Top Need-to-Know SEO Ranking Factors for 2025

Now that you’ve finally built your website, the next step is to make sure people see it. This is a lot easier said than done, as this process involves many different parts. Even though it may take some time, with the help of an SEO agency, the results you’ve dreamed of are closer than ever.

With an SEO agency by your side, you’ll be able to apply all the fundamentals of SEO and internalize all the critical factors needed to rank. Eventually, your site can land in the coveted top position on Google.

Let’s break down some important SEO ranking factors that your site needs to rank #1…

…And here’s how we can help:

What Are Ranking Factors in SEO?

Ranking high on the search engine results involves several different elements working together. 

Here’s a breakdown of seven need-to-know SEO ranking factors:

Structured Data

Structured data, also known as schema markup, makes it easier for Google to crawl and rank your website. Whether you run a news website or an eCommerce website, structured data translates your content into code that the search engine can process and understand.

Structured data tells Google what the most important part of the page is. This can increase the chances of your site becoming a featured snippet, which is great for online visibility.

You don’t need to learn code to make a schema markup; you can simply use tools like Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper. Depending on your website and type of content, use the right type of structured data, which could be:

• Organization
• Local Business
• Article
• Product
• Review

Keep your structured data simple but relevant to your site. Regularly check Google’s guidelines to increase your chances of rich results since SEO requirements tend to change over time.

Mobile Responsiveness

Because of Google’s mobile-first index requirements (and more than half of traffic coming from mobile devices), mobile responsiveness has become one of the most important SEO ranking factors.

• Check for mobile responsiveness with Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), which loads your site almost instantly on mobile devices.
• Optimize speed by compressing images and multimedia to prevent large files from bogging down the site.
• Minimize the amount of CSS or JavaScript code as well to keep things light on the backend.

Make sure your website adapts to all screen sizes by using vector graphics. These retain the quality of your images, graphics, logos, etc., regardless of screen size. Make your text and buttons large enough to tap (ideally at 16-20px for text and 48x48 pixels for buttons.)

Be mindful of ad placement as well. You don't want ads that cover the entire screen and hide essential content. Keep ads small and non-intrusive so as to not overwhelm the user. 

On-Page and Off-Page SEO

All web pages should have on-page and off-page elements to make it easier for the search engine to crawl and index. Without these SEO ranking factors, Google may have a hard time finding and understanding your site and its content, leading to lower rankings.

These elements can be easy to miss, so keep a checklist of them on hand when creating your website and publishing content. Starting with on-page SEO, these are elements seen directly on the webpage or Google Search Results:

• Title Tags: The main title of your page should be 60 characters or less.
• Meta Description: A brief description of your page that uses 90-120 characters.
• URL Structure: Use a simple URL structure with the primary keyword (ex. url.com/primary-keyword).
• Primary Keyword: This should be naturally incorporated in content and headers.
• Alt Text: Short description to make an image accessible to those with low vision.
• Well-Written Content: Use structured headers (H1, H2, etc.) to maintain flow and readability.
• Internal and External Links: External links should come from a high-domain rating (DR) site (50 or higher).

Meanwhile, off-page SEO refers to actions taken outside of your website. To increase rankings, websites need help from external sources to establish authority and credibility. Take note of these off-page elements:

• Backlinks Profile: Build high-quality backlinks from reputable sources
• Guest Posting: Reach out to site owners and offer to write guest posts to build backlinks and increase authority
• Brand Mentions: Use social listening tools or set up Google Alerts to track when your brand is being mentioned.

Don’t forget to top it all off with:

• Content Marketing: Create and share valuable content to engage users and drive traffic
• Social Media Marketing: Engage with users on social media by sharing content and personal communication

Technical SEO

The backend of your website needs a lot of work as well to improve SEO performance. This technical stuff may be intimidating or confusing at first, so this is one area where an SEO agency can be a great help.

