How Google ranks webpages in its search results is still a mystery for most of the marketers but some SEO experts have revealed data backed resources showing what matters to rank a page at top of Google rankings.
We are putting seven Most trusted case studies by SEO experts to show Top SEO Ranking Factors in 2019. Some of these are form 2019 itself and some are from 2018 but still valid.
Each of these case study is having a huge value for content marketers to understand SEO in depth.
SEO ranking factors in 2019
- Backlinko Analyzed 912 Million Blog Posts: Content Study
- Links as a Ranking Factor: Study by Stone Temple
- Ranking Factors SEMrush Study 2.0
- Searchmetrics Ranking Factors 101: Search Matrix
- Local Search Ranking Factors, by Moz
- YouTube Search, by Briggsby
- Speed Factors Affecting Google Rankings: Neil Patel
What’s included in these seven case studies and link to each one shown below.
Key Findings from the Content Study by Backlinko:
Backlinko Analyzed 912 Million Blog Posts. Here’s What they Learned About Content Marketing.
- Long-form content gets an average of 77.2% more links than short articles.
- 94% of all blog posts have zero external links.
- Headlines that are 14-17 words in length generate 76.7% more social shares than short headlines.
- List posts get an average of 218% more shares than “how to” posts and 203% more shares than infographics.
Full Case Study here: Backlinko Analyzed 912 Million Blog Posts: Content Study
Ranking Factors Study 2.0 by SEMrush
SEMrush took a set of big data consisting of 600,000 keywords from their worldwide base and the first 100 SERP positions for each of them. They also had a list of alleged ranking factors that might influence the page positions.
Key takeaways from the research:
- Direct website traffic is the most influential ranking factor. That is, when many users go to a website directly it is a good sign to Google that the domain has high authority and value.
- User behaviour signals such as time on site, pages per session and bounce rate also influence website rankings, since they indicate website quality and relevance for users.
- Backlink factors are extremely important for rankings. Except for the factors related to anchor texts, all the backlink factors share 5th place in the importance chart
Case Study by Stone Temple: Link as Ranking Factors
Stone Temple shared the results from the fourth of their “Links as a Ranking Factor” studies.
They conducted the first of these studies in May 2016 and have been tracking the same query set over time to measure any material shifts in the role of links.
In this year’s study, They also looked at different market sectors to see how the role of links may vary by market sector.
See the Case Study here: Link as Ranking factors
Searchmetrics Ranking Factors 1O1 – Key Findings:
Key takeaways on SEO rankings from the study:
- Content relevance and user intent are the key focus.
- Ranking Factors are becoming increasingly personalized.
- Technical factors – prerequisite for good rankings.
- User signals – Google is always watching you.
- Backlinks – the downward trend continues
Download the Full report from searchmatrics here
Local Search ranking factors by MOZ
MOZ released the rankings factors for local search and are quite interesting to get your local business ranked high in google.
See Local Ranking Factors by Moz here
YouTube SEO Ranking Factor Study by Briggsby
To better understand how the YouTube Search algorithm works, Briggsby looked at 3.8 million data points across 100,000 videos and 75,000 channels.
Using a keyword sample that contained a variety of named entities (people, places, things, etc.) and questions (how, why, etc.), they checked rankings for the first 20 results and fetched a wide array of data through the YouTube API, scraping, and additional analysis.
Speed Factors Impacting Google Rankings By Neil Patel
Neil Patel Analyzed 143,827 URLs and Discovered the Overlooked Speed Factors That Impact Google Rankings.
It is the largest study of the impact of website speed on Google search rankings ever performed.
He surfaced several highly significant findings. These findings are significant, partly because they’ve never been revealed before, but also because they could make a massive impact on your website’s search rankings!
We would like to hear your thoughts in comments about the ranking factors which matter in SEO in 2019.
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How Google Ranks in 2019, 7 Case studies from Top SEO Experts. @Backlinko @semrush @Searchmetrics @Moz @neilpatel #SEO #SEO2019 #marketing #digital #google #ranking Click To Tweet