Back in 2016, Google’s Andrey Lipattsev revealed that content and links were the top two ranking factors for its search engine. While Google takes nearly 200 other signals and algorithms into consideration, the huge weightage assigned to quality content and backlinks continues till today – which makes sense if you think about it.
Content
Quality comes over quantity here. It’s the valuable content that matters for Google ranking than the number of words. The best content for the “reasonable surfer” will always be one that is useful, relevant and engaging. If more users are clicking on your page simply because of the sheer quality of your content, you’re pretty much guaranteed higher rankings.
Backlinks
Since backlinks pass on its link juice and authority onto the destination page, no website would want to dilute its high authority status by linking to a spammy, low quality page. That’s why backlinks from high authority domains continue to remain among the strongest indicator about a page’s quality.