2015 Google On-page SEO Ranking Factors List (Including Deprecated Factors)

[martinibuster]

I want to split off on-page from off-page and discuss solely on-page ranking factors, including the deprecated factors. What's your list of important on-page factors and those that are less important?

2015 Ranking factors
User experience metrics (all of them)
Shorter title tags
Original content
Engaging content that provides an answer, teaches, informs, is useful, delights
Original images
Quality site design
Descriptive meta description

Deprecated
Keywords
Focus on longtail phrases
Focus on ranking for specific keyword phrases
Lean code

[toidi]

If a user lands on a page and immediately clicks on an ad, is that a good ux or bad? Is it considered a bounce?

[martinibuster]

The search engine has no way of knowing how long each of those tabs stays open, or what I do with it after the first page (the one they sent me to).

1. Not the back button
It's not measured by back button use. It's measured by how soon you return to the search engine. Opening tabs doesn't make a different to that metric.

2. Do not form opinions by analyzing a signal on it's own
Furthermore, it is an error to consider this or any other signal in isolation and draw conclusions as to it's efficacy. Signals are never used in isolation. They are combined with other signals to create a more accurate picture of the meaning of an event.

3. A (very) short explanation of how the Return to Search Engine signal works
If you return within a specific amount of seconds, that means a certain level of dissatisfaction. If you return after a minute or longer that means something else. Dwell time is used for a variety of goals, not just ranking accuracy.

[webcentric]

@lucy24 I rarely use new tabs for search results but that's just me. I have so many tabs open as it is that I don't need to spawn more than necessary. Occasionally, I will back up for the express purpose of opening something I found in a new window or tab so I can keep available for reference but mostly I will use a search pattern all in one tab e.g. search -> click on a result -> go back if I'm not happy with the result -- click the next seemingly-promising link in the results. I sometime search for complex, specific examples (code samples) where most results turn out to be off-point or half-baked so I'm backing out a lot. The difference is that, I do spend some time studying the content to evaluate it's efficacy whereas a slow-loading page of ads often gets the boot before it's even finished loading.

To address UX in a positive light, just flip all this back-button discussion around e.g. I love what I find at the end of my result link, spend 10 minutes reading every word on the page and then start reading even more pages on the same site. I just might be having a great (or at least engaging) experience.

Added: All one has to do is put an Adsense ad on a page and then go look at Page Speed Insights in their Adsense console to understand that Google is looking at a variety of UX-related page factors. Adsense is just another way to collect such data. They seem to want their ads published on fast-loading pages enough that they went to the trouble to actually expose some of their insights directly to publishers.

[martinibuster]

All one has to do is put an Adsense ad on a page and then go look at Page Speed Insights in their Adsense console to understand that Google is looking at a variety of UX-related page factors.

That's an enormous amount of data from which to extract meaningful insight into the kinds of pages that encourage browsing, kinds of pages that tend to inspire tell a friend actions, the kinds of pages that trigger positive and negative engagement scores.

[aakk9999]

I search similar to Lucy. I perform a search, browse through SERPs and I keep right clicking and opening websites in new tabs for results I think would be interesting. My browser is set up not to switch immediately to a new tab, so only after I went through the SERPs, (sometimes even repeating the search with some modifiers), I start to go through opened tabs, where I either read the page opened and explore this site or glance at it and close the tab if not happy with the result. Or sometimes I close the result because I found the answer amongst the tabs I opened and went through already.

Considering this pattern of search then with regards to this:

3. A (very) short explanation of how the Return to Search Engine signal works
If you return within a specific amount of seconds, that means a certain level of dissatisfaction. If you return after a minute or longer that means something else. Dwell time is used for a variety of goals, not just ranking accuracy.

What Google would get is number of clicks from SERPs to sites, and they would come in a reasonably quick succession. Unless the site entered had some other Google properties or Chrome was used, Google could not measure what I did with that other tab. I could just go there, read and close the tab - Google had no idea. Or I could never switch to it - again, Google would have no idea.

But if something else was used on that page that goes to Google as I am on the other site (jquery, google fonts, google maps etc) then they could build the picture as they would know my IP and could put the data together.

But lets remember that this is a HUGE amount of data and needs HUGE processing power to put it all together to get the picture and pattern of what the user is doing.

[lucy24]

this is a HUGE amount of data and needs HUGE processing power

Aren't we starting with the assumption that Google does, in fact, have this amount of processing power and can, in fact, deal with the data? I don't think there's any question-begging involved; it seems an all-around safe assumption.

[martinibuster]

But if something else was used on that page that goes to Google...

What I was trying to explain is that there is no need for something else to be on that page on an open tab situation, in the context of finding dissatisfaction in a web page that results in a user returning to Google. The user can close the tab and open a new one to repeat the search or return to the already open tab. Your browser and IP data remains the same.

I don't think this data is being used in real time. This is Google Search traffic log data. Log data has been used for many years for a variety of purposes, including to build models of user behavior so that patterns associated with a successful search (and patterns associated with an unsuccessful search) can be used to train the algorithms to recognize the hallmarks of a site that users tend to like (as well as the opposite of that).

There are many biases in click data and traffic logs, this has been recognized and researched and incorporated into those analyses.

It's interesting to see how much interest there is in that aspect of on-page SEO, which relates to user experience and how the search engines could measure it.

2015 Ranking factors
User experience metrics (all of them)

[System]

The following 2 messages were cut out to new thread by goodroi. New thread at: google/4754436.htm [webmasterworld.com]
9:58 am on Jun 25, 2015 (utc -5)