Google is constantly changing its ranking algorithm and they claim it’s not a secret. Nevertheless, there are some key factors that determine your rank in Google SERPs (search engine results pages).
With the growing number of SEOs out there, it’s important to know what can help or hurt you when reaching for the top spot. Which of these are not Google ranking factors?
Do you wonder about questions like Does linking to those sites that are not related to your niche can decrease your website search rankings on Google? Does using WordPress “post tag” option affect ranking? Does changing web hosting company really affects search engine rankings or not?
Find a solution to all these questions below:
Note: Off niche sites are those websites that are not related to the topic of your website blog.
1. Does linking to off niche sites decrease your website search rankings on Google?
Answer: No, if the number of links is few & yes if the number of links is high
- If the number of outgoing links to off niche sites is few say 5-10 then it will not affect your Google search rankings in any form but if your website is linking to 50-100 off niche sites/blogs then it will surely decrease your page rank and search engine rankings.
- Suppose, you’ve got a blog on Fashion and you are linking too many off niche sites like mobile, computers, photography, software, insurance, health tips, etc. Just think yourself, does it looks normal to you, why will any Fashion site link to an insurance site or software site. Google treats this activity as abnormal and it can affect your search rankings.
- So, in order to rank high in search rankings, this is also another factor that Google takes into consideration. From now be careful while linking to any site.
My site has a lot of outgoing links to off niche sites, what to do?
OK, if your site/blog has too many links to off niche sites and you do not want to remove them, then Google suggests that make it no-follow so that it does not passes any link juice and can be ignored by Google bots.
2. Does WordPress tags helps you rank high on Google?
I’ve seen many bloggers stuffing 10-15 tags in a single post and when I asked them why they do it, their reply was “to rank higher on Google”, lets break this myth in this Google MythBuster Series.
Answer- No, not at all
Google does not give any attention to the tags and it does not help you to rank higher in Google SERPs. Why, here is the reason:
- As you’ve already used those keywords in the post itself so Google does not consider it as a ranking factor.
- They can be good for normal visitors but not at all affect your search engine rankings.
Tags are only used to tell human visitors about the topic of your article, rest there is no use of “Post Tags”. So creating a huge list of tags and putting it in your articles is just a waste of time when it comes to Google rankings and it can help your normal human visitors to surf for similar articles.
3. Does Google Treats All The Links Equally On A Web Page?
I’ll tell you which web elements pass high link juice and which the least.
Different sections of a web page are:
- Header
- Post content area
- Sidebar
- Footer
Let’s talk about each page element in detail:
Do-follow links in Footer
As far as the value of links is concerned, Google pays less attention and treats footer links as less important. Google treats footer links as less important because:
- Footer contains affiliate links or theme designer credit links, so the links are of no high quality.
- The links are not related to the niche of the site
If you are getting a backlink from a footer of a site, it will go to pass very little or negligible link juice.
Do-follow links in Sidebar
The majority of the links contained in the sidebar are relevant to the site, so Google gives high importance to the links in the sidebar as compared to the footer. The value of backlinks from the sidebar is of high quality as compared to the backlinks in the footer.
Do-follow links in the post content area
The links in the post content area are of high quality and hold high importance. It passes very high link juice only if the link is to the relevant site.
4. Does changing web hosting companies really affect search engine rankings?
Let’s talk a bit about changing web hosting companies and search engine rankings. During my early days of blogging, I bought hosting from Dreamhost for 1 year. After 1 year passed, I decided to move to Hostgator.
After I made the shift, I was told that my search engine rankings will fall as I’ve changed my web hosting company.
At that time I was very worried about my rankings but after the Search Engine Optimization course, I came to know the truth. So, I am going to tell you does change web hosting companies really affects search engine rankings or not.
Answer- Changing web hosting company has no effect on Google Search Engine Rankings
Google does not interfere in such matters. Once you will change your web hosting company, in 24 hrs or less, Google will come to know about the change in the IP address of your server and it will update its records. Migrating to another hosting will have no effect on Google rankings.
But remember, your ranking will surely go down if you choose a bad web hosting company. If you are planning to change your web hosting company do read my article on Best Hosting Provider for Your Blog.
5. Does Top pinging services help you to get all your pages indexed by Google?
Now, I’ll talk a bit about pinging services. There is a myth among people’s minds that top pinging services help to index the links from sitemap to Google search result database, let’s have a closer look at it:
Answer- Yes, it is a myth that Google will index all the links from sitemap if you use top pinging services.
- Google does not index all the pages from a sitemap no matter what pinging services you use.
- Pinging services are only used to tell Google to crawl your newly created pages but will not help to index all the pages of your site.
In a nutshell, pinging services just ping the search engines that the blog has been updated, come and crawl the new content. It no way helps to index pages.
6. Does Google search rankings depend upon post frequency?
Answer- No, Google search rankings do not depend upon post frequency
- No search engine considers post frequency as its ranking factor. It is a myth. Search engines do not care about how often you update your blog/site rather they consider how original and fresh the content is.
- A good posting frequency can only impress your readers and regular visitors but not the search engines.
- This does not mean that I am encouraging you not to post on daily basis but my today’s article was to inform all the webmasters out there about Google Myth.
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Conclusion- Which Is Not A Google Ranking Factor In 2024
Google has always been a mystery when it comes to ranking factors. They claim they don’t use secret formulas, but we know that’s not true because there are some obvious ones like the number of backlinks and words on each page.
There are also less obvious ones such as how often you update your site or if you’re using WordPress tags (these can hurt). If you want to rank well in search engine results pages, be sure to avoid these six common mistakes!
