Cyrus: Google Ranking Factors Expert Survey favors Content Relevance, Quality & Backlinks
Key Takeaways:
Cyrus surveyed 131 SEO experts on the importance of defined Google Ranking Factors (z > 100): “How much of a positive or negative effect do you believe each of the following factors has on Google’s organic search rankings?“ + “What are the three most important Google ranking factors?“
Three most important Ranking Factors:
1. Relevance - 57.1% Content is relevant if it matches and satisfies the search intent of the user. The content should semantically match what the user is looking for and satisfy their needs.
2. Backlinks - 54.8% The rumor of the death of backlinks has been greatly exaggerated. In fact, respondents rated links from trusted, relevant sites as one of the most important factors. Many experts emphasize the importance of links from pages with real visitors.
3. Content Quality - 47.6% Nearly half of our experts listed elements of content quality as a top-ranking factor. This includes features such as originality, accuracy, and freshness.
4. Authority & Trust - 36.5% How much Google trusts the website, creator, or brand/business.
5. Behavior / Click Signals - 29.4% How users select search results and interact with web pages. Google watches the user.
6. Brand Signals - 27.0% The importance of being a brand/entity that people search for, trust, and visit.
7. User Satisfaction - 19.8% User satisfaction or “task completion” as the ultimate outcome.
8. Technical SEO Health - 17.5% Crawling and indexing form the foundation for all other ranking factors.
9. Topical Authority - 14.3% How well your brand/site is associated with expertise on a particular topic (EEAT).
10. Internal Links - 11.1% How you connect web pages on your site through links and site architecture.
Eventhough of the limitations of the method and that the list is categorized on a quite broad level, not to say across markets/niches, it still narrows down the priority of measures quite well
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