Important technical SEO practices include:

• Schema Markup: Use the appropriate schema to help Google understand your page.
• Canonical Tags: Include correct canonical tags to prevent duplicate content.
• XML Sitemaps: List important pages that you want the search engine to crawl.
• Site Architecture: Create a strong structural hierarchy for your website to make it easier for the search engine to crawl and for users to navigate.
• A 3xx Redirect: Ensure all links lead to the correct updated URL. Fix wayward URLs with whichever option suits the needs at hand, which may include 301 Moved Permanently, 302 Found, 303 See Other, 304 Not Modified, 305 Use Proxy, 306 Switch Proxy, 307 Temporary Redirect, and 308 Permanent Redirect.

Optimized Pages

Optimizing your pages involves more than completing a checklist of on-page, off-page, and technical SEO details. Since Google is a keyword-oriented search engine, every page should be optimized for not just the main keyword but for semantically related keywords as well. This is known as latent semantic indexing (LSI).

Utilize LSI keywords to rank for both traditional and conversational keywords (especially now that voice search is so popular). For example, let’s say you’re targeting “best restaurant near me” and “what’s the best restaurant in (city name).” Google may show different results, but this helps your restaurant appear for both keywords. With this, Google can understand your content better and rank you higher.

Align your content and keywords with the user’s search intent. The better you understand their intention with the keywords, the easier it will be to cater your content accordingly. Search intent may be:

• Navigational: Finding a particular page or website
• Informational: Learning more information about a certain topic
• Commercial: Finding more information before making a purchase
• Transactional: Making a purchase

Lastly, aim for a featured snippet or answer box. This shows your site at the very top of Google’s search results, giving users answers to their questions immediately without having to click on the site. To do this, check that your questions and headings are properly formatted. Keep your answers correct, concise, and relevant, but not too long. Google your keyword on incognito mode: What questions come up, and how can you best answer them?

Strong Security Measures

Google prioritizes sites with proper security measures. It’s how you can protect your users’ personal information and gain their trust as they navigate through your site. To do this, upgrade your site to HTTPS for its enhanced security measures. 

You’ll need an SSL certificate, which is like your site’s verification badge. This confirms that your site is secure and that all interactions are encrypted. 

There are three types of SSL certificates:

• Domain Validated (DV): Ideal for blogs or other sites that don’t do transactions or ask for personal information
• Organization Validated (OV): Verifies a business’s identity and legitimacy
• Extended Validation (EV): The most extensive level of security; websites must undergo a 16- to 18-point verification process, which includes site domain, site owner, etc.

If you’re running a site that deals with heavy data like finance, healthcare, or law, an extended validation SSL certificate is your best bet. Add in other cybersecurity methods for multiple levels of security, such as data encryption, multi-factor authentication (MFA), and role-based access control (RBAC).

Domain Authority

Domain authority (DA) ranks your site’s expertise on a particular subject and predicts how likely you are to rank. Domain authority ranges from 1-100; a DA of 50 or higher is considered to be more established and trusted by Google.

Higher DA doesn’t necessarily mean higher rankings, but it does reflect other things like your backlink profile, website health, and strength against competitors.

One way to increase DA is by including high-quality backlinks via guest posts from high-authority sites. Use tools like Google’s Disavow Tool to disavow links that you don’t want Google to associate you with. Publish high-quality content to boost your site’s authority and expertise as well.

Use tools like Ahrefs or Moz’s Link Explorer to determine your DA. It will also show other helpful details like the number of backlinks, ranking keywords, organic traffic, and more. These give you an idea of what areas to improve on.

Looking for more advice? Rely on a technical SEO agency — here’s Jason with why:

What Are the Most Popular Local SEO Ranking Factors?

Following local SEO best practices helps small businesses make a big splash on the search engine. Here are four important SEO ranking factors to keep in mind.

