Google rankings. Therefore, pages that cover every angle likely have an edge vs. pages that only cover a topic partially.

Pagina Snelheid

Both Google and Bing use page loading speed as a ranking factor. Search engine spiders can estimate your site speed fairly accurately based on your page’s HTML code.

Pagina Snelheid in Chrome

Google may also use Chrome user data to get a better handle on a page’s loading time. That way, they can measure how quickly a page actually loads to users.

Gebruik van AMP

While not a direct Google ranking factor, AMP may be a requirement to rank in the mobile version of the Google News Carousel.

Entity 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.

Google Hummingbird

This “algorithm change” helped Google go beyond keywords. Thanks to Hummingbird, Google can now better understand the topic of a webpage.

Dubbele Inhoud

Identical content on the same site (even slightly modified) can negatively influence a site’s search engine visibility.

Rel=Canonical

When used properly, use of this tag may prevent Google from penalizing your site for duplicate content.

Afbeelding Optimalisatie

Images send search engines important relevancy signals through their file name, alt text, title, description and caption.

Recente Inhoud

Google Caffeine update favors recently published or updated content, especially for time-sensitive searches. Highlighting this factor’s importance, Google shows the date of a page’s last update for certain pages.

Grootte van de Inhoud Update

The significance of edits and changes also serves as a freshness factor. Adding or removing entire sections is more significant than switching around the order of a few words or fixing a typo.

Historische Pagina Updates

How often has the page been updated over time? Daily, weekly, every 5 years? Frequency of page updates also play a role in freshness.

Zoekwoord Prominence

Having a keyword appear in the first 100 words of a page’s content is correlated to first page Google rankings.

Zoekwoord in H2, H3 Tags

Having your keyword appear as a subheading in H2 or H3 format may be another weak relevancy signal. In fact, Googler John Mueller states:

“These heading tags in HTML help us to understand the structure of the page.”

Kwaliteit Uitgaande Links

Many SEOs think that linking out to authority sites helps send trust signals to Google. And this is backed up by a recent industry study.

Thema Uitgaande Links

According to The Hillop Algorithm, Google may use the content of the pages you link to as a relevancy signal. For example, if you have a page about cars that links to movie-related pages, this may tell Google that your page is about the movie Cars, not the automobile.

Grammatica en Spelling

Proper grammar and spelling is a quality signal, although Cutts gave mixed messages a few years back on whether or not this was important.

Syndicated Content

Is the content on the page original? If it’s scraped or copied from an indexed page it won’t rank as well… or may not get indexed at all.

Mobiel Vriendelijk

Often referred to as “Mobilegeddon“, this update rewarded pages that were properly optimized for mobile devices.

Gebruiksvriendelijkheid op Mobiel

Websites that mobile users can easily use may have an edge in Google’s “Mobile-first Index”.

Verborgen Inhoud op Mobiel

Hidden content on mobile devices may not get indexed (or may not be weighed as heavily) vs. fully visible content. However, a Googler recently stated that hidden content is OK. But also said that in the same video, “…if it’s critical content it should be visible…”.

Ondersteunende Inhoud

According to a now-public Google Rater Guidelines Document, helpful supplementary content is an indicator of a page’s quality (and therefore, Google ranking). Examples include currency converters, loan interest calculators and interactive recipes.

Inhoud Verborgen Achter Tabbladen

Do users need to click on a tab to reveal some of the content on your page? If so, Google has said that this content “may not be indexed”.

Aantal Uitgaande Links

Too many dofollow OBLs can “leak” PageRank, which can hurt that page’s rankings.

Multimedia

Images, videos and other multimedia elements may act as a content quality signal. For example, one industry study found a correlation between multimedia and rankings:

Image usage rankings

Aantal Interne Verwijzende Links naar de Pagina

The number of internal links to a page indicates its importance relative to other pages on the site.

Kwaliteit van de Interne Verwijzende Links

Internal links from authoritative pages on domain have a stronger effect than pages with no or low PageRank.

Gebroken Links

Having too many broken links on a page may be a sign of a neglected or abandoned site. The Google Rater Guidelines Document uses broken links as one was to assess a homepage’s quality.

Reading Level

There’s no doubt that Google estimates the reading level of webpages. In fact, Google used to give you reading level stats:

Google Reading Level

But what they do with that information is up for debate. Some say that a basic reading level will help you rank better because it will appeal to the masses. But others associate a basic reading level with content mills like Ezine Articles.

