Which factors have the most weight when it comes to SEO? The JDN asked the opinion of SEO Services Force specialists and compiled their answers. Here are the results.How to raise your web page to the top of Google’s natural results? This is what the JDN wanted to know by surveying the professionals registered in its SEO directory . As with the previous study on local SEO , we asked them to rate the importance of a series of 46 criteria from 0 to 5. A list that Philippe Yonnet, director of the agency SEO Search Foresight, helped us to develop.
In all, 140 SEO professionals played the game. Below is the ranking of the criteria with the most positive impact. For more readability, the average scores have been reduced to 100 (full methodology at the end of the article).
The criteria that most favor SEO
Rank Criterion Score (average of scores out of 100) Confidence index (max: 100)
1 Many links from authoritative sites point to the page
2 Relevant keywords in the Title tag (details: “relevant” content or keyword responds to the user’s request. Like if a user is searching for an SEO company, he searches in the Google search bar for this keyword and the top results are the sites that have the SEO company keyword in title.
3 The content of the central area of the page is relevant: it gives a good answer to the query
4 Many links from sites in the same sector / the same theme
5 Many links point to the page
6 Relevant keywords in H1
7 Freshness of the information of the page on a subject that requires it
8 Mobile-friendly site (according to Google’s tool)
9 Speed of display of the site on mobile
10 Presence of an H1 beacon
11 Many links point to the site
12 Age of the site (on the same theme)
13 The vocabulary used is varied and supported
14 Variety of domains pointing to the site
15 Speed of display of the site on desktop
16 Presence of enriched content (with images, video, etc.)
17 In Google results, the click-through rate of the page is above average
18 Relevant keywords in H2, Hn
19 Presence of structured data (from schema.org)
20 Presence of H2, Hn
21 An older page with comparable content redirects (via 301 redirect) to the page to be referenced
22 Relevant keywords in the rest of the URL
23 The page contains internal links pointing to authoritative sites
24 Page in https
25 Relevant keywords in the domain name
26 Many links from social networks pointing to the page (many Facebook shares or many tweets pointing to the page)
27 Relevant keywords in the meta description. Reminder: it was the impact on Google positions that should be noted, not on organic traffic
28 Significant share of dofollow links (very few nofollow links). Here it was possible to note the positive or negative impact
29 Presence of the “author” tag
According to the professionals surveyed
The three most important factors in SEO are links from authoritative sites such as keywords in the title relevant to the query, and central content also in line with the search. of the Internet user. A podium that should not surprise professionals but that Philippe Yonnet wants to qualify: “We must not forget that Google can vary the weight of the criteria according to the requests”, he recalls. Our expert is also not surprised to see the title tag so high in the rankings. SEO Services Company places a lot of importance on this tag. It’s a strong belief. Yet it’s probably less important than before,” he thinks.
The weight of links
Also note in the top 10: SEOs give greater importance to the speed of page display on mobile than on desktop. This is probably taking a little head start, because for the moment, it is above all the speed on the desktop that is taken into account by the engine, but this should change.
