There’s no way to be sure how many websites exist at any given moment, but estimates hover at around 1.7 billion, with over 500,000 added each day. When you consider those figures, what Google Search Ranking does seems like a minor miracle! Google algorithm takes your natural-language queries and spits out highly relevant websites that offer valuable answers, all in under a second.
But given the high number of websites, how does the magic happen? You might have heard of Google’s powerful algorithms and GA updates, but it’s not always clear how they work—or how they decide which websites cut. So let’s take a look behind the scenes at how Google reads and ranks your website content.
- How does the Google algorithm work?
- How do you beat the Google algorithm?
- What is the Google SEO algorithm?
How the Google Algorithm Finds Content?
Long before anyone types a relevant search term into the search bar, Google has to find and read your content, so it knows how to rank it! To do this, Google uses “crawlers” or “spiders,” which are bots designed to discover and index new pages.
These bots work to read and understand your content, images, videos, and overall website. On a basic level, this is where your keywords come in: keywords tell Google what your content is about, which is why it can be helpful to scatter them throughout your headings, content, URLs, image descriptions, and more.
How Google Rank Content?
Google decides a content’s ranking in a few ways. First, as mentioned above, keywords can be a great help: if Google algorithm notices that your keywords are related to a user’s query, you’ll rank higher in the results pages.
However, there’s one crucial aspect that affects rankings beyond your keywords: quality. Google only wants to provide high-quality, valuable content to its users, so it’s much more likely to jump to the top of the search engine results pages if your website offers this. If you’re looking for ways to improve on this, work on understanding and adjusting your E-A-T, or your site’s expertise, authority, and trustworthiness.
Beyond this, Google also considers your site’s mobile friendliness and overall usability, so make sure to put in some backend work.
How the Algorithm Pairs Queries With Content?
Once the bots “read” your content, they rank it based on several key factors.
First, the search engine works to understand the searcher’s query. It can be more complicated than it sounds, as it may mean deciphering long-tail keywords, slang words, misspellings, and more.
Next, Google will try to find the most relevant web pages based on its understanding of the searcher’s query. It will then match the query to websites with related keywords. In addition, it will pull high-quality, user-friendly pages with relevant content to the top.
In addition, Google considers the user’s location, personal search history, and search behavior when tailoring the search results to them.
Understanding the finer details of how Google’s search algorithm works can help you better optimize your website for searchers. The ranking systems aren’t hard to understand: all you have to do is show your value, relevance, and quality. With the right content and backend work—and a look at the Best practices for SEO and marketing—this can be no trouble at all!