One of the things we're asked most often as an SEO agency is 'how do Google decide who's going to be at the top of the search results?'... A very expansive question with an even more expansive answer!
We've done our best to amalgamate our knowledge and the thoughts of industry experts such as Brian Dean at Backlinko and Rand Fishkin at Moz to put together a periodic table of the main signals that come into play when Google is determining where to rank your website.
Although we'd love to say that our little periodic table gives you the full picture of what it takes to rank in Google, unfortunately there's just too much to cover! In fact, Brian Dean estimates that there are now over 200 signals which Google uses to determine who ranks where.