Google Ranking Factors (Leaked)

Summary

In this insightful video, Nathan Gotch, founder of Gotch SEO Academy and Rankability, simplifies a recent massive leak of Google's ranking factors. He emphasizes the importance of click-through rates, user data from Google products, brand strength, content freshness, and backlink signals. Gotch provides actionable strategies for optimizing content, including ensuring uniqueness, updating assets regularly, fulfilling search intent, and relevance. He also highlights the significance of engagement and the use of tools like Google Analytics 4 to measure and improve user interaction.

Takeaways

• 🔍 Nathan Gotch, the founder of Gotch SEO Academy and Rankability, shares insights on Google's ranking factors.
• 📊 Click-through rate (CTR) is crucial for SEO; low clicks can signal a problem, and CTR data can be reviewed in Google Search Console.
• 🕵️ Google uses data from its own products like Chrome to track user behavior, influencing ranking decisions.
• 🏛 Building a strong brand is essential for SEO, as it can be determined by external variables like backlinks and branded searches.
• 📈 An 'omnipresent strategy' is recommended to build brand presence across relevant websites, driving referral traffic and positive user signals.
• 📆 The freshness of content is important; setting a cadence for updating assets every 6 to 12 months can improve SEO.
• 🔗 Link signals and domain authority are significant for SEO, with backlinks making a noticeable difference in rankings.
• 🎯 Uniqueness in content is vital; creating a unique angle or 'Purple Cow' type of approach can help stand out in search results.
• 🔄 Regularly updating content assets to maintain freshness is part of a good SEO workflow, especially for competitive topics.
• 🎯 Fulfilling search intent is critical; content must help the searcher, or else engagement will suffer, affecting SEO negatively.
• 📝 Relevance is key; the content must be the most relevant for the query, solving the searcher's specific problem to rank well.

Q & A

Who is Nathan Gotch and what is his role in the SEO community?

Nathan Gotch is the founder of Gotch SEO Academy, which is a top SEO training program for agencies. He is also the founder of an SEO software called Rankability, the author of 'The SEO Entrepreneur,' and has achieved significant SEO results over the past decade.

What was the main topic of the video that Nathan Gotch mentioned in the script?

The main topic of the video is a massive leak of Google's ranking factors, which Nathan Gotch aims to explain in a simplified manner.

What is the significance of Click-Through Rate (CTR) in SEO according to the script?

CTR is significant in SEO because if people are not clicking on a search result, it indicates a problem. It can be monitored and improved using Google Search Console, and is an area where one can benchmark performance.

How does Google use data from its own products to influence search rankings?

Google tracks everything users do when they use Google products. This data is used to determine what content should rank higher in search results.

What role does a company's brand play in its search ranking?

A company's brand plays a significant role in search ranking as it is likely determined by various external variables such as backlinks and branded searches, which are signals outside of the website.

Why is building a brand important for SEO?

Building a brand is important for SEO because it helps create an omnipresent strategy that is not solely reliant on Google. A strong brand can drive relevant referral traffic, which in turn produces positive signals for the website.

What does the term 'freshness' refer to in the context of SEO?

In SEO, 'freshness' refers to the need for regularly updated and upgraded content or assets. This helps maintain the relevance and engagement of the content, which is beneficial for search rankings.

How often should one update their assets to maintain freshness in SEO?

It is recommended to update assets every 6 to 12 months to maintain freshness. The frequency may vary depending on the level of competition for the asset.

What is the importance of link signals in determining domain authority?

Link signals are crucial in determining domain authority as they indicate the overall domain strength from a link profile perspective. Studies and evidence show that backlinks significantly impact search rankings.

What is the significance of content uniqueness in achieving high rankings?

Content uniqueness is important because it helps a page stand out from competitors. Creating a unique angle or 'Purple Cow' type of content can lead to higher engagement and better rankings.

How can one ensure their content fulfills the search intent and is relevant?

To ensure content fulfills the search intent and is relevant, one should analyze the most relevant topics for the query and create content that addresses those topics comprehensively. Tools like Rankability can help identify these topics and ensure content covers them effectively.

