Our Real Estate SEO Experts Reveal Google’s 100+ Ranking Factors

Young African-American SEO expert sitting at desk with headphones on advising a real estate agent client on Google's top ranking factors they should consider for their real estate website

Keeping up with the ever-changing world of SEO is a job in itself—which is why many real estate agents opt to work with a professional SEO provider or agency. But even if you’re working with an expert, it’s smart to stay in the know about SEO so you can ask the right questions and understand exactly what is impacting your website performance.

Get this: Google uses over 200 factors to determine where websites show up in search results, some of which are publicly confirmed and some of which they keep close to the chest. But don’t let that stress you out! Our SEO team has narrowed the list down to the top Google ranking factors to focus on if you want to see improvement in your rankings, which we’ll dive into below.

Top Google ranking factors

image of a laptop and a notepad with text handwritten on the page.

The following are ranking factors directly confirmed by Google or widely agreed upon by the SEO community.

Content relevance and quality

Content refers to the written and visual information on your page, including copy, video, and images. And the quality of that content matters to Google. You want your content to be contextually relevant to the purpose of the page and to incorporate keywords naturally. Google is very good at analyzing content and highly values relevancy and quality, so it’s important to put real thought into what problem a page is trying to solve and provide helpful, topical answers.

Keyword stuffing

On the flip side, stuffing keywords into a blog post has a confirmed negative impact on a page’s ranking. In earlier days of SEO, a common method for getting a page to rank was to add a keyword as many times as possible, no matter how awkward it made the copy sound. That’s no longer the case. Google is adept at natural language processing, and saying the same thing over and over does not work. In fact, Google is likely to penalize sites and pages that do this.

Keywords

Having said that, keywords are obviously still an extremely important ranking factor. Keywords should appear in headlines, copy, videos, captions, and other places on your page. It’s how and where they show up that matters, which is why a good content strategy is critical.

Title tags

While they might not be the most important factor in Google rankings, title tags matter because they’re the first impression that someone gets of your website. Your title tag appears as a link on the search engine results page (SERP) and should briefly explain what the page is about. While there’s technically no limit to how long a title tag can be, Google will truncate the text to around 60 characters.

Core Web Vitals

Core Web Vitals are another confirmed Google ranking factor. Essentially, they are a measurement of your page’s performance and what kind of experience a user will have when visiting it. They include Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), which measures loading

First Input Delay (FID), which measures interactivity, and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS), which measures visual stability. In non-technical speak, this means things such as how long it takes the largest image on the page to load and how long it takes before a visitor can interact with a page.

Page headings

These relate to headlines and subheadlines, which give your page structure and help users navigate it. As long as they are well-written and contextually relevant, Google will use these to better understand your page. In the example below, the page heading includes high-value keywords that are relevant to someone searching for what it’s like to move to San Francisco.

screenshot of headline example from an article about 8 things to know before moving to San Francisco, to show that headings are a google ranking factor

Location

When you set up your Google Business Profile or your website is crawled and indexed, your address is collected. Because Google knows the general location of its users, their proximity to your address affects how high you’ll rank. For example, if someone in Boston is searching for “TX real estate agents,” your website may not appear at all, while it will show up for someone who is searching from Dallas.

Anchor text

Another confirmed Google ranking factor, anchor text is the text on a button or a link that points the visitor to a different page. While “Read More” or “Click Here” are commonly used, descriptive text is more helpful when it comes to SEO. For example, rather than using “Read More” to direct someone to a blog post about fun things to do in Miami, your link could instead say, “Our 10 Favorite Things to Do in Miami.” By including keywords in your anchor text, you let Google know what the linked page is about.

HTTPS, not HTTP

This factor is pretty straightforward: Google wants you to use HTTPS rather than HTTP. HTTPS is a secure communication protocol that tells a browser to encrypt data, which is important for protecting your site and user data.

Mobile responsiveness

As of Q4 2022, 59.16 percent of global website traffic came from mobile devices. Google grades websites on how they perform on mobile, so making sure your pages are mobile-optimized is very important.

Backlinks

When another website links to your website, that’s called a backlink. The more credible and authoritative the website that links to yours is, the more Google will factor that in. Getting a link from the New York Times, for example, will have a lot more value than a link from a random blog.

While not officially confirmed, the following is considered a probable Google ranking factor.

Alt text

Alt text means “alternative text” and is a description of images, graphics, or videos on a website that is read by screen readers. This makes your website more accessible, which is a good practice regardless of SEO factors. Alt text can also help inform what is on the page and is considered a probable Google ranking factor.

