Google ranking systems

How does google ranks websites?

Google has over 200 metrics that decide the ranking of websites, of course, to know and act on all of them will take a very long time, so we are going to see the main factors that might be coming in your website’s way of going to the top.

Let me ask you a basic question first!

Q- What are the components of a website?

Let me help you in listing some-

• Domain, URL, Landing page, content, links, structure etc

How would you start if you were to improve your website’s image in search engines’ eyes?

• By working on and improving all the components of the website. Simple!

Google also says the same thing and ranks the websites on the basis of all of the factors. Let’s look at them:-

1. Domain name-

Google looks at the words in your domain and decides whether the query is relevant to the domain.

• For ex: If Tim searches for “fresh food deliver” then the search engines might look at the query and think that “Hello fresh” could be a good option as they have the exact word “fresh” in their domain name and they deliver “food”.

So Hello Fresh will come amongst the top results.

It is called “Exact match domain system”

This is also a reason why you should choose a domain name carefully that matches your product/service. If you want to get some idea on choosing a domain name then why not hear from the original.

2. Trends-

Search engine also picks websites on the basis of the freshness of the content.

Let’s try to understand this with an example.

• Ex: If I want to know about an earthquake that happened today in Tokyo. I will search for “earthquake in Tokyo” on Google. Google’s algorithm knows that my intent is to know about the recent earthquake that happened because its data from all over the world is telling it that there is a case of an earthquake in Tokyo today.

Therefore, it will show me the news and articles on the earthquake happened today.

On the other hand, if the search engine was not considering the freshness of content then it could have also shown me the “history of earthquake in Tokyo” or “list of earthquakes”, “how earthquake happens”etc.

Thanks to Google’s algorithm Rankbrain.

This is called “Freshness systems”

3. Uniqueness and Originality

Google wants its users to see the most original and helpful content therefore it discourages webpages which are purely created to bring traffic.

4. Page experience

The search engine does not let page experience override the content although a website with similar content but better page experience may outperform its competitors. That’s how important page experience is.

Google focuses on these factors when assessing page experience-

• Mobile-friendliness- How mobile-friendly a website is. It is pretty straightforward because, In the USA, 94% of people with smartphones search for local information on their phones. Read more about mobile friendliness.
  • You can also test your website’s performance by taking this mobile friendliness test. Google calls this “Mobile-friendly ranking system”

• Three aspects of page experience which are a part of core web vitals are loading, interactivity, and visual stability.
  • The loading time of a webpage- It is recommended to have a loading time of 2.5 seconds or less. The website’s performance is considered poor if it takes 4 secs or more. This aspect has a name- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP).
  • Visual stability- Due to several reasons, unexpected movement of page content may happen. When the user was clicking on a link, the page or the link moved and ended up clicking somewhere else. This is called Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS). This often happens because webpages during the development phase behave differently than when the users actually interact with them. A good CLS score is 0.1 or less. More than 0.25 is deemed bad.
  • Interactivity – Let’s say you have a great loading time but once the user clicks on a link on your webpage, it takes ages to load. This is a negative sign as well. It is recommended to have a delay of 100 milliseconds or less. Anywhere more than 300 ms is considered bad. This is called First Input Delay (FID).

5. Site diversity system

Search engines do not repeat a website in the search result on the same search engine results page. The only exception is if it is extremely important and relevant to the search query, then it may be shown. Search engines do this to maintain site diversity.

6. Google Algorithms

Apart from these, Google’s algorithms play a substantial role in determining the rank of a website. I have covered an entire post on Search engine algorithms in depth.