What are some strategies to improve user engagement on a webpage?

Strategies to improve user engagement include creating content that is unique, fresh, and fulfills the search intent. Additionally, using tools like Google Analytics 4 to measure engagement rate and identifying areas for improvement can be beneficial.

Outlines

00:00

🔍 SEO Insights: Google's Ranking Factors Revealed

Nathan Gotch, founder of Gatch SEO Academy and Rankability, introduces a significant leak of Google's ranking factors. He simplifies the technical aspects, emphasizing the importance of click-through rate (CTR) from Google Search Console, the influence of Google's product usage data, and the significance of brand strength, including backlinks and branded searches. Gotch also stresses the need for fresh content updated every 6 to 12 months and the undeniable impact of link signals on domain authority.

05:01

🚀 Boosting SEO Rankings with Unique and Relevant Content

The video script discusses strategies for improving SEO rankings by creating unique and relevant content. Gotch shares examples of how he achieved high rankings by addressing specific user queries, such as 'iMovie crashes when importing,' with dedicated assets. He highlights the importance of fulfilling search intent, ensuring content is the most relevant for a given query, and using tools like Google Analytics and NLP to identify and cover necessary topics in content creation.

10:01

📈 Enhancing User Engagement and Content Freshness for SEO Success

In the final paragraph, Gotch focuses on the importance of engagement and content freshness for SEO. He suggests using Google Analytics 4 to measure engagement rates and identify areas for improvement. Gotch also emphasizes the need for content to fulfill search intent effectively, as this is a critical factor in user engagement. He provides a simple example of a tool that, while not lengthy, successfully engages users and generates positive signals, contributing to high rankings.

Keywords

💡SEO

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, which is the process of improving the visibility and ranking of a website or a web page in a search engine's unpaid results. In the video, Nathan Gotch emphasizes the importance of SEO, particularly in the context of Google's ranking factors, to ensure that content is optimized for search engines and can be found by potential customers.

💡CTR (Click-Through Rate)

Click-Through Rate (CTR) is a metric used to measure the success of an online advertising campaign for a particular website as well as the effectiveness of email campaigns. In the script, Gotch mentions that if people are not clicking on a search result, it's a problem, and CTR data can be reviewed in Google Search Console to benchmark and improve rankings.

💡Google Search Console

Google Search Console is a free service offered by Google that helps monitor, maintain, and troubleshoot your website's presence in Google Search results. The script refers to it as a tool where one can check CTR data, indicating its importance in analyzing and improving a site's search performance.

💡Brand

A brand represents the identity of a business or product, encompassing its reputation, logo, slogan, and other distinguishing features. In the video, Gotch discusses the significance of building a strong brand, which can influence search rankings through various external variables such as backlinks and branded searches.

💡Relevance

Relevance in the context of SEO refers to how closely a web page's content matches what a user is searching for. Gotch stresses the importance of creating content that is highly relevant to the search query, as this is a key factor in fulfilling search intent and achieving higher rankings.

💡Freshness

Freshness pertains to the concept of regularly updating content to keep it current and valuable. The script mentions setting a cadence for updating assets to maintain their relevance and improve search rankings, which is critical in competitive fields.

💡Content and Link Signals

Content and link signals are indicators that search engines use to evaluate the quality and authority of a webpage. Gotch explains that link signals, particularly backlinks, are a significant factor in domain authority and search rankings, emphasizing the need for a strong link profile.

💡Uniqueness

Uniqueness in the context of SEO refers to creating content that stands out from the competition by offering a distinctive angle or perspective. Gotch uses the term 'Purple Cow' to illustrate the idea of creating content that is so unique it cannot be ignored, which can help in ranking for competitive keywords.

💡Fulfillment of Search Intent

Fulfilling search intent means providing content that effectively meets the needs of the searcher. Gotch highlights the importance of this concept, stating that even if a page is unique and fresh, it must also help the searcher, or else it will not perform well in terms of engagement and rankings.