The following are not considered direct Google ranking factors—but they still provide a positive user experience for anyone visiting your website.

External links

External links add value for your site visitors. For example, if you’re writing a blog post about the best restaurants in Dallas, you’ll likely include a link to each restaurant’s website. Including these links save your readers time and hassle, but there’s little value to your own website rankings.

Meta description

It used to be that including keywords in your website description could help improve your rankings. Today, they only serve to provide more information and help entice someone to click on your site—useful, but not a direct ranking factor.

Word count

There’s a lot of chatter online about the length of blog posts and other website content. But the truth is, a 500-word post isn’t worse or better than one with 2,000 words. There’s no magic number—word count is simply not a Google ranking factor. What matters is a page’s quality, as mentioned earlier. The only “right” word count for a blog post is the number of words you need to deliver a page’s message in a relevant, thoughtful way.

Content date

When a piece of content was published generally does not affect a website’s ranking. The only nuance here is when someone is searching for content about a specific timeframe. For example, a search for lists of the top vacation spots in 2023 will often, though not always, show more recent content pieces. It’s important to note that republishing existing content with a new date will not improve search rankings.

Other Google ranking factors

Image of person sitting at desk with laptop open and writing in a notepad thats situated next to a coffee cup

The Google ranking factors we mentioned above are our key priority at Luxury Presence, as they have the greatest impact on your ranking. But we keep a pulse on all the latest changes and updates to make sure the real estate professionals we work with always stay competitive in search results.

Again, our SEO experts speculate there are over 200 (!) ranking factors that Google uses in its algorithm. In no particular order, here’s a list of other suspected Google ranking factors:

