Google Ranking Factors 2022 

I recently read an article recommending we blog four-five times/week. That’s crazy. I don’t know anyone who has the resources to produce four or more quality articles/week. I try to blog once/week, but we all know how that goes–sometimes it just doesn’t happen. 

Is publishing content related to ranking?

While I’ve always believed that the more you publish to the online space, the likelier you’ll show up in a search, I have no documented proof for this. But Google recently conducted an SEO hangout to discuss content and rankings. Specifically, “If I add content every day will I increase my rankings?” 

How do I rank my content?

Posting daily or at any specific frequency doesn’t help with ranking better in Google search results. But the more pages you have in the Google index, the more your content may show up in search results. The key equalizer is the quality of your content and getting that content indexed.

Ranking factors in SEO

Google bots are constantly crawling the internet and indexing content. They’re looking for your headings and subheadings, for H1 and H2 tags. But Google doesn’t crawl all content. If the content isn’t crawled, it’s not going to be indexed, which means it’s not going to get ranked. Part of the reason Google might not crawl that content is the overall quality of a website. 

I worked with a client who had a really awful website with terrible blogs that she copied and pasted from other sources. These blogs were maybe 300 words or so, not the 750-word count that we recommend. There were no images, no headings or subheads with the requisite H1 and H2 tags that Google looks for. She made no effort to insert snappy intros, opinions or experiences that would have personalized them. These were examples of content that is likely not being indexed. 

How long does it take for new content to rank on Google

For websites that have just launched, Google doesn’t know if the quality of that content is good. It could be a site with a big database and thousands of pages—Google does like quantity, after all. But Google will be cautious about crawling and indexing those pages until it’s sure that the quality is actually good. 

February 2022: Google’s John Mueller’s advice on getting content indexed

According to Mueller, “Internal linking is very important for us to understand what you would consider to be important on a website. For example, being linked from the home page is usually a sign that you care about these pages, so maybe we should care about them more.” He also suggested focusing less on quantity and more on the quality of content. “Making sure that it’s easy for us to recognize the important content on a website is really good.”

More from Mueller: “I’ve noticed that readers can become obsessed with discovering new content when they are highly engaged with a topic. In my opinion, content can be like eating popcorn when the reader has a strong engagement with the topic – they can’t stop reading and keep coming back for more. People who are engaged with a topic will click through when they see an article on their important topic in the search results.

Making sure your site can be crawled by search engines is key

There are tools that can analyze crawlability, including Screaming Frog. It will evaluate crawlability and metadescriptions. It can also find broken links and duplicate content–Google hates duplicate content. 

There’s more, of course. We’re content marketing specialists. Contact Top of Mind Marketing to talk about Google ranking factors and your website.