💡Engagement Rate

Engagement rate is a metric that measures how actively users are interacting with a page or a piece of content. In the script, Gotch suggests using Google Analytics to monitor engagement rates and improve them, as high engagement is a positive signal to search engines about the quality of the content.

💡NLP (Natural Language Processing)

Natural Language Processing (NLP) is a field of artificial intelligence that focuses on the interaction between computers and humans using the natural language. Gotch mentions using NLP to understand topics that need to be covered in content to build a relevant asset, which is crucial for SEO and user engagement.

Highlights

Nathan Gotch, founder of Gotch SEO Academy and Rankability, discusses a massive leak of Google's ranking factors.

Importance of Click-Through Rate (CTR) and how to check it in Google Search Console for SEO improvement.

Google's use of user data from its own products like Chrome to influence search rankings.

The significance of brand in SEO and its determination by external variables such as backlinks and branded searches.

The necessity of building a strong brand presence across relevant websites to drive referral traffic.

The concept of freshness in SEO assets and the strategy of updating them every 6 to 12 months.

Content and link signals as crucial factors in domain authority and search rankings.

The role of uniqueness in content creation for standing out in search results.

Creating a 'Purple Cow' type of angle in content for differentiation in a competitive keyword space.

The strategy of building the most relevant page for a query, even without a unique angle.

The importance of fulfilling search intent to produce positive user signals on a webpage.

Using Google Analytics to measure engagement rates and identify areas for content improvement.

The relevance of a page to a query and its impact on search rankings and user engagement.

Utilizing NLP and topic analysis to build highly relevant content that meets search intent.

The balance between hitting core NLP topics and introducing unique content sections for better rankings.

Engagement as a key indicator of content quality and its role in SEO strategy.

Practical examples of how simple tools can fulfill user intent and generate good user signals.

Encouragement for viewers to like, subscribe, and comment on the video for further discussion on ranking factors.