Affiliate Links

Affiliate links themselves probably won’t hurt your rankings. But if you have too many, Google’s algorithm may pay closer attention to other quality signals to make sure you’re not a “thin affiliate site“.

HTML fouten / W3C validatie

Lots of HTML errors or sloppy coding may be a sign of a poor quality site. While controversial, many in SEO think that a well-coded page is uses as a quality signal.

Domein Authoriteit

All things being equal, a page on an authoritative domain will rank higher than a page on a domain with less authority.

Pagina PageRank

Not perfectly correlated. But pages with lots of authority tend to outrank pages without much link authority.

URL Lengte

Excessively long URLs may hurt a page’s search engine visibility. In fact, several industry studies have found that short URLs tend to have a slight edge in Google’s search results.

url length2

URL Niveau

A page closer to the homepage may get a slight authority boost vs. pages buried deep down in a site’s architecture.

Human Editors

Although never confirmed, Google has filed a patent for a system that allows human editors to influence the SERPs.

Pagina Categorie

The category the page appears on is a relevancy signal. A page that’s part of a closely related category may get a relevancy boost compared to a page that’s filed under an unrelated category.

WordPress Tags

Tags are WordPress-specific relevancy signal. According to Yoast.com:

“The only way it improves your SEO is by relating one piece of content to another, and more specifically a group of posts to each other.”

Zoekwoord in URL

Another relevancy signal. A Google rep recently called this a “a very small ranking factor“. But a ranking factor nontheless.

URL String

The categories in the URL string are read by Google and may provide a thematic signal to what a page is about:

URL string

Referenties en Bronnen

Citing references and sources, like research papers do, may be a sign of quality. The Google Quality Guidelines states that reviewers should keep an eye out for sources when looking at certain pages: “This is a topic where expertise and/or authoritative sources are important…”. However, Google has denied that they use external links as a ranking signal.

Bullets en Genummerde Lijsten

Bullets and numbered lists help break up your content for readers, making them more user friendly. Google likely agrees and may prefer content with bullets and numbers.

Pagina Prioriteit in Sitemap

The priority a page is given via the sitemap.xml file may influence ranking.

Teveel Uitgaande Links

Straight from the aforementioned Quality rater document:

“Some pages have way, way too many links, obscuring the page and distracting from the Main Content.”

Kwaliteit van de Overige Zoekwoorden van de Pagina

If the page ranks for several other keywords, it may give Google an internal sign of quality.

Pagina Leeftijd

Although Google prefers fresh content, an older page that’s regularly updated may outperform a newer page.

Gebruiksvriendelijke Layout

Citing the Google Quality Guidelines Document yet again:

“The page layout on highest quality pages makes the Main Content immediately visible.”

Geparkeerde Domeinen

A Google update in December of 2011 decreased search visibility of parked domains.

Nuttige Inhoud

As pointed out by Backlinko reader Jared Carrizales, Google may distinguish between “quality” and “useful” content.

Backlink Factoren

Leeftijd van het Linkende Domein

Backlinks from aged domains may be more powerful than new domains.

Aantal Linkende Homepages

The number of referring domains is one of the most important ranking factors in Google’s algorithm, as you can see from this industry study of 1 million Google Search results.

Aantal Links van verschillende C-Klasse IPs

Links from separate class-c IP addresses suggest a wider breadth of sites linking to you, which can help with rankings.

Aantal Linkende Pagina's

The total number of linking pages — even from the same domain — has an impact on rankings.

Backlink Anker Tekst

As noted in this description of Google’s original algorithm:

“First, anchors often provide more accurate descriptions of web pages than the pages themselves.”

Obviously, anchor text is less important than before (and, when over-optimized, work as a webspam signal). But keyword-rich anchor text still sends a strong relevancy signal in small doses.

Alt Tag (Afbeelding Links)

Alt text acts as anchor text for images.

Links van .edu or .gov Domeinen

Matt Cutts has stated that TLD doesn’t factor into a site’s importance. However, that doesn’t stop SEOs from thinking that there’s a special place in the algo for .gov and .edu TLDs.

Authoriteit Linkende Pagina

The authority (PageRank) of the referring page has been an extremely important ranking factor since Google’s early days and still is.

Authoriteit Linkend Domein

The referring domain’s authority may play an independent role in a link’s value.

Links van Concurrenten

Links from other pages ranking in the same SERP may be more valuable to a page’s ranking for that particular keyword.

Links van “Gerespecteerde” Websites in Jouw Branche

Although speculative, some SEOs believe that Google won’t fully trust your website until you get linked to from a set of “expected” sites in your industry.

