What is the most important Google ranking factor?

There is an extremely huge list of all the factors that are a part of your rank in the Google Search Engine. Google even has its own search quality evaluation guidelines

 that are frequently updated and worth to check out. However, having this big list it’s really hard not to lose your tactics and know what to look for to improve your ranking. So in between hundreds of all the factors, here are the main ones I would exclude that need more attention:

Page quality

Google itself indicates the most important factors of the page quality. How to know if your website can be highly rated?

The Purpose of the Page - Google cares about the growth of the internet and the benefits of the websites in it. Common helpful and beneficial page purposes include sharing information that could even be personal or social, sharing any forms of media, files and software to download, sharing original opinion or point of view, entertaining, selling products or services that are on demand, allowing discussions. Any helpful pages are most liked by Google and those that have a potential of spreading hate, cause harm or misinform users can receive only lowest rating.

E-A-T or Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness - an important characteristic for all beneficial pages. It includes the expertise of the content creator, the authoritativeness and the trustworthiness of the content creator and the website itself. The standard for the expertise depends on what the topic of the page is.

Main Content Quality and Amount - the quality of the content depends on the accuracy of the topic, entertainment or the ease of use. Content also includes the features and functionality of the website, so it is important to test them out. To create this type of content it should take a huge amount of at least one of the following: time, effort, expertise, and talent or skill. The amount of the content as well depends on the purpose of the page.

Website Information and information about who is responsible for the main content - high quality pages should have clear and detailed information about the website, so the users of it could feel comfortable trusting the page.

Website Reputation and reputation of who is responsible for the main content - for the high quality ranking in Google, the website should be highly rated in the well trusted review websites for example in Google reviews.

Website security

Google is really happy if your website has HTTPS - it even gives you a padlock on Chrome and indicates that your website is secured. It is good not only for the padlock, HTTPS comes only with SSL which creates a secure connection between the website and the browser. This is a big indicator that can encourage users to register to the website and even make a payment. As HTTPS is giving you more trustworthiness, it is also helping you to rank higher on Google Search Engine.

Another thing to note - from the beginning of July 2018, Google announced that Chrome will display a “not secure” warning on every website that doesn’t have SSL. It’s time to get one if you haven’t already!

Page speed

Another important Google ranking factor is your website speed. Starting from July 2018 the mobile page speed has also become a crucial thing for mobile search results as up to 70% of search comes from mobile phones. Google gives some tools to improve your page speed and lets you test your website on both - mobile and desktop - and find the main options how to make it load faster.