Transcripts

if you're doing SEO then you have to

watch this video because there was just

a massive leak of Google's ranking

Factor so I'm going to jump over to my

computer and I'm going to show you

exactly what has been discovered okay so

before we dive in just want to make sure

you know who I am I'm Nathan gotch the

founder of gotch SEO academy uh this is

number one SEO training program for

agencies and you can see we've got the

whole Community here and I'm also the

founder of an SEO software called

rankability I'm the author of The SEO

entrepreneur and I also have gotten a

lot of SEO results over the last decade

but I was scrolling through Twitter and

I saw that Rand fishkin had posted about

this and basically just you know I'm

going to I'm going to take all of this

really technical stuff and I'm going to

make it really simple number one nav

boost all this kind of technical

language I'm just going to keep it

really simple once you're ranking if

people are not clicking on your result

that's a real problem the good news is

you can go right into Google search

console and you can see your CTR data

that's an area where you can Benchmark

and try to improve the next one is

Chrome if you're using a Google product

they are tracking everything that you're

doing so they're using all the data at

their disposal to determine what should

rank number three is brand and eat the

biggest element is your overall brand

and your overall brand is likely

determined uh by a lot of external

variables so that's going to be

backlinks possibly could be branded

searches it could be a bunch of other

signals outside of your website right so

building a brand is really important and

like that's why you know I'm publishing

YouTube videos I'm not just relying on

Google right if I only relied on Google

then that would be not super smart at

all so we should be building out kind of

an omnipresent strategy around any brand

that we're working with to really focus

on just building a brand like don't even

think about necessarily SEO think about

building a brand uh and building a

presence on the websites that are most

relevant to what you do which then can

drive relevant referral traffic into

your website which is going to produce

the positive signals on your site right

if we're trying to produce positive user

signals on the site we need to drive Max

maximum relevant traffic into our

website relevance is the name of the

game and now number four is this is all

about freshness we need to really focus

on having fresh assets and the way that

we do that is we we set a Cadence for

updating and upgrading our assets you

know every 6 to 12 months typically okay

and it doesn't necessarily need to be a

full rebuild at least building some new

freshness into that asset is really

really smart okay that's going to make a

big difference I'll talk more about that

in a second and then content and Link

signals okay it's no surprise that link

signals are huge and when we're talking

about domain Authority this is not moz's

domain we're just talking about the

overall domain strength from a link

profile perspective there's a high

probability that they use this it's

pretty clear there's been overwhelming

studies and evidence that backlinks make

a huge difference okay so even debating

it would be foolish at this point so

it's a huge huge Factor all right so

those are kind of like the core things

you know it's basically uh click data

user data uh obviously content itself uh

your reputation and your brand and then

backlink signals we're just going to

walk through kind of like some simple

things that you can do to make sure that

your content is built for maximum

rankings so number one is uniqueness the

number one thing you should do with

youro content is when you pick a keyword

start to think about what is the unique

angle what's the unique thing that I can

build that no one else has done

sometimes it's a fullon completely

Purple Cow type of angle okay so here's

a quick example of a purple cow type of

angle so I when I wanted to rank for

this keyw I looked at all the results

and basically I saw this bunch of

generic kind of list posts where people

probably just went to Amazon and threw

them into a list so what I did is I

actually went and I purchased all of the

books in the SEO space and I actually

read them and then reported on all these

books I took I took pictures obviously

this is in my kitchen like I have Visual

Evidence there's evidence that I

actually did this because there's Nuance

in this post that I had to have read it

to actually know it right so this is

this is just a small example of like a

purple cow type of angle sometimes there

are situations where you can't do this

it's just not possible so in other ways

you can you can create

differentiation uh using other

techniques okay so this is just one

small example another one is like you

know best CMS for SEO like I'm winning

on this one right now of course but I'm

beating some really powerful websites

and once again this is just based purely

on uniqueness like I just did something

that was a purple cow Angle now that's

not always the case I'm not always

looking for a really hard like purple

cow type of angle to win sometimes it's

a very simple angle which is just being

the most relevant page possible so this

page here is what I want to show you

like this page was ranking like number

50 or 60 or something like way way

horrible and what I did uh this keyw

iMovie crashes when importing so this

post was ranking for this specific

phrase and it was ranking horribly so

what I did is I wanted to rank for this

so I I started to look at the results

and basically what I saw was like okay

none of these results are really talking

about the specific issue of crashes when

importing like it's a very specific

problem that needs to be solved so what

I did is I splintered off and created a

dedicated asset to solve that one

problem re and then I published that new

asset and it's been ranking you know

number one or in the top three for like

many many years okay

and the reason like what I did here this

is not like a particular you know it's

not a spectacular piece of content but

what it is is it's the most relevant

piece of content for this query so what

I did is instead of finding some purple

cow angle like one of these I just

basically said well I'm just going to

build the most relevant piece of content

because no one else has done that right

so you don't need to always go to such

extreme lengths you only need to do this

when it's a highly competitive keyword

but when it's a not a competitive key

keyword sometimes just building out the

most relevant asset is the angle that

you have to do okay it's literally as

simple as that so there's a lot of other

