SEO Ranking Factors in 2017

As technology advances, search engines can refine their ranking algorithms to better determine relevance and return results that better align with searcher intent.

Because these ranking algorithms are constantly being improved and refined, search engine ranking factors are always evolving. Factors that might once have had a huge impact on search rankings may no longer matter all that much, and new ranking factors (such as mobile-friendliness or HTTPS) can emerge to reflect changing technologies and user behaviors.

So, what are the most important ranking factors today, in 2017? A panel at SMX East, “SEO Ranking Factors in 2017: What’s Important and What’s Not,” sought to answer that question. This panel featured data from large-scale studies performed, as well as case studies and practical advice for adapting your SEO strategies to current realities.

The first panelist was shared the results of a large-scale study on ranking factors that examined the top 100 positions for 600,000 keywords. Keywords were grouped by search volume into the following categories:

Very High: 10,001 monthly searches and up

High: 1,001 to 10,000 monthly searches

Medium: 101 to 1,000 monthly searches

Low: 1 to 100 monthly searches

looked at on-page factors, referring domains and traffic data, then compiled their findings to see which ranking factors appeared to be the most important. Here were some of their findings:

Website security (HTTPS)

found that 65 percent of domains in the top three positions for Very High volume keywords are already secure. Although it’s not a huge ranking factor,

Content length

found that content length generally had a positive correlation with search rankings; content for pages in the top three positions is 45 percent longer, on average, than content in the 20th position.

Keywords

some interesting findings with relation to keywords. They found that 35 percent of domains ranking for high-volume keywords don’t have the keyword in the title. This suggests that Google’s algorithms are getting better at understanding context/synonyms, and/or that keywords in the page title are becoming a less important ranking factor.

Very few links contain a keyword in the anchor text — in fact, even among Very High volume keywords, only 8 percent of link anchors included a keyword. This may suggest that keywords in anchor text are not a major ranking factor, but it also might be a reflection of SEOs adhering more strictly to link-building best practices that see anchor text links as spammy.

Website traffic

exclusively studied website traffic’s impact on rankings. They found that the number of visits matters for high-volume keywords. Interestingly, search traffic specifically did not appear have any impact on rankings; however, direct traffic does.

User signals

bounce rate. Overall, bounce rate is low for the top three positions but gets higher as you go down — this could suggest that top-ranking sites have more relevant content, better site speed, higher user trust and so forth.

pages per session. Higher pages per session correlates with rankings, too.

Links

High-quality link building is still super-important, both in terms of referring domains and “followed” backlinks. especially for sites targeting keywords with fewer than 10,000 monthly searches.

What factor is most important?

Interestingly user signals and (direct) website traffic were actually the highest predictors of top rankings.

Why General Ranking Factors Are Dead!

analyzed ranking factors, but rather than look at factors by keyword search volume, he looked at factors by general trends versus individual industry/niche trends.

General trends

Everyone is improving their page load time across the board. While this isn’t a massive ranking factor, it’s important to see how you compare to your competitors so you don’t get left behind.

Industry-specific trends

different ranking factors seemed to be weighted differently depending on the query itself,.The study looked at how ranking factors within each of these industries were weighted against the average — this provided some insight into which ranking factors are most relevant for each of these industries.

For example, HTTPS is a bigger deal for finance sites, as those require more user trust; however, it does not seem to be as heavily weighted for travel sites. Usage of images, on the other hand, was not so important for finance websites but had a larger impact for travel sites.