What Is Google Ranking? A Modern Business Essential

The Google ranking system is an algorithm to measure the relative relevance, quality and importance of findings in a Google search. 

Being favoured over other businesses means having a much bigger ‘shop window’ in results and more chances to show your wares to potential buyers!

Google, first launched in 1998, has become the world’s leading search engine, holding the key to unlocking website success. Its ranking algorithm plays a crucial role in determining which websites appear in the coveted top positions. In 2022, there were an average of 8.5 billion daily searches conducted on Google worldwide (Source: Internet Live Stats).

Google ranking is a complex and ever-evolving system, but its core principles remain consistent: websites that provide high-quality, relevant, and engaging content, earn backlinks from reputable sources, and offer a seamless user experience are more likely to rank higher in search results. By mastering these fundamental principles, this will help Google rank your website which will lead to elevating your website’s visibility, attracting more visitors, and achieving your business goals.

This comprehensive guide will demystify the world of Google ranking, equipping you with the knowledge and strategies to optimise your website and achieve a top ranking. Embark on this journey of understanding and mastering Google’s ranking algorithm, and watch as your website emerges as a beacon of success in the digital realm.

How? Read on…

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What is Google Ranking? The ‘How’

Google ranking guides users towards the most relevant and valuable content. It’s a complex system that determines the order in which websites appear in search results, shaping the online landscape. Google ranking is not merely a matter of technical algorithms and cryptic codes; it’s the embodiment of Google’s mission to organise the information available on websites and to make it universally accessible and useful. It’s a dynamic process that constantly evolves, adapting to the ever-changing user needs and the ever-expanding web.

When a user enters a search query, Google’s algorithms scan through trillions of web pages, evaluating their relevance, authority, and trustworthiness. This intricate assessment, involving hundreds of factors, determines the ranking of each website, positioning it higher or lower in the search results.

The position of a website in search results directly impacts its visibility and traffic. A higher ranking means more eyes on the content, more clicks, and potentially, more conversions. For businesses, this translates into increased brand awareness, customer acquisition, and ultimately, revenue growth. For individuals, a high ranking can lead to recognition, professional opportunities, relevant results, and a wider audience for their ideas.

In today’s digital landscape, where online presence is paramount, understanding Google ranking is a necessity. It’s the key to unlocking the vast potential of the internet, enabling businesses to reach their target audience and individuals to share their expertise.

Mastering Google may require a somewhat holistic approach that encompasses content creation, technical SEO, and a deep understanding of user intent. It’s a journey of continuous learning and adaptation, as Google’s algorithms evolve and user behaviour shifts. But the rewards are undeniable – a prominent position in the digital world, a voice that resonates with the online community, and a gateway to success in the ever-expanding digital realm.

Google uses a lot of factors to rank results. It counts links like they were votes for a page. A link means the page has been contacted in some way, whether visited or just linked to. The more links, the more votes it gets and the higher its rank.

That may be the most significant factor, but a lot is involved.  Page Rank, for example, measures the quality of links to a page to estimate the importance of pages related to your search. 

According to Google itself, it analyses the links. Pages that are higher ranking that link to a page carry more weight than other links, pushing it higher in the rankings. Google also uses a complicated text-matching system to ensure it matches your search words. 

It also examines all the content on the page, but those keywords make a difference.

A whole industry called SEO, or Search Engine Optimisation, has sprung up and tries to anticipate the system’s rank. The number of times the keyword of a search appears on a page is essential, but it goes a lot further than that. 

It compares all aspects of a page’s contents in its rankings.

Unveiling Google’s Ranking Secrets: A Deep Dive into Ranking Factors

Ranking on Google and its algorithm is complex and constantly evolving, but several factors are known to be necessary. These factors can be broadly divided into two categories: on-page factors and off-page factors.

On-page factors are those that are under the control of the website owner. They include:

• Keyword usage: The use of relevant keywords throughout the website’s content, including title tags, meta descriptions, and body text. This will help to tell Google what your content is about and help search engines to get your website to its target users based on their search intent.
• Content quality: The quality and relevance of the website’s content. This includes factors such as originality, usefulness, and comprehensiveness. Google doesn’t like to promote content that doesn’t meet its quality standards.
• Technical SEO: The technical aspects of the website, such as its loading speed, mobile-friendliness, and crawlability. Google will show results from websites that meet these technical aspects.
• User experience: The overall user experience of the website, including factors such as navigation ease and bounce rate. This will have an effect on where your website is placed in Google’s search results.

