Important Google ranking factors for 2025

The digital world remains highly competitive and as part of this, Google’s ranking factors will continue to evolve. In 2025, user experience, relevance, and technical performance will remain key to ranking success. But how does this relate to the important Google ranking factors for 2025? And what can you do to come out on top?

What are the important Google ranking factors for 2025?

If you want your website to perform well on Google, understanding the ranking factors and taking steps to adjust your practices in line with these factors is essential. Some of the most important factors for 2025 include:

• High quality content
• Backlinks
• Search intent and content relevancy
• Website loading speed
• Mobile friendliness

High quality content as a Google ranking factor

Crafting compelling content that informs your audience, while being engaging, original, and useful, has long been one of the most important factors for Google’s ranking algorithm. This is no different in 2025. But what defines high quality content? And what should you consider? Well there are a number of things to take into account, including:

• Depth and originality- The content you create needs to address topics comprehensively, offering unique insights rather than rehashing existing information. This allows your website to become a knowledge hub, with useful and genuine content to share.
• Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness (E-E-A-T): Google assesses the credibility of your content through E-E-A-T principles. As part of this, you will need to ensure that your content is written to an expert standard in order to build trust with your audience.
• Visual enhancements- Multimedia content, such as videos, images, and infographics, can all play a key role in improving engagement and helping to convey complex ideas. In 2025, optimised multimedia is more crucial than ever for holding user attention and enhancing search rankings.
• Backlinks are a key ranking factor

Backlinks continue to serve as a significant ranking factor, but it is the quality and relevance of these that is essential for success in 2025. Google’s algorithm has become highly adept at distinguishing between authoritative and spammy links, so it’s important to follow the best practice guidelines for the best results. Some important and effective strategies include:

• Quality over quantity- A single backlink from a reputable site in your industry (e.g., a national newspaper or a recognised niche authority) carries more weight, and can boost the profile of your website further than dozens of low-quality links.
• Natural link building- Creating link-worthy content such as case studies, in-depth guides, and original research, can be effective ways to earn natural backlinks. These will have more of an influence on your website ranking, and natural link building remains the gold standard for backlinks in 2025.
• Diverse link profile- A healthy backlink profile includes links from a range of different sources, including blogs, news sites, forums, and social media. Google values this diversity as an indicator of genuine link building efforts.

Search intent and content relevancy as a ranking factor

Google aims to deliver the most relevant results to any search term, as these results are likely to provide the most help and support to the searcher, improving Google’s user experience. So what is search intent? Well this is essentially the reason behind a users query, and deciphering this can include:

• Informational intent- The user is seeking knowledge (e.g., “how to bake a cake”).
• Navigational intent- The user wants to find a specific website or brand (e.g., “BBC News”).
• Transactional intent- The user is looking to make a purchase or take a specific action (e.g., “buy running shoes”).

So with these different types of search intent in mind, how can you optimise for relevancy? Well, there are several steps including:

• Keyword research with intent in mind- Use tools like SEMrush, or Google Search Console, to identify the intent behind different keywords that are relevant to your company or business. Then you can tailor your content to match the expected intent, improving the user experience, boosting user engagement, and pushing up your Google ranking.
• Content clusters- By organising your website into topic clusters with a pillar page and supporting articles that address different aspects of a broad topic, you can create meaningfully, relevant content for users. This approach improves both relevancy and internal linking.
• SERP analysis- Another alternative is to analyse the current Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) for your target keywords to understand what Google deems relevant. For example, if the top results are all videos, creating a video may be essential to rank.

Website loading speed as a ranking factor

Website loading speed has long been a critical ranking factor, and in 2025, it’s even more vital for a number of reasons, including:

• Improved user experience- A fast-loading website reduces bounce rates and keeps users engaged. This improves your website’s ranking potential with Google.
• Core Web Vitals- Google uses metrics to measure the page load speed as part of the Core Web Vitals. This means that a faster loading time directly influences Google ranking factors.

So how can you effectively optimize your website for quick loading times to keep your users engaged, and to boost your ranking? Well there are several steps you can take, including:

• Compressing images- You should consider using modern formats like WebP, and implementing lazy loading to reduce the burden on browsers.
• Leverage browser caching- By storing frequently accessed files locally on users’ devices you can speed up page reloads and keep your users engaged.
• Minimise code- Reduce the size of CSS, JavaScript, and HTML files by minifying and combining them for a faster loading time.

Mobile friendliness as a ranking factor

In 2025, mobile-first indexing is the standard. This means that Google predominantly uses the mobile version of a website for ranking and indexing. This is due to the large amount of mobile traffic, which has led Google to prioritise this type of web design for the best experience for searchers. So how can you ensure mobile friendliness and secure a higher ranking position? Well, you could consider:

• Responsive design- Your website must adapt seamlessly to different screen sizes and orientations.
• Simplified navigation- Use clear menus, buttons, and internal links that are easy to interact with on small screens, with click options that are available to mobile users.
• Optimised mobile content- Use concise paragraphs, larger fonts, and easily tappable elements to improve readability and usability on mobile devices.
• Mobile page speed- Ensure that mobile pages load quickly by implementing AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) where appropriate.

Here at Pumpkin Web Design, we are Preston’s leading web design and web marketing experts. From SEO to content, we are the team you can count on for your businesses online success. Why not get in touch today to find out more?