Search Engine Land’s Periodic Table of SEO Elements (originally known as The Periodic Table Of SEO Ranking Factors when it debuted in 2011) is a globally recognized and widely used tool designed to help you understand the essential elements of a winning SEO strategy. This resource is ideal for helping those new to SEO, as well as clients or stakeholders, understand the major factors that will lead to success with sustained effort over time. You’ll find the 44 SEO elements arranged into groups, which are explained below. No single element or group matters more than any other element or group in this table. When it comes to SEO, doing everything – and doing it well – is what matters. It’s all connected. That said, some elements in this table may matter more than others for gaining greater visibility in search engines, especially depending on what vertical, market or niche you operate in. Bottom line: we don’t know exactly how the algorithms used by search engines are weighted, so to assign any “scores” to these various elements would be purely speculative.
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The table is organized into groups of similar elements. Each element in the table represents a factor that you need to consider to be successful in SEO. The main table consists of seven groups – Content, Architecture, Code, Credibility, Links, User and Performance.
A great site structure can help your SEO efforts. A bad site structure can mean ongoing frustration and mediocre SEO results.
The Architecture group of the SEO Periodic Table explores the key elements for creating a website that is easy for web crawlers to crawl and people to navigate while making it clear what your website and pages are all about. Most of these elements fall under on-page and technical SEO activities.
While it’s technically not visible to end users, clean and valid code plays a critical role in SEO. You may not need to know how to code or do any coding yourself, but you should understand HTML, structured data types and programming languages (e.g., JavaScript, Python) and how they can impact SEO.
The Code group of the SEO Periodic Table explores the key elements for enhancing the user experience and helping search engine crawlers render and understand your content. Most of these elements are part of on-page and technical SEO activities.
Google’s Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines emphasize the importance of a concept known as E-E-A-T, which stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness. Stanford’s Guidelines for Web Credibility, which pre-date E-E-A-T, offer 10 guidelines for building the credibility of any websites.
While neither of these concepts are direct ranking signals, they can help guide your understanding of what the search algorithms want to reward.
The Credibility group focuses on elements that impact your reputation, which can in turn influence your organic search visibility. These elements touch upon all areas of SEO, as well as brand marketing.
Links mattered in a big way once Google burst onto the scene with its then-revolutionary PageRank algorithm in 1998. Google made clear that links were a major factor in how well a website would perform in search – though over time, it put more of a focus on “quality” and “quantity.”
The Links group focuses on elements involving links to and from your website – as well as critical context links can provide to users and search engines. Link building, specifically where the goal is acquiring backlinks, has traditionally existed as its niche within SEO. Internal and external links tend to be owned by on-page and/or technical SEO.
One of Google’s core beliefs is “Focus on the user and all else will follow.” This is exactly why you must focus on understanding what matters most to your users – and then figure out the smartest way to give it to them. Google is also watching everything people do within Search results.
The User group of the SEO Periodic Table explores elements that are all about people – and providing the best user experience possible. All of these elements are driven by people, so any actions you take here involve uncovering actionable insights that will help your SEO efforts better serve your audience or users.
After you’ve architected and optimized your pages, how do they actually perform in the real world for users? Many of these elements might not be as impactful for rankings, but poorly performing pages can frustrate people, which can negatively impact engagement, conversions and revenue.
The Performance group of the SEO Periodic Table explores elements that can help create a better on-page experience for your users. Most of these elements are part of technical SEO.
There you have it, the science and art of SEO, decoded.
Hopefully, the SEO Periodic Table serves you well as the first visual aid you turn to when trying to plot out an SEO strategy for the properties you own or manage.
Again, the relative importance of factors for your individual website will vary (yes, it depends!). Still, this updated Periodic Table provides a foundational understanding of the space as it exists in 2024.
While SEO is indeed an art, it is also a science. We hope the SEO Periodic Table serves as an essential reference for your experiments and planning.
The 2024 SEO Periodic Table strips back much of the expansion that took place in 2021. Namely, the Niches group of Local, News and Ecommerce SEO has been removed. The reason for the change: to eliminate redundancy and restore the original vision for the table: explaining the big picture, universal, foundational elements of SEO that matter.
The Toxins group has also been eliminated in the 2024 update. This is because if you truly focus on the overarching best practices found in the SEO Periodic Table, you shouldn’t be doing things that could get you into trouble and lead to serious algorithmic downgrades or even manual actions.
Other changes include two renamed groups:
We also added a new group – Performance.
The Periodic Table (7th edition) was compiled and written by Danny Goodwin, Managing Editor, Search Engine Land & SMX, using feedback and contributions from a panel of search industry experts who each have at least 15 years of experience in SEO, including Barry Schwartz, Nichola Stott, Eric Enge and others.
Past SEO Periodic Table updates:
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