In a recent Q&A, Andrey Lipattsev, a Search Quality Senior Strategist at Google revealed Google’s top three search ranking factors.

What are the three most important factors? Let’s dive right in!

Links and Content

According to Lipattsev, links and content are the two most important factors for ranking.

Surprised? Probably not.

But, with over 200 ranking signals, it is very rare when Google reveals what their ranking factors are.

It is more like a sigh of relief, having confirmation from Google that links and content are the two most important factors since those are two areas that SEO professionals tend to focus a lot of time and effort on.

RankBrain

RankBrain, Google’s artificial intelligence system was leaked as the third most important factor for ranking.

Again, this may not come as a surprise to some.

When Google announced RankBrain last year, they revealed it was the third most important ranking signal.

Conclusion

We’ve known how important content and links are for a long time now.  For some, this does not change how you go about your daily strategies.

However, this information does give us validation and a greater understanding of Google’s ranking factors.

Links and content still remain the core of Google’s algorithm.