Links van "Foute Omgevingen"

Links from so-called “bad neighborhoods” may hurt your site.

Gast Artikelen

Guest Posts: Although links from guest posts still pass value, they likely aren’t as powerful as true editorial links (plus, “large-scale” guest posting can get your site into trouble).

Links van Advertenties

Links From Ads: According to Google, links from ads should be nofollowed. However, it’s likely that Google is able to identify and filter out followed links from ads.

Homepage Authoriteit

Links to a referring page’s homepage may play special importance in evaluating a site’s — and therefore a link’s — weight.

Nofollow Links

This is one of the most controversial topics in SEO. Google’s official word on the matter is:

“In general, we don’t follow them.”

Which suggests that they do…at least in certain cases. Having a certain % of nofollow links may also indicate a natural vs. unnatural link profile.

Diversiteit van Link Types

Having an unnaturally large percentage of your links coming from a single source (ie. forum profiles, blog comments) may be a sign of webspam. On the other hand, links from diverse sources is a sign of a natural link profile.

“Gesponsorde Links”

Words like “sponsors”, “link partners” and “sponsored links” may decrease a link’s value.

Contextuele Links

Links embedded inside a page’s content are considered more powerful than links on an empty page or found elsewhere on the page.

Excessieve 301 Redirects naar Pagina

Backlinks coming from 301 redirects dilute some PageRank, according to a Webmaster Help Video.

Interne Link Anker Tekst

Internal link anchor text is another relevancy signal. Although internal links likely have much less weight than anchor text coming from external sites.

Link Title Attribuut

The link title (the text that appears when you hover over a link) may also be used as a weak relevancy signal.

Land TLD van het Linkende Domein

Getting links from country-specific top level domain extensions (.de, .cn, .co.uk) may help you rank better in that country.

Link Locatie in de Inhoud

Links in the beginning of a piece of content may carry slightly more weight than links placed at the end of the content.

Link Locatie op de Pagina

Where a link appears on a page is important. Generally, a link embedded in a page’s content is more powerful than a link in the footer or sidebar area.

Relevantie van het Linkende Domein

A link from a site in a similar niche is significantly more powerful than a link from a completely unrelated site.

Pagina Relevantie

A link from a relevant page also passes more value.

Zoekwoorden in de Title Tag

Google gives extra love to links from pages that contain your page’s keyword in the title (“Experts linking to experts”.)

Link Toename

A site with positive link velocity usually gets a SERP boost as it shows your site is increasing in popularity.

Link Afname

On the flip side, a negative link velocity can significantly reduce rankings as it’s a signal of decreasing popularity.

Links van “Hub” Pagina's

The Hilltop Algorithm suggests that getting links from pages that are considered top resources (or hubs) on a certain topic are given special treatment.

Link van een Authoriteit Website

A link from a site considered an “authority site” likely pass more juice than a link from a small, relatively unknown site.

Link is Wikipedia Bron

Although the links are nofollow, many think that getting a link from Wikipedia gives you a little added trust and authority in the eyes of search engines.

Co-Occurrences

The words that tend to appear around your backlinks helps tell Google what that page is about.

link-co-citations

Backlink Leeftijd

According to a Google patent, older links have more ranking power than newly minted backlinks.

Links van Echte Websites vs. “Splogs”

Due to the proliferation of blog networks, Google probably gives more weight to links coming from “real sites” than from fake blogs. They likely use brand and user-interaction signals to distinguish between the two.

Natuurlijk Link Profiel

A site with a “natural” link profile is going to rank highly and be more durable to updates than one that has obviously used black hat strategies to build links.

Linkruil

Google’s Link Schemes page lists “Excessive link exchanging” as a link scheme to avoid.

Zelfgemaakte Inhoud Links

Google can identify UGC vs. content published by the actual site owner. For example, they know that a link from the official WordPress.com blog is very different than a link from besttoasterreviews.wordpress.com.

301 Links

Links from 301 redirects may lose a little bit of juice compared to a direct link. However, Matt Cutts says that a 301s are similar to direct links

Schema.org Gebruik

Pages that support microformats may rank above pages without it. This may be a direct boost or the fact that pages with microformatting have a higher SERP CTR:

TrustRank van Linkende Website

The trustworthiness of the site linking to you determines how much “TrustRank” gets passed on to you.

Aantal Uitgaande Links op de Pagina

PageRank is finite. A link on a page with hundreds of external links passes less PageRank than a page with a handful of outbound links.