Google Business Profile

The very first step is telling Google that your business exists by having it listed in Google’s Business Profile (GBP). Having your business listed here with complete and consistent details is crucial to achieving high rankings. Key details to include are:

• Company name
• Company address
• Operating hours
• Contact information (email address, phone number)
• Ratings and reviews
• Photos of the business (interior and exterior)
• Business category
• Service areas

Consistency is a huge factor in maintaining rankings. Even the slightest change in spelling or capitalization can affect your rankings. Make sure your NAP information (Name, Address, Phone) is consistent across all platforms. If any of this information has changed, update your listings immediately, whether on GBP, Yelp, or other local listings. 

Customer Reviews

Reviews are the social proof you need to convince customers that you’re a trustworthy business. 75% of customers trust online reviews, and 90% of these shoppers won’t make a purchase without reading them. 

Encourage customers to leave reviews and respond to all of them, whether they’re positive or negative. You can send an email with a review link using Google’s Place ID Finder or by generating a link on your GBP to send to customers.

Link Factors

Internal links, external links, and backlinks build trust with users and the search engine. The better your link profile is, the more likely you are to rank higher. Internal and external links help provide users with additional value within your site and from reputable sources, respectively.

Meanwhile, backlinks from third-party sources help establish your site’s credibility. When a third party adds your link to their site, it acts as an endorsement of sorts, informing the search engine that your site is trustworthy and presents reliable information.

To ensure you have high-quality links, consider these important factors:

• Domain Authority: Do your backlinks come from high-authority domains?
• Page Authority: Do your internal links lead to your site’s best-performing pages and vice versa?
• Quantity: Do you have enough links without going overboard? (A good rule of thumb is to have 3 to 5 internal and external links each.)
• Anchor Text: Are your links inserted on the appropriate anchor text?
• Relevance: Is there a clear connection between the sites linking and the sites being linked to?

Behavioral Signals

When users remain longer on your site and engage with it more, this tells Google that they find value in it. This makes it easier for Google to pick out which businesses are most relevant and bring the most attention to users.

To understand user behavior, regularly monitor behavioral analytics such as:

• Click-Through Rate: Percentage of people that click on your search result
• Dwell Time: How long does a user spend looking at and browsing your website
• Clicks-to-Call: How many people click on the “Call” button to contact you
• Clicks-to-Site: How many people click on your site from the local listing
• Conversion Rate: Percentage of people that fulfill a specific action (Ex. purchasing a product, subscribing to a newsletter, etc.)
• Bounce Rate: Percentage of people that click off your site and leave

Use tools like Google Analytics to keep track of these behavioral signals. These tools offer greater insight into audience demographics, unique/returning visitors, and traffic sources. Using their dashboards and reports, make data-driven decisions on how to improve the overall user experience.

How To Improve SEO Ranking

SEO is always moving, so there’s always room for improvement to turn your rankings around. Here are five helpful tips for improving your SEO ranking.

Optimize Site Speed

Google prioritizes fast-loading sites, and faster sites provide a better user experience. Use tools like Google’s PageSpeed Insights to test your site's speed. Analyze your current core web vitals, which show you how efficiently your site loads. 

Core web vitals consist of three main metrics:

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): How long it takes for the largest piece of content to load (should be ideally less than 2.5 seconds)
• Interaction to Next Paint (INP): Measures user responsiveness (less than 200 milliseconds is ideal)
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): Measures visual stability (a CLS of less than 0.1 is ideal)

To reduce site loading speed, compress all images and multimedia to minimize the file size (keep images under 1 MB) and retain quality before uploading them to the site. Minimize CSS and JavaScript files to keep things lightweight and reduce the number of files to download and parse.

Use a content delivery network to distribute content faster across multiple servers. Instead of using one main server, having multiple allows users to quickly access content from the server closest to their location.

If your site continues to load slowly, consider upgrading your hosting platform. Your current one may not be able to handle multiple requests at once, so switch to a more robust one or try a dedicated or cloud-based server. (A digital design agency can help with this.)