Off-page factors are those that are not controlled by the website owner. They include:

• Backlinks: The number and quality of backlinks from other websites. Backlinks are essentially votes of confidence, and the more backlinks a website has, the higher its ranking is likely to be.
• Social signals: The number and quality of social media shares, likes, and comments. Social signals can help improve a website’s visibility and credibility, leading to higher rankings.

Why Is Google Ranking Important?

Google ranking is crucial for several reasons:

• Visibility: A higher ranking means your website appears higher in the Google search results, increasing the likelihood that users will see and click on it.
• Traffic: Increased visibility translates into more visitors, ultimately driving traffic to your website.
• Credibility: A high ranking signals to users that your website is relevant, authoritative, and trustworthy.
• Conversions: Higher traffic and increased credibility can lead to more conversions, whether it’s sales, leads, or newsletter signups.

The Pillars of Google Ranking: Understanding the Algorithm

Google’s ranking algorithm is constantly evolving, but several key pillars remain constant:

• Content: High-quality, relevant, and engaging content is essential.
• Links: Links from reputable websites act as votes of confidence, boosting your ranking.
• Technical SEO: Ensure your website is technically sound easy to crawl by Google’s robots.
• User Experience: Provide a positive user experience with fast loading times, mobile-friendliness, and clear navigation.

EEAT: Establishing Expertise, Experience, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness

In Google’s eyes, expertise, experience, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (EEAT) are the cornerstones of credibility. When creating content, demonstrate your expertise in the subject matter, showcase your experience in the field, establish your authoritativeness as a thought leader, and cultivate trustworthiness by providing accurate and unbiased information.

Proven Techniques to Boost Your Google Ranking

Businesses should know that Google wants to provide its users with high-quality and relevant content. While mastering Google’s ranking systems is an ongoing journey, here are some actionable steps to improve your website’s position:

• Keyword Research: Identify relevant keywords that users are searching for and incorporate them naturally into your content. This will give Google an idea of what your content is about when people search for these terms.
• On-Page Optimization: Optimize your website’s title tags, meta descriptions, and headers to align with target keywords.
• Content Creation: Produce high-quality, informative, and engaging content that addresses user needs. This is important to ensure a high Google Quality Score.
• Link Building: Earn backlinks from reputable websites by creating valuable content and building relationships with industry influencers.
• Technical SEO: Ensure your website is mobile-friendly, has fast loading times, and is easy for Google’s robots to crawl.
• User Experience: Focus on providing a positive user experience with clear navigation, easy-to-read content, and a visually appealing design.

Embrace the Journey: Continuous Improvement and Adaptation

The world of SEO is constantly evolving, and staying abreast of the latest trends and algorithm updates is crucial for success. Regularly update your knowledge of Google’s ranking factors, search user behaviour, and industry best practices to ensure your strategies remain effective. Organic traffic leads to higher conversion rates and a better return on investment (ROI) compared to paid traffic (Source: HubSpot). It is therefore worth taking the time to find important SEO keywords and develop a solid SEO strategy.

Concrete Examples of Optimisation

Google will look at many factors within its core ranking systems before placing your page in the SERP. Here are some concrete examples of how to optimise for Google ranking:

• Optimise title tags: Title tags are the clickable headlines that appear in search results. They should be concise, relevant, and include the target keyword.
• Write high-quality content: High-quality content is informative, engaging, and relevant to the target audience. It should also be well-written and free of errors. This helps Google, and other search engines, understand how informative, educational, valuable, and useful the pages on your site are.
• Build backlinks: Backlinks can be built through various methods, such as guest blogging, social media outreach, and directory submissions. This will also help Google rank your content on the SERP.
• Promote your website on social media: Social media can be a great way to drive traffic to your website and generate social signals. 
• Use relevant keywords: Keywords should be used throughout the website’s content, including title tags, meta descriptions, and body text. However, it is important to avoid keyword stuffing, which can penalize the website.
• Make sure your website is mobile-friendly: Google shows and prioritises mobile-friendly websites in its search results. Many Google searchers are now mobile-users which is why this factor is so important. Make sure your website is designed to look and function well on mobile devices.
• Use a fast hosting provider: A fast hosting provider can help to improve your website’s loading speed, which is a factor in Google’s ranking algorithm.
• Submit your website to search engines: Submit your website to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools to ensure that it is being crawled and indexed correctly.