Forum Links

Because of industrial-level spamming, Google may significantly devalue links from forums.

Aantal Woorden van de Linkende Inhoud

Word Count of Linking Content: A link from a 1000-word post is more valuable than a link inside of a 25-word snippet.

Kwaliteit van de Linkende Inhoud

Links from poorly written or spun content don’t pass as much value as links from well-written, content.

Sitewide Links

Matt Cutts has confirmed that sitewide links are “compressed” to count as a single link.

Onnatuurlijke Groei van Links ❌

A sudden (and unnatural) influx of links is a sure-fire sign of phony links.

Penguin Penalty ❌

Sites that were hit by Google Penguin are significantly less visible in search. Although, apparently, Penguin now focuses more on filtering out bad links vs. penalizing entire websites.

Link Profiel met Hoog % Lage Kwaliteit Links ❌

Lots of links from sources commonly used by black hat SEOs (like blog comments and forum profiles) may be a sign of gaming the system.

Relevantie Linkend Domein ❌

The famous analysis by MicroSiteMasters.com found that sites with an unnaturally high amount of links from unrelated sites were more susceptible to Penguin.

Linking domain relevancy

Onnatuurlijke Links Waarschuwing ❌

Google has sent out thousands of “Google Search Console notice of detected unnatural links” messages. This usually precedes a ranking drop, although not 100% of the time.

Lage Kwaliteit Directory Links ❌

According to Google, baclinks from low-quality directories can lead to a penalty.

Widget Links ❌

Google frowns on links that are automatically generated when user embeds a “widget” on their site.

Links van hetzelfde C-klasse IP adres ❌

Getting an unnatural amount of links from sites on the same server IP may help Google determine that your links are coming from a blog network.

“Poison” Anker Tekst ❌

Having “poison” anchor text (especially pharmacy keywords) pointed to your site may be a sign of spam or a hacked site. Either way, it can hurt your site’s ranking.

Onnatuurlijke Piek in Aantal Links ❌

A 2013 Google Patent describes how Google can identify whether or not an influx of links to a page is legitimate. Those unnatural links may become devalued.

Links van Artikelen en Persberichten ❌

Articles directories and press releases has been abused to the point that Google now considers these two link building strategies a “link scheme” in many cases.

Handmatige Acties ❌

There are several types of these, but most are related to black hat link building.

Links Verkopen ❌

Getting caught selling links can hurt your search visibility.

Google Sandbox ❌

New sites that get a sudden influx of links are sometimes put in the Google Sandbox, which temporarily limits search visibility.

Google Dance ❌

The Google Dance can temporarily shake up rankings. According to a Google Patent, this may be a way for them to determine whether or not a site is trying to game the algorithm.

Google dance

Disavow Tool ❌

Use of the Disavow Tool may remove a manual or algorithmic penalty for sites that were the victims of negative SEO.

Reconsideration Request ❌

A successful reconsideration request can lift a penalty.

Temporary Link Schemes ❌

Google has caught onto people that create — and quickly remove — spammy links. Also know as a temporary link scheme.

Overige Google Algoritme Factoren

RankBrain

RankBrain is Google’s AI algorithm. Many believe that its main purpose is to measure how users interact with the search results (and rank the results accordingly).

Organische Click Through Rate (CTR) voor een Zoekwoord

According to Google, pages that get clicked more in CTR may get a SERP boost for that particular keyword.

Interpreting live experiments

Organic CTR for All Keywords: A site’s organic CTR for all keywords it ranks for may be a human-based, user interaction signal (in other words, a “Quality Score” for the organic results).

Bounce Rate

Not everyone in SEO agrees bounce rate matters, but it may be a way of Google to use their users as quality testers (after all, pages with a high bounce rate probably aren’t a great result for that keyword). Also, a recent study by SEMRush found a correlation between bounce rate and Google rankings.

bounce rate seo

Directe Bezoeken

It’s confirmed that Google uses data from Google Chrome to determine how many people visit site (and how often). Sites with lots of direct traffic are likely higher quality sites vs. sites that get very little direct traffic. In fact, the SEMRush study I just cited found a significant correlation between direct traffic and Google rankings.

Terugkerende Bezoekers

Sites with repeat visitors may get a Google ranking boost.

Pogosticking

“Pogosticking” is a special type of bounce. In this case, the user clicks on other search results in an attempt to find the answer to their query.

Pogosticking
Results that people Pogostick from may get a significantly rankings drop.