Place Keywords Strategically

Your main keywords should be used naturally and strategically throughout the content. Insert it in your title tag and meta description, as these are among the first things your user will see in the search results.

Include your primary keyword within the introduction of your content — before any other internal or external links. Google prioritizes when the keyword is at the beginning of the content. Find places to insert the keyword within the body of your content, but not too much — you want to prevent keyword stuffing. Make sure you’re using the keyword appropriately within the given context.

Follow E-E-A-T Guidelines 

E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. These are crucial factors that Google looks for when ranking sites.

Some ways to practice E-E-A-T include highlighting the expertise and credentials of the content author(s). This may include adding their biography, relevant experience, awards, position in their organization, etc. Additionally, you can also leave links to case studies or portfolios that highlight firsthand experience in the field.

Include reputable sources in your content. This includes external sources from high-DA websites, academic journals, statistics, or industry-leading publications.

Build trust with users by engaging with them personally, such as on social media, forums, or reviews. Include reviews and testimonials from satisfied clients on your site as social proof to gain the trust of audiences.

Conduct a Content Audit

An audit is your opportunity to polish everything and fill in the missing pieces. This includes poor-performing pages and adding new and updated statistics or information. Check if all pages have the appropriate on-page and off-page SEO details as well.

Check if all internal and external links are working and lead to the right pages. Otherwise, remove them or replace them with working ones. Use this time to look for any opportunities to gather backlinks.

Revise your content to improve user-friendliness, readability, and organization. This can be done by shortening long paragraphs, adding bullet points, and fixing the structural hierarchy of the content. 

Utilize Google Search Console (GSC) Insights

One way to use GSC is to identify your top-performing pages: Look at what’s working to follow that strategy on your future pages. At the same time, look at which pages are performing poorly and see what areas need to be improved. 

GSC also provides data on backlinks and shows you which websites are linking to yours. Use this data to plan future link-building and come up with ways on how to improve authority.

Submit a sitemap to GSC to let it know which pages you want to be crawled and which ones you don’t. You can also identify any crawling errors to remain visible and indexable.

How Do You Check SEO Ranking?

Google Search Console is one of the best and most commonly used tools for checking SEO rankings. It’s free to use by connecting the website through your domain host.

Start by setting up an account and adding your website address to the Domain or URL prefix section. Verify that you own the site with your Google Analytics tracking ID or by Domain Property Verification to see if your domain is registered with the listed providers.

Next, add your sitemap to Google’s Search Console to help it find which pages to crawl. Do this by going to "Sitemaps," pasting the URL of your XML sitemap into the box labeled “Enter sitemap URL,” and clicking “Submit.” 

GSC presents you with a comprehensive dashboard of all relevant SEO metrics, including, but not limited to:

• Impressions: How many impressions or clicks your site receives
• Average position: Track your average position and daily, weekly, or monthly changes
• Position by pages: Find out the page position of any page on your site
• Position by queries: See which pages show up for which queries

Apart from that, GSC also offers different SEO tools and reports that provide insight into your site’s current performance and status. These include:

• URL Inspection Tool: Identify any HTML, JavaScript, or mobile usability issues.
• Index Report: Shows any indexing problems 
• Security Report: Shows any security problems, such as if you’ve been hacked or installed malware
• Experience Report: Shows data related to user experience, such as core web vitals, mobile usability, and HTTPS usage.
• Links Report: Shows all links pointing to your site

Talk Rankings With an SEO Agency

With so many SEO ranking factors, it can be overwhelming to monitor all of them. That’s why having a professional agency by your side is a huge help.

Digital Authority Partners specializes in all things SEO. Our team of experts and marketers has an impressive track record of helping companies increase their website traffic and ROI. We’ve been voted the Top SEO Agency by Clutch, MarCom Awards, Summit International Awards, Expertise, and UpCity Top Digital Agency. We’re also a Google Partner. (And we have more awards here.)

Send us a message right away to kickstart your SEO journey!