Google Ranking Factors

There is a lot of relativity involved in how Google ranking works. 

The words and links matter, but that is all relative to the pages doing the linking and the words used. It examines millions of pages and notices the millions of links to various pages and what pages have been visited what pages.

Google also says as the web gets bigger, this way of doing searches gets even better. There are more “votes” to be counted as the web gets even more significant, and each new site is just another point of information to guide the super information highway.

Page rank is important, but Google says it is not the only consideration. Page rank itself is a program and it helps decide if a page will show up in a search. From there, other things help determine the actual ranking of the results when you search.

What is Google Ranking? The ‘What’

As we see, how many times a page has been linked to or seen has a tremendous impact. If it has a lot of “votes,” that will make its rank go higher. The words on the page, similar to the search terms, also have an effect.

There are more than 200 known factors that have an impact on a Google search. Some are known, and some are speculation.

There is sort of a cat-and-mouse game going on. People keep trying to figure out how to manipulate the system so their pages appear at the top of search results. Google knows this and continually changes things to stop various loopholes and advantages.

There are domain factors or the name of the website itself. It used to be that if you had an exact match, that would propel you to the top, but Google has changed that a bit to take away that advantage. Content matters more than the name.

Page-level factors include having the keyword in the title tag, but the importance of that has faded recently. However, the keyword in the description tag, in the H1 tag, or in the secondary headline seems to matter more recently. 

Longer documents or articles matter more when the keyword is there a lot. It is also believed that having a table of contents can have a positive result.

Google Ranking Keywords

Keyword density is also important, as Google uses that to determine the subject matter. However, having too much of a keyword may make Google think it is spam, hurting your ranking.

The site level factors are similar, but it considers the entire site more than a single page—keywords matter, of course, but not too many of them.

Backlinks are essential, but having too many broken ones will hurt you. The quality of the backlinks is believed to matter as well. Links from one page to another are essential, as are connections from mother pages. 

Having links from high-ranking pages also helps your rankings.

How people interact with search results can affect future results, making it a little more complicated. The traffic a site gets is also a positive marker. A well-visited site will get even more visitors because it will rank higher in search results. 

Repeat visits are also measured and have an impact.

Sometimes, people don’t click on the first link. If people skip over the first two or three in the results list, that can adversely affect the rankings next time. 

Pages bookmarked in Chrome and the number of comments an article gets can also positively impact results.

Some other factors include the idea that newer sites get a  boost with specific queries. Your browser history and your search history are also figured into a search.

People often search for brands, so if Google knows your brand, that will help. 

If a site has Facebook linked and that page has a lot of likes, that will also help. Twitter profiles can also play a role. Other social sites can also impact searches.

Protecting Your Online Image: How to Prevent Negative Google Rankings

While there are a lot of factors that positively impact search results, there are also some factors that can work against you. Google tries to avoid spammy pages or pages overloaded with ads; if it can spot those, they will be lowered in the rankings.

Pages with low-quality content or content from poorly written content farms to try to manipulate keywords will be lowered in the rankings. Google can tell when a page has been optimized too much, and those are also penalised. 

How much is too much is not explicitly known, but overdoing it hurts page rankings.

Content is also essential. A page stuffed with keywords likely will not do well. But a lot of information on the subject of the keyword will do well. Comprehensive information is essential. There are online tools that can help you make your content better. Just like ChatGPT can help you generate content, a rewording tool can help you make it look humanly written. These tools are good, but do some manual editing to enhance their quality further.

Google Ranking Decoded: A Practical Guide to Interpreting Your Website’s Ranking

Several sites with tools claim to be able to tell you where your site will rank with various keywords. Most web gurus advise against using these, and Google says it violates their terms of service to send many queries through these sites.

