Methodology (Merge content with companion post?)
There’s a lot of bad information available about what makes a website rank. Most of all when nobody cites sources. The products and services that stem from that recklessness tend to be worthless or even dangerous.
We actually know a lot for certain about Google. Real SEO knowledge doesn’t come from a blogger, forum, or get-rich-quick scheme. In 2024, the best information comes from three (individually imperfect) sources.
- Patent filings (okay)
- Statements from Google and their team (better)
- Studies that apply The Scientific Method (best)
This resource is a complete guide. We’ve included factors that are controversial and total myths, but provided filters to hide the junk. The ranking factors below are updated constantly, so if you’re passionate about SEO, bookmark this page and check back often.
Factors
There are four main categories that help us evaluate the information that comes our way:
1. Positive On-Page Factors
On-page SEO describes factors that you are able to manipulate through your own website. Positive factors are those which help you to rank better. Many of these factors may also be abused, to the point that they become negative factors. We will cover negative ranking factors later in this resource. These factors mostly relate to the subject matter of content, accessibility, and a positive user experience.
2. Negative On-Page Factors
Negative Ranking Factors are things you can do that harm your existing rankings. These factors fit into three categories: accessibility, devaluations, and penalties. Accessibility issues are just stumbling points for Googlebot that could prevent your site being crawled or analyzed properly. A devaluation is an indicator of a lower quality website and may prevent yours from getting ahead. A penalty is far more serious, and may have a devastating effect on your long-term performance in Google. Once again, on-page factors are those that are under your direct control as a part of the direct management of your website.
3. Positive Off-Page Factors
Off-Page Factors describe events that take place somewhere other than on the site that you directly control and are trying to improve performance of in the rankings. This usually takes the form of backlinks from other sites. Positive Off-Page Factors generally relate to an attempt to understand honest, natural popularity, with a large emphasis on popularity achieved from more-trusted and influential sources.
4. Negative Off-Page Factors
Negative Off-Page Factors are generally related to unnatural patterns of backlinks to your site, usually due to intentional link spam. Until the the Penguin algorithm was introduced in 2012, the result of these factors was almost always a devaluation, rather than a penalty. That is, you could lose all, or nearly all, value obtained from linking practices that Google felt may be unnatural, but your site would not be harmed otherwise. While that’s still mostly true, Penguin introduced off-page penalties in a number of cases, which has opened the floodgates for malicious behavior from competing sites as a practice known as negative SEO or Google Bowling.