Authoritative Domains Tend to Rank Higher in Google’s Search Results
We recently analyzed 11.8 million Google search results to answer the question: Which factors correlate with first page search engine rankings? We looked at content. We looked at backlinks. We even looked at page speed. With the help of our data partner Ahrefs , we uncovered some interesting findings. And today I’m going to share what we found with you. Here is a Summary of Our Key Findings: 1. Our data shows that a site’s overall link authority (as measured by Ahrefs Domain Rating) strongly correlates with higher rankings. 2. Pages with lots of backlinks rank above pages that don’t have as many backlinks. In fact, the #1 result in Google has an average of 3.8x more backlinks than positions #2-#10. 3. Comprehensive content with a high “Content Grade” (via Clearscope ), significantly outperformed content that didn’t cover a topic in-depth. 4. We found no correlation between page loading speed (as measured by Alexa ) and first page Google ra...