One way to find out is to do searches, but do it in invisible or incognito mode, so your previous searches won’t be figured into the calculation. Using someone else’s computer, or even a public computer at a library, might give you objective results.

Google webmaster tools are also an excellent place to find how your page is ranking. Go to the “search queries” area of the Google Webmaster tools and find keywords people used there. The tool will include the ranking in the results.

Understanding where you rank is a significant first step to determining WHY you rank where you do.

Major updates to Google’s search algorithm

2020

• September 2020: Core Update
  • This update was a broad update that affected a wide variety of websites.
• May 2020: Core Update
  • This update focused on rewarding websites that provide a good user experience and penalizing websites that have poor user experience.
• January 2020: Core Update
  • This update was a broad update that affected a wide variety of websites.

2021

• December 2021: Product Reviews Update
  • This update was the first of a series focused on improving product review pages’ quality.
• November 2021: Core Update
  • This update focused on rewarding websites that provide a good user experience and penalizing websites that have poor user experience.
• July 2021: Core Update
  • This update was a broad update that affected a wide variety of websites.
• June 2021: Core Update
  • This update focused on rewarding websites that provide high-quality content and penalizing websites that have low-quality content.

2022

• September 2022: Core Update
  • This update focused on rewarding high-quality content and penalizing low-quality content.
• August 2022: Helpful Content Update
  • This update aimed to improve the visibility of high-quality content that is written for people, not for search engines.
• May 2022: Core Update
  • This update was designed to improve search results’ overall relevance and quality.
• April 2022: Product Reviews Update
  • This update improved Google’s ability to identify and rank high-quality product review pages.
• March 2022: Product Reviews Update
  • This update further enhanced Google’s ability to identify high-quality product review pages.

Additional Considerations

• Google releases hundreds of algorithm updates yearly, but only a few are major enough to be noticeable.
• Google does not release specific details about its algorithm updates, so it can be challenging to know exactly what changes were made in each update.
• The best way to ensure that your website is in good standing with Google’s algorithm is to follow Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. These guidelines provide a comprehensive overview of the factors that Google considers when ranking websites.

FAQ on Google Ranking

Q: What is Google ranking?

A: Google ranking is the algorithm that determines the order in which search results appear on Google. It is a complex system that considers a multitude of factors, including the relevance and quality of a website’s content, the number and quality of backlinks, and the website’s user experience.

Q: Why is Google ranking important?

A: Google ranking is important because it determines how visible a website is to users. A higher ranking means that a website is more likely to appear in search results, which can lead to more traffic and conversions.

Q: How can I improve my Google ranking?

A: There are many things you can do to improve your Google ranking, including:

• Creating high-quality, relevant content: This is the most important factor in Google ranking. Your content should be informative, engaging, and well-written.
• Building backlinks: Backlinks are links from other websites to your website. They act as votes of confidence and can help boost your ranking.
• Optimizing your website for technical SEO: Technical SEO is the process of making sure your website is easy for Google’s robots to crawl and index. This includes factors like site speed, mobile-friendliness, and structured data. Ensure that the technical aspects of your website are running properly.

Q: What is EEAT?

A: EEAT stands for Expertise, Experience, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. It is a set of guidelines that Google uses to evaluate the credibility of a website’s content.

Q: How can I ensure my content adheres to EEAT principles?

A: To ensure your content adheres to EEAT principles, you should:

• Make sure your content is written by experts in the field.
• Showcase the experience of your content creators.
• Establish your website as a trusted source of information.

Key Takeaways on Google Ranking

Mastering Google ranking is an ongoing journey that requires dedication, continuous learning, and a commitment to providing exceptional user experiences. By understanding the algorithm’s pillars, implementing actionable strategies, and staying abreast of industry trends, you can elevate your website’s visibility, attract more visitors, and achieve your business goals.

Remember, Google ranking is not a destination but a journey. Embrace the process of learning and improvement, use Google tools such as Google Analytics to measure website results, and you will be well on your way to achieving success in the ever-evolving world of search engine optimisation.

If you found this blog insightful, check out these articles on how Google Search works and how to improve your website’s search rankings: What Is Google Search? Your Essential Toolkit for Enhanced Search Rankings | Google PageRank in 2023: What It Is and How to Improve It | Competitive Keywords: The Secret to Ranking Higher on Google.