The SEO table of elements: how to read it and a six family version you can audit

The SEO table of elements is a chart that lays out ranking factors the way chemistry lays out elements: grouped into families, each with a short symbol, so you can see the whole subject on one page. The best known is the Periodic Table of SEO Success Factors from Search Engine Land. This page explains how to read a table like that, gives a plain version grouped into six families you can audit in order, and shows which elements to fix first.

What the original chart is and how to read it

Search Engine Land, the search industry news site, published a periodic table of SEO success factors that sorts factors into families such as content, architecture, HTML, trust, links and violations. Each box carries a short symbol, in the style of the chemistry original. The chart has been revised over the years, so open the current edition on Search Engine Land for its exact boxes and weights, and read it with the notes below.

Any table of this kind shares limits worth knowing before you use it.

• It is a teaching tool made by editors, not a list published by a search engine.
• The weights on each box are the authors' judgement at a date. Google's ranking systems change, so use the chart to learn the families, not to rank your tasks by a number.
• Google's own documentation, such as its SEO Starter Guide and its guide to its ranking systems, is the reference for what Google says it does.

A plain table of elements in six families

The grouping below is our own, written for this page. It is built around the order in which a page has to succeed: be found, be understood, be worth ranking, be trusted, be easy to use, and stay clear of trouble.

Family	Elements	The question each answers
1. Access	Crawlability, robots rules, sitemaps, status codes, indexing, canonical tags	Can Google reach the page and store it?
2. Structure	URLs, site hierarchy, internal links, navigation, pagination	Is it clear where the page sits and what links to it?
3. Markup	Title, headings, meta description, image alt text, structured data	Does the page tell a machine what it is about?
4. Content	Search intent match, completeness, accuracy, freshness, originality, readability	Is this the best answer for the reader?
5. Trust and authority	Links from other sites, brand mentions, reviews, author identity, contact details	Why should anyone believe this page?
6. Experience	Page speed, Core Web Vitals, mobile layout, security, intrusive pop-ups	Is the page pleasant and safe to use?

A seventh group sits outside the table: the violations. Hidden text, keyword stuffing, cloaking, bought links and doorway pages are listed in Google's spam policies. They are not elements to add. They are elements to check you do not have.

How to use the table as an audit, in order

The families are ordered because a failure in an earlier one makes the later ones irrelevant. A page that Google cannot index will not rank however good its content is.

1. Access. Search the site address in Google with the site: operator to see whether your key pages are indexed, and use the page indexing report in Search Console for the reasons any are not.
2. Structure. Check that every important page is reachable within a few clicks and is linked from other pages with descriptive link text. Our guide to internal linking covers the audit.
3. Markup. Give each page a unique title and one main heading. Add structured data only where it matches the visible content.
4. Content. Compare your page with the best result for its query. Does it answer the whole question? Is it current and original?
5. Trust. Identify who stands behind the page and show it. Earn links and mentions by being worth citing, as covered in backlink strategy.
6. Experience. Test speed and layout on a phone. The three Core Web Vitals and their fixes are set out in our Core Web Vitals guide.

Which elements matter most for which site

Your site	Start with
New site, few pages indexed	Access, then content for narrow questions
Established site, flat traffic	Content freshness and intent match, then internal links
Local business	Markup for services, reviews, and the Business Profile
Online shop	Structure for categories, structured data for products, speed
Publisher or blog	Originality, author identity, internal links between related articles

Common mistakes when reading a periodic table of SEO

• Treating a box as a switch. A title tag is not an on-off item. A weak title is a missed chance, and a strong one is one input among many.
• Working from the top left to the bottom right. Order your tasks by your own audit, not by the order of the chart.
• Chasing the heaviest-looking element. A heavily weighted factor you already do well adds little.
• Ignoring the violations column. Removing a violation often does more than adding an element.
• Using an old copy. Check the date of any chart before you act on it.

Build your own one-page table

A custom table is more useful than a borrowed one. Make a sheet with the six families as columns and your site's pages down the side, and mark each cell green, amber or red after the audit. In an hour you will see which family is weakest across the site, which is where the next month's work goes. Repeat it each quarter and keep the dated sheets, since the change over time shows whether the work is landing. The same approach, applied to metrics rather than factors, is in our guide to SEO KPIs.

Questions about the SEO table of elements

Who made the periodic table of SEO?

The best-known one comes from Search Engine Land, the search industry news publication. Other sites have made their own versions in the same format.

Is the table an official list of Google's ranking factors?

No. Google publishes documentation on how Search works and its ranking systems, and a chart by an industry publisher is an interpretation of those ideas.

How often should the table be updated?

A chart ages quickly, so use the families and re-check specifics against Google's documentation at the time you act.

Which element has the biggest effect?

For most pages the biggest is whether the content matches what the searcher wants. An access failure is bigger when it exists, because it removes the page from consideration.

Can I print the table for my team?

Print the six-family table on this page or make your own. For the Search Engine Land chart, follow the publisher's terms for reuse.

The element the chart does not list: how an assistant describes the page

Every table of this kind was drawn for a results page with ten blue links. Buyers now also get answers from assistants that read your pages and write a sentence about you. That adds an element to each family: whether the page states its facts in a form that can be quoted, whether the same facts appear on the other sites an assistant reads, and whether the answer names you at all. Ask ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity three buying questions for your category and note what each says. AI Knows Us (aiknowsus.com) runs that read for a business across five assistants and lists the sources behind each answer, which gives you a column for the table that the original chart could not include.