Google Leak : 10 Concrete Actions to Boost Your SEO Rankings

Which SEO expert has never dreamed of receiving on a Sunday evening Google Search API documents that explicitly reveal the ranking rules of the world’s most used search engine?

This is what happened to Rand Fishkin, co-founder of Moz, who received on May 5th access to a significant amount of documents (between 2000 and 3000 pages) on the Google Search API from an anonymous source. This source has revealed his identity in a video: Erfan Azimi, SEO advisor and EA Eagle Digital founder. Once authenticated by former Googlers (or Xooglers) and by Mike King, founder of iPullRank, many quickly summarized the main information from these Google Leak documents.

Dozens of discoveries that we ultimately don’t know how to leverage in our on-page and off-page SEO strategies.

This is why we tested many SEO actions and share here those that are most effective for improving the ranking of Getfluence client content in search results.

Here, we share practices that have proven results in our clients’ contexts. Each site and page are different and have their own SEO history. Therefore, we advise always testing ideas and actions in your environment. It is the only way to verify their precise impact in your case!

Structure a Content, a Page for Ranking

1. Address common user queries and search intentions in clear titles, short paragraphs, structured bullet points, and without keyword stuffing.

2. Work on the depth of the semantic and lexical field.

3. Ensure your article is updated and addresses the main developments of the topic.

4. Add a unique perspective compared to existing publications on the topic.

What consequences for Google’s ranking criteria revealed by the Google Leak¹?

✅ High scores per page (YmylHealthscore, OriginalContentScore, DocLevelSpam, commercialScore, NlpSaftDocument, spambrainLavcScores, etc.).

✅ A high ContentEffort score due to quality, diversity, and a high ChardScore to measure the extent of the subject covered in the article and its level of update.

✅ A well-ranked contextual content by the seven different PageRanks, the most direct being PageRank_NS (Nearest Seed) which ranks based on semantic understanding and interactions with visitors.

Stimulate User Experience (UX) and Engagement

5. Integrate quality images, video previews, and attractive infographics within the first two scrolls of your article.

6. Connect complementary pages from high-authority, high-expertise external media (external links or premium backlinks). Develop internal linking to important site pages that provide deep knowledge on the topic and maintain engagement

7. Publish quality content that generates interest (long page visit duration) on well-positioned external referring domains that include a Dofollow contextual link to a complementary page on website.

What consequences for Google’s ranking criteria revealed by the Google Leak¹?

✅ High ImageQualityClickSignals thanks to clicks and user engagement, indicating the importance and utility of the content.

✅ Obtain a good NavBoost and Glue rating by demonstrating to Google that visitors refine their searches and complete their knowledge by consulting diverse sources, some of which have high authority, before continuing to navigate the site.

✅ NavBoost will assign better visitor satisfaction for your content if the clicks are long (a lot of time spent on the article) rather than short (quick bounce back to search results page).

✅ Glue, in use since 2014, will analyze any other interactions that aren’t clicks, such as scrolling, hovering, time spent reading an answer or snippet.

Leverage internal and external backlinks

8. Obtain a diverse external link profile (different authority ranges, trusted sources on a topic) and adapt to the main context (related and relevant themes) to reinforce authority and improve ranking.

9. Highlight and promote your articles by linking them on the homepage to enhance the authority and credibility of the articles.

10. Strengthen the expertise of authors and speakers by publishing interviews, biographies on highly reputable media.

What consequences for Google’s ranking criteria revealed by the Google Leak¹?

✅ Increase your SiteAuthority, one of the three main ranking criteria mentioned in the Google documents along with content quality and visitor interaction.

✅ Reinforce the trust and authority of an article through the homepage, which benefits from higher PageRank and trust from Google.

✅ Benefit from high traffic and freshness of targeted referring domains.

✅ Save time searching for relevance rather than volume. Referring domains not relevant to the topic will simply be ignored by Google and will have no impact on the ranking of the concerned pages.

¹ Sources : The API documents behind the Google Leak can be viewed here