With a zillion amount of information and millions of websites available on the web, Google algorithms sort through them to find the most relevant, helpful results in split seconds and present them in an order of relevance for the user. To present the most relevant results search algorithms look into many factors such as words used for query, relevance and usability of pages, the expertise of sources, location, and settings. As there is much ambiguity over what exactly is counted as ranking factors, there are many misconceptions associated with it. Here we examine some common myths about Google\u2019s Ranking Factors brought up by many SEO professionals or clients. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
This has been\ncoming up as a ranking factor in lists every now and then, although Google\ndenied that it is not. Agreed, that these are inter-related, but inter-relation\ndoes not equate to causation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Also Read: The Ultimate Checklist for International SEO<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Domains that have\nbeen functioning for years would have acquired these ranking factors over the\nyears. It is highly likely that they have content and links and more customer\nsupport that they have accrued over time. But the truth is that it is the other\nsignals that come with age- but are non-essential to have. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The same applies to\ndomain registration length. A domain is something you buy and hence it is\nabsurd to make it a ranking factor. The timeline of your domain registration is\nof little relevance to the user as it has nothing to do with their query. But\nit does loosely matter in determining authority.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Google does own a\npatent on using registration length, but this does not necessarily imply that\nthey are using it for ranking purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Pogo-sticking happens when a user clicks on a result, but very quickly retracts back to the search results page and clicks on a different result. This is often linked to the dissatisfaction felt by the user in the search results and is often mentioned as a ranking factor by SEO companies<\/a> even though Google has said otherwise. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Also Read: Google\u2019s SMITH Algorithm Outranks BERT<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Pogo Sticking might\nbe used for internal testing, contrasting ranking charges against each other,\nquality control, and other factors but not as a ranking factor in the core\nalgorithm. <\/p>\n\n\n\n This is a case of\nmisunderstanding of some Google comments by some folks in the SEO community.\nGoogle has already made it clear that it does not treat unlinked mentions as\nlinks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What went on here\nis that unlinked mentions are employed for building knowledge graphs and\ndetermining entities, but not factored in for ranking. Does the knowledge graph\nhave any bearing on ranking? Probably yes, in many subtle ways, but we should\nenumerate them as a factor, instead of the constituents that may partially make\nthem up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Accelerated Mobile Pages or AMP are lightweight pages build to offer mobile<\/a> users a lightning-fast, more engaging experience. Although closely related to page speed, only page speed is considered a ranking factor, albeit a small one. This is because Google weighs relevancy when compared to page speed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is one of the\nmost prominent misinformation trending in SEO now and then. This essentially\nmeans that the person behind it has little understanding of LSI at all. LSI\n(Latent Semantic Indexing) are abstractly connected terms that search engines\napply to deeply understand the content on a webpage. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Also Read: Google\u2019s December 2020 Core Update is Here <\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n But, according to\nGoogle\u2019s John Mueller, \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as LSI keywords — anyone who’s\ntelling you otherwise is mistaken, sorry.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n XML sitemaps have\nis unrelated to ranking. They are an approach used by Google to discover your\npages- but if Google has indexed all of your pages, adding an XML sitemap will\nbe of little use although there is no harm in adding one. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Not all websites\nneed an XML sitemap. It is a sort of a band-aid for sites that face crawl\nissues. But there are a lot of non-ranking benefits for having one such as\nincluding additional data available in Search Console.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the moment,\naccessibility is not considered as a ranking factor although several things\nthat are essential for your website to be accessible such as alt attributes,\nproper heading usage, etc. This does not imply that your page shouldn\u2019t be\naccessible. We hope search engines will eventually turn their attention towards\naccessibility- but we haven\u2019t reached there yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The web is not\nalways right. Although Google and other search engines want to display accurate\ncontent, that is a hard problem to solve. The emphasis is on the consensus of\nthe web rather than being accurate. Also, the search engine is putting in an\neffort to match the query intent and use backlinks to gauge authority. The\nfocus is on showing whether the site is authoritative or reputable. In reality,\nsearch engines are not measuring the \u2018correctness of the content but the\npopularity of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As early as 2010,\nGoogle had made it clear that it doesn\u2019t use social signals. They can\u2019t because\nmost social networks prevent them from crawling. Also, if they were using it\nand any of the social media sites suddenly blocked them by putting up\nrobots.txt. This might bring drastic changes to Google’s ranking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Also Read: 11 Probable Reasons Why Your Search Ranking Dropped <\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n But they do crawl\nsocial media sites from time to time, but they treat these pages just as any\nother page.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Google algorithms\nhave evolved so much that it has better ways of determining whether a subdomain\nis being used as a separate site or as a part of the main site. As regards\nsubdomains VS. directories, it very much on how you use them and how they\ninterlink them to everything else, and not the actual domain or directory\nitself. <\/p>\n\n\n\n There are plenty of\nstudies saying that relocating from one to the other resulted in a dip. But, in\nall of those studies, many forget to mention that they didn\u2019t just move- they\nchanged the navigation, UX, and linking structure. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Deleting a ton of\nlinks to subpages and replacing them with one link to a subdirectory will have\nan impact on your SEO. But that is due to links and Page Rank and not the actual\nURL structure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hopefully, this clears up a lot of confusion around the above-listed factors. Most of the lists that talk about Google ranking factors are never-ending and lists everything under the sun. Hence it is very important to focus on the factors that matter such as the relevance of web pages, quality of the content used, and usability of web pages. If you are looking for a digital marketing support team to maximize your SEO efforts Contact Us<\/a><\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n Web Hosting Dubai<\/a> | it companies in uae<\/a> | software development dubai<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" With a zillion amount of information and millions of websites available on the web, Google algorithms sort through them to find the most relevant, helpful results in split seconds and present them in an order of relevance for the user. To present the most relevant results search algorithms look into many factors such as words […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-others"],"yoast_head":"\nDomain Registration\nPeriod<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Pogo-Sticking.<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Unlinked Mentions<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Accelerated Mobile\nPages<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
LSI Keywords<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
XML Sitemaps <\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Accessibility<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Content Accuracy<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Social Networks<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Subdomains or\nSubdirectories<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Conclusion<\/strong> <\/h4>\n\n\n\n