Geblokkeerde Websites

Google has discontinued this feature in Chrome. However, Panda used this feature as a quality signal. So Google may still use a variation of it.

Chrome Bladwijzers

We know that Google collects Chrome browser usage data. Pages that get bookmarked in Chrome might get a boost.

Number of Comments: Pages with lots of comments may be a signal of user-interaction and quality. In fact, one Googler said comments can help “a lot” with rankings.

Community Through Comments Help A Lot With Ranking

Dwell Time

Google pays very close attention to “dwell time”: how long people spend on your page when coming from a Google search. This is also sometimes referred to as “long clicks vs short clicks”. In short: Google measures how long Google searchers spend on your page. The longer time spent, the better.

Query Deserves Freshness

Google gives newer pages a boost for certain searches.

Query Deserves Diversity

Google may add diversity to a SERP for ambiguous keywords, such as “Ted”, “WWF” or “ruby”.

Gebruiksgeschiedenis

You’ve probably noticed this yourself: websites that you visit frequently get a SERP boost for your searches.

User Search History: Search chain influence search results for later searches. For example, if you search for “reviews” then search for “toasters”, Google is more likely to rank toaster review sites higher in the SERPs.

Featured Snippets

According to an SEMRush study, Google chooses Featured Snippets content based on a combination of content length, formatting, page authority and HTTPs usage.

Geo Targeting

Google gives preference to sites with a local server IP and country-specific domain name extension.

Safe Search / Veilig Zoeken

Search results with curse words or adult content won’t appear for people with Safe Search turned on.

Google+ Circles

Even though Google+ is essentially dead, Google shows higher results for authors and sites that you’ve added to your Google Plus Circles.

“YMYL” Zoekwoorden

Google has higher content quality standards for “Your Money or Your Life” keywords.

DMCA Klachten

Google “downranks” pages with legitimate DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) complaints.

Domein Diversiteit

The so-called “Bigfoot Update” supposedly added more domains to each SERP page.

Transactionele Zoekopdrachten

Google sometimes displays different results for shopping-related keywords, like flight searches.

Locale Zoekopdrachten

For local searches, Google often places local results above the “normal” organic SERPs.

Grote Merken Voorkeur

After the Vince Update, Google began giving big brands a boost for certain keywords.

Shopping Resultaten

Google sometimes displays Google Shopping results in organic SERPs:

Afbeelding Resultaten

Google images sometimes appear in the normal, organic search results.

Easter Egg Resultaten

Google has a dozen or so Easter Egg results. For example, when you search for “Atari Breakout” in Google image search, the search results turn into a playable game (!). Shout out to Victor Pan for this one.

Single Site Results for Brands

Domain or brand-oriented keywords bring up several results from the same site.

Payday Loans Update

This is a special algorithm designed to clean up “very spammy queries“.

Merk Signalen

Merknaam Anker Tekst

Branded anchor text is a simple — but strong — brand signal.

Merk Zoekopdrachten

People search for brands. If people search for your brand in Google, this shows Google that your site is a real brand.

Merk + Zoekwoord Opdrachten

Do people search for a specific keyword along with your brand (for example: “Backlinko Google ranking factors” or “Backlinko SEO”)? If so, Google may give you a rankings boost when people search for the non-branded version of that keyword in Google.

Website Heeft Facebook Pagina en Likes

Brands tend to have Facebook pages with lots of likes.

Website heeft Twitter Profiel met Volgers

Twitter profiles with a lot of followers signals a popular brand.

Linkedin Bedrijfspagina

Most real businesses have company Linkedin pages.

Auteursrecht

Known Authorship: In February 2013, Google CEO Eric Schmidt famously claimed:

“Within search results, information tied to verified online profiles will be ranked higher than content without such verification, which will result in most users naturally clicking on the top (verified) results.”

Legitimiteit van de Social Media Accounts

A social media account with 10,000 followers and 2 posts is probably interpreted a lot differently than another 10,000-follower strong account with lots of interaction. In fact, Google filed a patent for determining whether or not social media accounts were real or fake.

Brand Mentions on Top Stories

Really big brands get mentioned on Top Stories sites all the time. In fact, some brands even have a feed of news from their own website, on the first page:

Brands mentions site

Unlinked Brand Mentions

Brands get mentioned without getting linked to. Google likely looks at non-hyperlinked brand mentions as a brand signal.

Bedrijfslocatie

Real businesses have offices. It’s possible that Google fishes for location-data to determine whether or not a site is a big brand.