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User friendliness

A site that is difficult to use or to navigate can hurt rankings indirectly by reducing time on site, pages viewed and bounce rate (in other words, RankBrain ranking factors).

Google certainly estimates the reading levels of webpages. In fact, Google used to give you reading level stats:

Some say that a basic reading level will help you rank better because it will appeal to the masses. But others associate a basic reading level with content mills like Ezine Articles.

Citing the Google Quality Guidelines Document yet again:“The page layout on highest quality pages makes the Main Content immediately visible.”

A page closer to the homepage may get a slight authority boost compared to pages buried deep down in a site's architecture.

Do users need to click on a tab to reveal some content? If so, Google has said that this content “may not be indexed”.

Bullets and numbered lists help structure your content for readers, making them more user friendly. A well-structuredand user-friendly site-architecture helps users (and search engines) know where they are on a site. Google states that: “Google Search uses breadcrumb markup in the body of a web page to categorize the information from the page in search results.”A well put-together site architecture (for example, a silo structure) helps Google thematically organize your content. It can also help Googlebot access and index all of your site's pages.

Some suggested Google has filed a patent for a system that allows human editors to influence the SERPs.