  1. Domain age
  2. Originality of the page’s content
  3. Keyword in your domain
  4. Keyword is the first word in your domain
  5. Domain registration length
  6. Keyword in subdomain
  7. Domain history
  8. Penalized Whois owner
  9. Public WhoIs instead of private Whois
  10. Presence of the keyword in the title tag
  11. Adding the keyword within the first 60 characters of your title tag
  12. Keyword in your meta description tag
  13. Presence of the keyword in the H1 tag
  14. Keyword is frequently used in the content
  15. Presence of a linked table of contents
  16. Keyword density
  17. Presence of semantically related keywords
  18. Semantically related keyword in meta title and description
  19. Page loading speed via HTML
  20. Page loading speed tested on Chrome
  21. No duplicate content on the same site
  22. Image optimization through ALT, title, and  file name
  23. How many edits were made to the content during updates
  24. Historical data on page updates
  25. Proper use of rel=canonical
  26. Presence of keyword in H2 and H3 tags
  27. Presence of keyword in the first 100 words
  28. Grammar and spelling (as it relates to page content quality)
  29. Entity match
  30. Number of high-quality outbound links
  31. Hidden content on mobile (may not be indexed)
  32. Presence of multimedia, for example, images and videos
  33. The quality of outbound links
  34. Theme of outbound links
  35. Presence of helpful supplementary content, like free tools and calculators
  36. Content hidden behind tabs
  37. Number of internal links pointing to the page
  38. Quality of internal links
  39. Presence of too many broken links
  40. The reading level of the page
  41. Presence of many affiliate links
  42. Presence of many HTML errors
  43. Authority/trust level of the domain
  44. Authority/trust level of the page
  45. PageRank
  46. Length of URL
  47. Closeness of URL to the homepage
  48. Presence of keyword in URL
  49. Opinion of human editors
  50. Relevance of page’s category to page
  51. Content formatting for user-friendliness and readability
  52. Priority of the page in the sitemap.xml
  53. UX signal from pages ranking for the same keyword
  54. Citing references and sources
  55. Use of a user-friendly layout
  56. URL string in Google search engine results
  57. Internal link anchor text to the page
  58. Use of structured data
  59. Site-level factors
  60. Presence of a contact us page or an appropriate amount of contact information
  61. Content on the site provides value or new insights
  62. TrustRank (how close your site is to a known and trusted site in terms of linking)
  63. Website updates for freshness factor
  64. Site architecture
  65. Presence of a sitemap
  66. Long-term site downtime
  67. Location of server
  68. Presence of legal pages (terms and conditions and privacy policy)
  69. Unique metadata
  70. Use of breadcrumb markup
  71. Site-wide mobile optimization
  72. Site-wide user-friendliness (usability and interactiveness)
  73. Bounce rate
  74. Domain authority
  75. User reviews
  76. Site reputation
  77. Age of linking domain
  78. Number of referring domains
  79. Number of links from separate c-class IPs
  80. Number of referring pages
  81. Anchor text of backlinks
  82. ALT tag of image links
  83. Number of links from .edu and .gov domains
  84. Trust factor of linking page
  85. Trust factor of linking domain
  86. Number of links from expected sites in your industry
  87. Links from bad neighborhoods
  88. Number of links that are not from ads
  89. Diversity of link profile
  90. Context of content the content of linking page
  91. Presence of more follow links that are sponsored or UGC
  92. Lots of backlinks to URL with 301 redirects
  93. Location of link in content
  94. Links from relevant and high-quality domains
  95. Links from relevant pages (internal linking)
  96. Presence of your page’s keyword in the title of the linking page
  97. Natural rate of growth in number of links
  98. Spiky and unnatural rate of growth in number of links
  99. Links from top resources on a certain topic or hubs
  100. Number of links from sites that are considered authority sites
  101. Linked as a source in a Wikipedia article
  102. Words around your backlinks
  103. Backlink age
  104. Links from real sites vs fake blogs
  105. Natural link profile
  106. Excessive reciprocal links
  107. Links in real content vs. UGC
  108. Backlinks from a page with a 301 redirect
  109. TrustRank of linking site
  110. Fewer outbound links on the linking page
  111. Links in real content vs links in forums
  112. Word count of linking content
  113. Quality of linking content
  114. Sitewide links = one link
  115. User Interaction
  116. Organic click-through rate for exact keyword
  117. Organic click-through rates for all ranking keywords
  118. Dwell time
  119. Bounce rate
  120. Measurement of how users interact on your site based on RankBrain
  121. Total direct traffic
  122. Percentage of repeat visitors
  123. Blocked sites
  124. Percentage of visitors that click on other pages on the SERP after clicking visiting your page
  125. Page frequently bookmarked by Chrome users
  126. Number of comments on page
  127. Need for diversity in the SERP
  128. Need for freshness in the SERP
  129. Browsing history of the user
  130. Search history of the user
  131. Succinct answers, formatting, page authority, and HTTPS for featured snippets
  132. Geo-targeting
  133. Adult content or curse words (excluded from safe search results)
  134. High content quality standards for YMYL keywords
  135. Legitimate DMCA complaints
  136. Need for domain diversity in SERP
  137. Transactional searches
  138. Local search results
  139. Presence of news stories related to keyword for the Top Stories box
  140. Search intent
  141. Presence of big brands with relevant content (they are often ranked higher)
  142. Presence of results optimized for Google Shopping
  143. Image results
  144. Branded search
  145. Easter eggs and April Fools’ Day jokes and hoaxes from Google
  146. Spammy queries
  147. Spammy sites
  148. Brand Signals
  149. Brand + keyword searches
  150. Branded anchor text
  151. Twitter profile with followers
  152. Official LinkedIn page
  153. Facebook page with lots of likes
  154. Branded searches
  155. Known author or verified online profile
  156. Real social media accounts
  157. Top stories with brand mentions
  158. Brand mentions without links
  159. Physical location of offices
  160. On-site Web
  161. Links to bad neighborhoods
  162. Multiple and sneaky redirects
  163. Flagged server IP address
  164. Distracting ads and popups
  165. Popups that are spammy and difficult to close
  166. Over-optimizing the site
  167. Gibberish content
  168. Use of doorway pages
  169. Lots of ads above the fold and not much content
  170. Hiding affiliate links
  171. Low-value content sites
  172. Affiliate sites
  173. Keyword stuffing in meta tags
  174. Compute generated content
  175. Nofollowing all outbound links
  176. Off-site webspam Factors
  177. Unnatural and sudden increase in backlinks
  178. Hacked site
  179. Lots of low-quality backlinks
  180. High percentage of links from unrelated websites
  181. Low-quality directory links
  182. Automatic links in widgets
  183. Links from sites with the same server IP
  184. Using “poison” in your anchor text
  185. Ignored manual actions in the search console
  186. Selling links
  187. Temporary link schemes

Work with the real estate SEO experts

two real estate SEO specialists, one male, one female, sitting next to each in coffee shop engaged in conversation.

Whew, right? We get it if you’re feeling exhausted just by looking at that list. That’s exactly why most real estate professionals hire SEO experts to handle their search engine optimization. If you tried to focus on all of these factors, you’d have no time left for real estate!

If you want to take your website rankings to the top of the SERP without stress, our expert team is here to make the whole process approachable and successful for you. Get started by booking a call, and we’ll walk you through how we can work together to get you discovered on Google.

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