things you can do to build proper

engagement on a page um but just so you

know this is when I'll be talking about

this but this is the first place to

begin is like how do I create something

that's different than what's currently

ranking right sometimes the whole angle

sometimes it's just micro pieces of that

now we're going to move on to number two

here which is freshness right I already

talked about this but make it a make it

a a part of your routine you're

constantly trying to update your assets

like depending on the competition of

that asset you should be doing it

probably you know every 3 to 6 months at

least revisiting it and seeing how it's

doing but if it's not super competitive

you could expand that out further but

the more competition there is the the

smaller the window is to keep that app

to keep it to keep it as fresh as

possible okay so highly highly recommend

putting that into your workflow uh

number three is fulfillment and when I'm

talking about fulfillment I'm talking

about fulfilling search intent okay this

is really critical you could get

uniqueness right you could get freshness

right but if you don't if your page does

not actually help the Searcher it's not

going to matter right because the

Searcher will not will not engage on

that page and if we can produce good

engagement on that page then the whole

system breaks down the whole system

breaks down so we got to if we're

producing positive signals on the page

that's an indication that we have

fulfilled the intent properly right

that's the key so you can just go go

into Google analytics and you can see uh

with engagement rate okay and I'll be

talking here in a second about

engagement but you can go and look at

the engager you can see how that page is

performing we can use user tracking data

uh like you know a hot jar or Mouse flow

to see how users are engaging um on your

page and that will help us figure out

like have we fulfilled the intent okay

that's what matters and Google is really

looking at this so do not take it

lightly number four is relevance okay

this goes back this goes back to search

intent so these are kind of cousins when

it comes to this but we have to build

out the most relevant page possible for

the query so going back to my example

which was the you know iMovie crashes

when

importing this page although it is

partially relevant it does it's not

relevant to the big problem that this

person has and I can speak from

experience when I go on iMovie and I

have this issue the last thing I want is

a freaking review I don't care about a

review I need to solve my my specific

problem and this page did not deserve to

rank so when I built this page this

actually deserved a rank cuz I'm

actually solving that very specific

problem okay so this comes back down to

relevance now there's a way that you can

do this there's a smart way and a you

know ineffective way to do this now the

the way that I do it it's just just

going to tell you in full transparency

the way that I do it is I of course use

my own software to do this now showing

you this example here this is uh I was

ranking number like 70 or something for

SEO for dentists now I don't know where

I am now we can check let's see seo4

dentist and of course this could be

personalized so take it with a grain of

salt but yeah I'm in I'm let's say in

the top three okay over here so I built

this asset with NLP in mind and all of

these are topics that needed to be

fulfilled in this content to build a

properly relevant asset okay the big

difference with this with rankability

compared to the other tool is that we

don't care about how many times you

mention a specific keyword that does not

matter what I view these as are topics

these are topics that we have to hit in

the cont content okay and that's really

critical cuz we're trying to build the

most relevant page imaginal so if you're

not using this data you're really not

you're you don't have the the

information you need to build a highly

relevant asset okay you can guess you

can try to piece something together with

chat gbt but it will never be as

effective as actually extracting the NLP

ideas from the competitors and then

making sure you're hitting on those same

topics now there's a Nuance here this is

very important it's not just about

hitting the NLP topics that's kind of

like part one but going back to what I

mentioned before which is going back to

uniqueness okay uniqueness which is

really critical is you want to have

sections in this content that have

certain levels of uniqueness meaning

other people who are creating content

for this keyword have not talked about

this stuff okay so what I do is I look

at my content I say okay we got a lot of

green that's good that means we're

hitting on the core topics but then what

I to see is I want to see a lot of blank

spots a lot of areas where there's no

green okay so we got this whole block

here where there's not a lot of green

mean that's a good thing for me okay

that means there's something I put in

this content that's unique and then the

final piece of this is engagement

there's a few things you can do on the

engagement side you don't have to guess

use Google analytics 4 I published this

video 8 months ago talking about ga4

engagement rate you can integrate the

Google analytics 4 API into screaming

frog crawl your whole site and then you

can actually get the uh get the

engagement rate for each individual page

on your site and this is just one thing

that you can Benchmark and you can get

an average so what I like to do is I'll

take the average engagement rate on my

entire website okay average engagement

rate let's say it's you know 50 okay

that's my average engagement rate well

then any page that's below that 50%

average is a page that I want to

investigate further I want to look into

it I want to see why is that engagement

rate so poor on that page and I won't

get into you know what produces good

engagement but there's small things like

for example if you look up uh the

keyword script timer okay I think I

ranked somewhere yeah here like this

page here is is this is not what you

would think is like a long form piece of

content it's just a simple tool a very

simple tool it fulfills the intent and

it produces good user signals right

because what people are doing they're

actually coming in here they're actually

they're using it and they're calculating

and stuff is happening here and then

they bookmark it and then they link to

it and they share it like this is what

it's all about I'll drop links to all

these sources below and you guys can

check them out and and as always uh if

you like this video please like it

subscribe leave your comments below tell

me what you think about these ranking

factors and I'll see you in the next

video thanks