These are the 20 most important factors for SEO positioning according to Semrush

Semrush, the suite of tools for improving online visibility, presented its new study “Positioning Factors 2024”, in which it analyzes the most important SEO factors that influence the positions on Google’s search engine results pages (SERP).

These are the 20 most important factors for SEO positioning:

1. Text relevance.
2. Organic traffic of the URL.
3. Organic traffic of the domain.
4. Organic positions of the URL in the top 20.
5. Domain appearances in starred positions.
6. Domain authority scores.
7. Organic positions of the domain in the top 20.
8. Domain appearances in images.
9. URL appearances in starred positions.
10. Page authority scores.
11. Number of referring IPs (domain).
12. Number of referring domain (domain).
13. Number of referring IPs (URL).
14. Number of referring domains (URL).
15. Content quality score.
16. Number of backlinks (domain).
17. Number of backlinks (URL).
18. Domain appearances in featured snippets.
19. URL appearances in images.
20. Domain age.

For this purpose, a sample of 16,298 English keywords were analyzed, all with more than 100 monthly searches. For each keyword, the search engine results pages were compiled to analyze the top 20 positions and their performance based on a number of factors, to a total of 300,000 positions (excluding positions where Wikipedia and YouTube appeared).

In turn, the study has divided the different factors according to their typology: content, backlinks, URL and domain. Below, we analyze each of them.

Top 5 content factors:

• Text relevance (0.47).
• Content quality scores (0.17).
• Keyword coverage (0.08).
• Image alt tag count (0.04).
• Image count (0.03).

Backlinks factors

When building a website’s authority, it is necessary to monitor the authority score of both your own website and those of other domains that link to it.

Gaining backlinks from unique domains is a relevant factor and, although it is not essential to have a large number of backlinks, they help to build a thematic authority over time and drive more traffic.

The top 5 backlink factors are:

• Domain authority score (0.21).
• Page authority score (0.19).
• Number of referring IPs (domain) (0.18).
• Number of referring domains (domain) (0.18).
• Number of referred IPs (URL) (0.18).

URL factors and domains

Respect to the factors related to URLs and domains, the study makes a very interesting comparison by stating that the first three ranking factors remember of the “chicken and egg” situation.

And, according to the data collected, organic traffic (both to the URL and the domain), has had a strong correlation with the highest positions, however, they admit that the nature of the study does not allow them to ensure faithfully if this trend “is due or not to being at the top of the SERP“.

In this sense, they state that moving from position 2 (organic traffic of the domain) to position 1 (organic traffic of the URL), represents about 50% more traffic. Therefore, they recommend updating and improving pages that already rank to be on the first page of Google to increase organic performance.

The top 5 URL and domain factors are:

• Organic traffic of the URL (0.33).
• Organic traffic of the domain (0.28).
• Organic positions of the URL in the top 20 (0.22).
• Appearances of the domain in reviews (0.22).
• Organic positions of the domain in the top 20 (0.2).

By the way: we have talked to Semrush and they have offered our readers an extension of the free trial from 7 to 14 days, via the following link.

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Photo: Depositphotos.