If you work in the SEO industry, then you’ve heard about Google Search API ranking factors data leak.
It’s probably the most comprehensive collection of Google Search API ranking factors to go public (by accident, apparently, on GitHub under the Apache 2.0 license) ever!
The contents of the 2,500+ internal documents (containing 14,014 attributes, or API features) relating to Google Search’s Content Warehouse API can influence how marketers and SEO professionals help businesses rank higher, pull in more organic traffic, and perform better in Google.
TL;DR:
- On Sunday 5 May, 2024, Erfan Azimi, founder & CEO of an SEO agency, leaked the most comprehensive collection of Google Search API ranking factors in the history of search engines to Rand Fishkin and Mike King (founder of iPullRank).
- We published our own analysis of the documents and Google search ranking factors on 6 June, 2024.
- But, what you need now is something actionable: How do we turn this knowledge into ways we can rank higher, and bring in more traffic and sales leads?
That’s what this article is about!
Read on for details 👇
In this article, we will help you use the Google search engine ranking factors data leap to help you rank higher and bring in more traffic and sales leads.
Why the Google Rankings Data Leak Matters?
This Google Search API ranking factors data leak matters for numerous reasons for every business that wants more traffic from Google:
- It contradicts numerous denials and false statements from Google over the years: proving what many of us have known for years, like backlinks DO make a big difference!
- It also provides valuable insights for the whole SEO industry and, crucially, our clients.
- Google is a gatekeeper. Google is the gatekeeper of the Internet.
- Google has admitted the documents were accurate, saying that: “We would caution against making inaccurate assumptions about Search based on out-of-context, outdated, or incomplete information.”
- The documents have been verified by ex-Googlers, with one saying “It has all the hallmarks of an internal Google API.”
- This leak also fits in with what the industry now knows thanks to previous Google leaks.
- One of the factors has already been referenced in the DoJ case against Google. VP of Search, Pandu Nayak, admitted that an algorithm called NavBoost collected data from Google’s Toolbar PageRank.
However, one thing we need to remember is that everyone needs to take this leak with a pinch of salt and a dash of context.
Plus, we’re lacking things, such as weighted context. This isn’t the inner workings of Google’s algorithm.
And Google won’t keep these factors the same forever, so what works now won’t be 100% accurate in a year.
With that in mind, let’s see what we can extract from these insights and turn them into something actionable.
6 Ways to Write SEO Content Based On What We Know
Here are six key takeaways from the ranking factors data leak, or Google leak for short, that marketers, business owners, agency owners, and founders need to consider when creating content and SEO.
1. High-quality, Human-centric SEO Content
Businesses work with SEO agencies because they need to increase web traffic (mainly from Google), to bring in traffic that’s relevant to them ⏤ people actually interested in their services ⏤ and turn that traffic into paying customers.
Quality has always mattered when it comes to content marketing and SEO.
Google has been saying this for years, and these documents are yet more proof. In his analysis, Mike King, says: “After reviewing these features that give Google its advantages, it is quite obvious that making better content . . . will yield the best impact on those measures.”
With that in mind, it’s worth asking: What about the rise of generative AI tools, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT-4 and dozens of SaaS products built on it and other Large Language Models (LLMs)?
As Google points out, 10 years ago, so-called “content farms” mass-produced content for cheap and thousands of businesses published it. Most of it was rubbish. Google couldn’t penalize every site for this, so instead “it made more sense to improve our systems to reward quality content, as we did.”
Google has taken the same approach to AI-generated content: “Appropriate use of AI or automation is not against our guidelines.”
The key to this is the word “appropriate”, which means helpful, reliable, people-first content that achieves the following: E-E-A-T: Expertise, Experience, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness.
In other words, use AI sparingly, maybe for a first draft. Don’t churn out 100s of AI-generated articles and expect to rank #1 for your target keywords. It won’t work, it won’t contain valuable EEAT factors, and nor will it be high-quality or people-first.
Also, if you want to rank #1 in Google, their algorithms would soon identify this as a spam tactic “with the primary purpose of manipulating ranking in search results is a violation of our spam policies.”
