Unveiled: The Surprising SEO Secrets Google’s Experts Swear By to Dominate Rankings

Backlinks ranked as Google’s second most important ranking factor in a new survey of 131 SEO professionals conducted by Zyppy. Relevance ranked first, and content quality ranked third.

Backlinks ranked No. 2. Although Google’s Gary Illyes has said links are not among Google’s top three ranking signals, 54.8% of respondents selected backlinks as one of the three most important factors. Only relevance ranked higher at 57.1%.

• Links from trusted, topically relevant domains and pages with real visitors received some of the highest ratings among backlink-related factors.
• Spammy backlinks ranked among the strongest negative signals.
• Cyrus Shepard wrote in the report that “the rumor of the death of backlinks has been greatly exaggerated.”

Search intent ranked first. Search intent match received the highest rating of any individual ranking factor.

• Many respondents said success depends on satisfying the searcher’s underlying goal, not just matching keywords.
• Several also pointed to information gain as an important factor when multiple pages satisfy the same search intent.
• Meta descriptions ranked near the bottom. Most respondents said they have little or no direct effect on rankings.

Original research ranked highly. Content quality ranked third overall. Within that category, original research and first-party data received some of the highest ratings.

• Respondents viewed AI-generated content more favorably when it received substantial human review and added unique value.
• AI-generated content published at scale with little added value received negative ratings.

Brand and user signals. Branded search volume, online reputation, and user satisfaction received some of the highest ratings in their categories. Among user signals, satisfaction and task completion ranked highest. Quickly returning to Google’s search results received a negative rating.

Technical SEO remained foundational. Respondents gave consistently positive ratings to technical SEO factors. They generally described crawling, indexing, and overall site health as foundational requirements. Internal linking also received high ratings.

About the data. Zyppy’s 2026 Google Ranking Factors Expert Survey collected 13,665 ratings across 103 potential ranking factors. Respondents rated each factor on a seven-point scale and identified what they believed were Google’s three most important ranking signals. Zyppy said it updated this year’s survey to reflect AI search, Google’s API leak, testimony from Google’s antitrust trial, and recent algorithm updates.

Why we care. The survey offers an interesting snapshot of what 131 SEO professionals believe Google’s ranking systems value most in 2026. That said, nothing in the survey was too surprising — expect more confirmation than revelation. Search intent, backlinks, and content quality have long mattered for ranking well on Google.