Ranking factors are the signals a search engine's systems use to order results for a query. They number in the hundreds and are grouped loosely into on-page relevance (how well the page's content matches the query), off-page authority (links and reputation), user-experience signals (page speed, mobile-friendliness, layout stability), site-level quality signals, and query-specific factors like freshness or location.
Definition
Ranking factors are the signals a search engine's systems use to order results for a query. They number in the hundreds and are grouped loosely into on-page relevance (how well the page's content matches the query), off-page authority (links and reputation), user-experience signals (page speed, mobile-friendliness, layout stability), site-level quality signals, and query-specific factors like freshness or location.
No search engine publishes a complete, weighted list, and the weights shift by query type and change over time as systems are updated.
Because of this, "ranking factors" is more useful as a category of thinking than as a checklist. The systems are trying to identify the most relevant, highest-quality, most trustworthy result for the searcher's intent, and the individual factors are proxies for those goals.
Optimising a proxy in isolation — stuffing a keyword, buying links, gaming a metric — tends to be detected and discounted, whereas improving the underlying quality the factor is meant to measure is durable.
In context
Russian-language SEO discussion often splits ranking factors into internal ("внутренние") and external ("внешние"). Internal factors are everything on the site the owner controls: content quality and relevance, title and heading structure, internal linking, site architecture, technical health, page speed.
External factors are backlinks, brand mentions and reputation signals originating off-site. Yandex and Google weight these somewhat differently and use different specific systems, but the broad split holds for both.
For an iGaming affiliate, the practical reading is that internal factors are where controllable, penalty-free gains live — matching pages to intent, covering topics thoroughly, clean architecture, strong internal linking, fast mobile pages — and external factors are the harder, slower, riskier half. A site that has maximised its internal factors and still cannot compete for head terms is usually looking at an authority gap that only earned links and reputation over time will close; a site with weak internal factors is leaving free gains on the table regardless of its link profile.
Worked example
An affiliate maps its performance against ranking-factor categories: internal factors are strong (thorough content, clean architecture, fast pages) but it still ranks page two for head terms. The analysis concludes the gap is external authority, so the roadmap shifts from further on-page work to a two-year earned-link and digital-PR programme.
Related terms
Frequently asked questions
Browse the full iGaming & affiliate glossary — hundreds of EN/RU terms with examples.
← Back to glossary