Key Takeaways:
- Produce high-quality, helpful (it has to do more than sell your product or service!) content that’s optimized for your target keywords and customers;
- Publish this consistently to give your business a better chance of ranking higher in search engines and bringing in more traffic and sales leads;
- Don’t rely on AI to generate this content. You need writers, or ideally, an SEO agency that can produce high quality content for you that’s optimized well and includes your expert insights.
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2. Backlinks & Link Building
Our next big actionable takeaway from the Google data leak is that backlinks make a difference! Backlinks contribute positively to a websites position in search results (SERPs).
It’s what we’ve known for years, of course, as a well-established link building agency.
However, Google has always said no, links don’t matter or they don’t make that much of a difference.
Now we know that’s clearly not true.
Google explicitly ranks websites higher that have higher-quality backlinks. According to Mike King, the Google API documents clearly show that “the higher the tier [of backlink], the more valuable the link. This partially explains why getting rankings from highly ranking pages and from news pages yields better ranking performance.”
Even more useful to point out, another study has found that: “96.3% of the sites that ranked in the top 10 have over 1,000 unique domain backlinks.”
Key Takeaways:
- If you want to rank #1 for your target keywords your business needs backlinks, link building, guest posts, link insertions (niche edits), and Digital PR;
- Higher-quality links (e.g., those placed on sites with a high Domain Authority (DA)) will produce better results, providing the linking sites are in-line with your audience and customers;
- A larger volume of backlinks will generate better results, getting your business to rank higher in search engines, bringing in more traffic and sales leads.
Ready to get started with link building? Take a look at our link building, guest posting, blogger outreach, and digital PR services.
3. On-Page SEO
It’s not enough to publish content and secure backlinks and hope for the best.
Google ranks hundreds of factors, such as site and page authority. We know this as Domain Authority (DA). Turns out, Google’s been calling it “siteAuthority” all these years. It’s basically the same thing!
One of the most effective ways to ensure your website has a high DA and Page Authority is to optimize every page. There’s lots of ways you can do this:
- Update the content, also known as web copy. Google factors in the age of a website, and, crucially, the age (or last time it was done) websites and individual pages were last updated.
- Ensure titles and sub-headers (known as H2, H3, H4, etc.) are aligned with SEO keywords and phrases.
- Link between pages. Ensure that your website has a logical structure and you use every opportunity to link back to core landing or informational pages.
- Ensure title tags, meta descriptions, and image descriptions are aligned with SEO keywords and phrases.
- Do everything you can to make sure every page achieves the following: E-E-A-T: Expertise, Experience, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness.
- There’s loads more you can do to improve the quality of every page, optimize a website effectively, and improve DA, rankings; all of which will make a positive impact on ranking higher in search engines, bringing in more traffic and sales leads.
Not sure where to get started with SEO? We always recommend new clients sign-up to an SEO Audit and Topical Map first. We will also arrange a client input call as part of completing the SEO strategy and content calendar.
4. Click-Through Rate (CTR)
Something else the the Google API documents confirmed is a website’s click-through rate (CTR) matters.
A higher CTR means your business will rank higher in search engines, bringing in more traffic and sales leads.
Despite years of denials, the data shows that the number of clicks a website gets make a difference.
Do not underestimate the power of well-written title tags and meta descriptions, as these are the key elements that will set you apart from other results on the SERP.
Experiment with various strategies to engage your audience – whether by tapping into emotions, injecting humor, presenting key facts, or highlighting important numbers – but always ensure you’re addressing the needs of your users.
The more you do for your companies’ website (e.g., on-page optimizations, ongoing content marketing/SEO) the more traffic that will drive and, therefore, more clicks, resulting in higher rankings.
Key Takeaways:
- Test your title tags and meta descriptions using different approaches – emotions, facts, numbers – and choose the best performers.
- Optimize structured data (e.g. add AggregateRating where it makes sense).
- Improve your CTR by improving on-site SEO and technical SEO (e.g., fix and improve performance and UX issues, improve your site structure).
- Improve your CTR by publishing more high-quality SEO-optimized content that’s helpful for your audience/target customers.
