65+ Ranking Factors Across 4 Evaluation Categories

1. Crawl accessibility

Checks whether search bots can access key templates and important paths.

2. Indexability controls

Validates noindex, canonical, and robots directives for correctness.

3. XML sitemap quality

Audits sitemap freshness, status codes, and alignment with indexable URLs.

4. Robots.txt policy

Reviews robots rules for accidental blocking and poor crawl prioritization.

5. HTTP status integrity

Flags broken pages, soft 404s, and status code mismatches.

6. Redirect hygiene

Detects redirect chains, loops, and unnecessary temporary redirects.

7. HTTPS enforcement

Confirms secure protocol usage and canonical consistency between variants.

8. Canonical architecture

Verifies duplicate pages resolve to intended canonical URLs.

9. URL readability

Scores slug clarity, stability, and avoidance of noisy parameters.

10. Internal link depth

Measures how many clicks core pages are from the homepage.

11. Orphan page detection

Finds pages with no internal links pointing to them.

12. Duplicate content control

Identifies pages with highly overlapping copy and mixed canonical targets.

13. Title tag coverage

Checks uniqueness, intent alignment, and title length.

14. Meta description quality

Evaluates presence, relevance, and rewrite risk in snippets.

15. Heading structure

Audits H1-H3 hierarchy and semantic section clarity.

16. Image alt coverage

Reviews descriptive alt attributes for accessibility and context.

17. Structured data presence

Measures schema type coverage for business and content entities.

18. Breadcrumb markup

Validates breadcrumb navigation and BreadcrumbList schema consistency.

19. Pagination handling

Checks paginated collections for crawl traps and weak signals.

20. Hreflang readiness

Audits multilingual annotations when international variants exist.

21. Thin page risk

Flags pages with low unique value or low informational depth.

22. Business identity consistency

Checks NAP and brand identity consistency in core pages and markup.

1. Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)

Measures how quickly primary page content becomes visible.

2. Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)

Tracks visual stability and layout jumps during load.

3. Interaction to Next Paint (INP)

Evaluates responsiveness for taps, clicks, and keyboard input.

4. Time to First Byte (TTFB)

Assesses backend response latency and server-side bottlenecks.

5. Caching and compression

Checks gzip/brotli usage and cache-control strategy for static assets.

6. Mobile rendering quality

Verifies responsive behavior and viewport reliability on mobile devices.

1. Search intent alignment

Measures how directly the page answers likely query intent.

2. Topical depth

Checks whether pages cover core subtopics and practical specifics.

3. Content freshness

Looks for update cadence and outdated references in critical pages.

4. Original insight

Rewards first-party data, examples, and unique framing.

5. Factual consistency

Flags contradictory claims and unclear positioning statements.

6. Expertise signals

Evaluates visible qualifications, credentials, and domain knowledge.

7. Author transparency

Checks authorship clarity, bios, and editorial accountability.

8. Readability and structure

Scores scannability using headings, lists, and clear paragraph flow.

9. Entity completeness

Measures explicit mention of products, services, industries, and locations.

10. Keyword targeting clarity

Assesses primary and secondary phrase focus without stuffing.

11. Supporting internal links

Checks contextual links that reinforce topic clusters.

12. Conversion clarity

Evaluates CTA specificity and alignment with page purpose.

13. Local relevance

Reviews local context signals when geography matters.

14. FAQ usefulness

Measures quality and coverage of practical question-answer content.

15. Trust reinforcement

Checks testimonials, proof points, and policy transparency.

1. Entity definition clarity

Determines whether AI models can unambiguously identify your business.

2. Brand disambiguation

Checks naming overlap risk and context markers that reduce confusion.

3. Answer-first formatting

Scores whether pages provide concise direct answers near the top.

4. Question coverage

Measures breadth of natural-language questions your content addresses.

5. Citation-ready phrasing

Evaluates quote-worthy statements with clear, verifiable language.

6. Schema completeness for AI

Checks machine-readable schema supporting entity understanding.

7. Service specificity

Assesses explicit service, pricing, and audience qualifiers.

8. Geo qualifier strength

Measures location specificity for local and regional prompts.

9. About and contact transparency

Reviews trust pages that help models validate legitimacy.

10. Review and reputation signals

Looks for consistent social proof and sentiment evidence.

11. Cross-source consistency

Compares messaging consistency across owned and third-party mentions.

12. Long-tail conversational coverage

Audits prompt-style phrase coverage beyond short keywords.

13. Comparison content readiness

Checks whether pages support model-generated alternatives comparisons.

14. List and table extractability

Measures how easily models can pull structured facts and summaries.

15. Paragraph compression quality

Evaluates sentence density for chunking and retrieval quality.

16. Context-setting intros

Checks whether page intros provide fast, clear framing for retrieval.

17. Knowledge graph alignment

Assesses explicit entities, relationships, and supporting attributes.

18. Source attribution quality

Rewards outbound references and transparent claim provenance.

19. Multi-platform answer readiness

Scores adaptability for ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity patterns.

20. Prompt-to-page matching

Measures alignment between likely prompts and available landing pages.

21. FAQ schema and Q&A structure

Checks structured FAQ markup and visible Q&A quality.

22. Recommendation confidence signals

Evaluates trust elements that support definitive AI recommendations.