- Improve your CTR by securing more backlinks, with higher-quality links at scale published in media and blogs that are relevant to your audience/target customers.
Want to improve CTRs? SEO + Link Building = Organic growth supercharged. When you combine SEO with link building we can be even more effective at generating buyer-intent traffic and revenues.
5. An SEO & Backlink Audit
If you’re reading this as as busy CMO, growth or marketing leader, or founder/CEO, you might be thinking:
- Where do we start?
- What should we invest in first ⏤ On-Page SEO, Technical SEO, Backlinks, SEO content marketing?
- Or, we’ve tried SEO before with (insert here: an in-house copywriter, freelancer, AI + freelancer, an SEO agency/consultant) and it didn’t work! How can we be sure it will work this time?
That’s why we always recommend starting with an SEO Audit. An SEO Audit is the first important step towards optimizing your website for more traffic, higher rankings, and sales leads.
Building on that, we also offer a Topical Map. Make the most of your SEO content and on-Page SEO with our in-depth and easy to implement SEO Topical Map.
Using the insights from both, we can:
- Create a link building strategy that will increase your businesses backlink profile, that will help you rank higher in search engines, bringing in more traffic and sales leads.
- Create an SEO content marketing strategy that will have the same impact, improving your website’s DA, CTR, search rankings, traffic, and sales leads.
- To maximize results: Combine a link building strategy with SEO content marketing and on-page optimizations.
Not sure where to get started with SEO? We always recommend new clients sign-up to an SEO Audit and Topical Map first.
6. Website Performance, User Experience (UX)
How well your website performs, particularly loading speeds and whether it’s mobile friendly also makes a difference to rankings and traffic.
Google points out that the bounce rate, also an indication of how fast (or not) your website loads reduces the CTR:
Slow websites perform worse in SERPs; people don’t wait for sites to load, especially on mobile devices. Google is also actively removing sites from SERPs that aren’t accessible on smartphones: “After July 5th, 2024, if your site is inaccessible on mobile devices, it will no longer be indexable.”
Anything else that negatively impacts loading speed and performance will affect rankings, CTR, and traffic, such as:
- Broken internal links and pages (e.g., 404, 301, etc).
- Images or videos that are too large (file sizes).
- Poorly optimized titles and sub-headers (H2, H3, H4, etc.), title tags, meta descriptions, and image descriptions.
- Poorly optimized on-page content.
- Badly written, unhelpful, or spam-style AI-generated content.
If you want to rank #1 for your target keywords, you need to fix these issues, fast!
Fixing issues like this is especially important if your business has suffered from any recent Google algorithm updates. Or, if you’ve noticed a drop in traffic but don’t know what’s caused it.
That’s why we always recommend starting with an SEO Audit. An SEO Audit is the first important step towards optimizing your website for more traffic, higher rankings, and sales leads.
Key Takeaways: Write Better SEO Content to Improve Rankings, Traffic & Sales Leads
Ranking higher, which improves traffic, and pulling in more traffic from Google to increase your revenue and number of customers is the ultimate goal of SEO.
No matter how you go about it, that’s what every business is aiming for. When traffic is organic it’s “free” because people found your business searching for what they needed. Finding you that way is proven to be better than through advertising.
As the Google data leaks prove, you need a combination of the following to push organic growth further, faster, and at scale:
- Find out how to improve the SEO of your website and content with an SEO Audit and Topical Map.
- This will also show you what Technical SEO fixes are required.
- Create a link building strategy that will increase your businesses backlink profile, that will help you rank higher in search engines, bringing in more traffic and sales leads.
- Create an SEO content marketing strategy that will have the same impact, improving your website’s DA, CTR, search rankings, traffic, and sales leads.
- To maximize results: Combine a link building strategy with SEO content marketing and on-page optimizations.
Talk to us today about SEO services you can depend on. OutreachMama is trusted by over 300 companies worldwide to generate high-impact organic growth from Google. OutreachMama can deliver every SEO service you need to improve your rankings and drive more traffic, sales leads, and customers to your website.
