How does Google decide how to rank pages/businesses in the search results?

Business owners of all sizes will have pondered the question, ” How does Google rank our website?” After reading hundreds of search engine optimisation articles, you might be left with more questions than answers.

Yet, why is that?

Different agencies will have other methods for optimising a website. Google’s algorithm is something of a “secret sauce”—something that

Alphabet keeps closely guarded.

So, SEO consultants, whether freelancers or employees of a global marketing business powerhouse are left to speculate about how Google’s algorithm works.

However, through trial and error, the top agencies—and we are included in that group—have figured out which approaches work and which don’t.

Because we have 10 years of expertise behind us, our agency is well-placed to advise you.

 

Written by: Ryan Walsh
Date: 27/01/2025

17-minute read

Ranking right at the top of Google is essential for some businesses and some businesses. It can mean the difference between that business hiring and growing or simply ceasing to exist and going into liquidation. Therefore, working out how Google’s algorithm works is crucial, and most businesses don’t have this knowledge and expertise in-house, so they will need to outsource it to an agency like ours.

Now, you do get some businesses that sleepwalk into damaging their business’s search engine optimisation.

They take a simplistic view that SEO is “well, that’s just link building and writing content marketing, right?”

Nope, no, it’s not.

Google’s algorithm is a masterpiece of mathematical engineering; underestimating it by thinking it’s simple is just a simplistic formula; well, we bet that approach won’t work, and later, your business may languish on page 7 of Google’s SERPs.

It is complex; it has built-in spam filters, A. I am monitoring engagement and a “Knowledge Vault” that uses semantic SEO to work out; how good is your advice? Layer on top of that Google E-EAT, which assesses whether you are an expert. Have you had real-world experience with what you’re talking about? How authoritative is the work? How trustworthy is the information?

Then, you have over 200 different “ranking factors,” which are all the other areas that Google uses to determine how strong or weak a business’s search engine optimisation is.

 

How exactly does Google’s search algorithm work?

 

Many of Google’s top consultants describe it as a gigantic library. In a library, there are books that are read more often and offer a better answer or solution—this is the same with Google.

 

Google’s index

Google holds an index, which is a bit of a giant library, yet the library is entire of pages and blog posts instead of books.

Google then sorts these pages by how useful, helpful, and well-written they are. As mentioned earlier, Google uses more than 200 ranking factors to determine a page’s quality.

Then, there’s overarching advice, such as Google E-EAT, which will examine your company website.

 

That is, Google assesses the website as a whole on the following attributes:

– Experience- Do the pages/posts shine through the authors have real experience of what they are writing about? For example, if it’s a plumbing business, would precise plumbers have direct input into the advice?
– Expertise- is it clear the authors and the business are experts at what they do?
– Authoritativeness- is the business authoritative? Has it accumulated a lot of quality links?
– Trustworthiness—How trustworthy is the content marketing? Is it a reliable source for sound advice on DIY issues?

 

Crawling and indexing

The SEO process starts with “crawling and indexing.” This process involves Googlebot reading your website. If no code, such as “no-index,” blocks the bot, Googlebot, from reading the page, it should be able to get indexed.

As the page gets indexed, Google’s algorithm scores it based on its quality and the strength or weakness of its search engine optimisation.

So, first things first, can your company website get indexed?

Indexing, crawling, and indexing the website are the first steps in the process.

Therefore, an agency’s first job is ensuring the website can be indexed.

Googlebot can simply read and navigate the website, determining the page and blog posts’ rankings based on their SEO.

 

Natural Language Processing (NLP)

Have you ever read a page on a website and thought it was written robotically?

There’s, therefore, no effort to offer helpful advice helpfully.

And was that keyword, such as a product name, mentioned excessively?

This is an example of rubbish content marketing likely to be deemed spam by Google.

Those who don’t know how Google’s algorithm works or have little knowledge think that overly mentioning a service or a product in the text will improve the SEO. However, this won’t work; it’s called “keyword stuffing.” Millions of businesses do it each year, yet they often get their website “blocked” or removed from Google for using spammy / low-quality optimisation methods.

Therefore, our best advice, our top recommendation from our agency, is this: Don’t cut corners or implement rubbish SEO. Instead, aim to be the best, offer the best advice, and make your website a place for helpful advice.

Offer the best advice, whether that’s how to put up a shelf or which electric car to buy.

What are some of the more critical ranking signals?

As we mentioned earlier, Google uses complex mathematical formulas to determine the quality and power of your business’s search engine optimisation.
There are over 200 ranking signals, and you probably don’t want to know about them, but which are the most important?
Well, let’s go through important areas now.

 

Content quality and freshness

Just as we need to keep fresh and shower a splash of aftershave, we also keep our content marketing fresh.

As a business, we need to keep our website updated and show that you are the bees-knees. You’re the best at what you do. It’s only by showing this expertise, this knowledge through helpful advice to your customers, that your Google E-EAT will improve.

Even if a customer doesn’t buy a product from you there and then, it sometimes doesn’t matter.

If you offered helpful advice, you may have helped that shopper with pressing questions that might have.

In return, they may browse many pages on your company website, increasing their dwell time. Therefore, if this happens a lot, and many shoppers do the same, then you are sending a crystal clear signal to Google that you are offering helpful, practical advice, which shows that you have put a lot of effort into your content marketing.

The work is, therefore, good quality, and by retaining a shopper’s interest, you will have a high dwell time; this shows that people are interested in reading your advice. For example, if you log into your Google Analytics and see the pages have a very high dwell time, this shows people like to read the advice and the products you have for sale.

Let me give you a brief example.

Let’s say you have two competitors; they sell the same items and are washing machines.

One retailer gives 100 product information about the product.

The second retailer goes to a much better marketing company that understands how important it is to improve Google E-EAT.

So, what do they do?

Well, they take their most experienced salespeople, who have the most in-depth knowledge of that product, and create YouTube videos explaining the benefits of that item.

 

The following could happen:

The bounce rate decreases (this is a positive thing)
The amount of backlinks quality links increases
The dwell time increases.

 

Now, which company would Google rank higher in the SERP’s?

Does the business offer brief product descriptions, or does the business clearly showing the pages have much better engagement?
Hiring the right agency is crucial; a lacklustre approach to search engine optimisation doesn’t work.

 

Keyword optimisation

As previously mentioned, you don’t want to keyword stuff the page. But you do want to offer helpful and valuable advice.
Work that’s well written, informative and has a very high Google E-EAT score; naturally, the right keywords will be written into the paragraphs.

Therefore, if you write content marketing so it’s helpful and valuable, you will naturally be writing in the keywords to optimise the page.
Number and quality of backlinks

Yes, backlinks are essential.

Yet, remember this, as so many businesses get this wrong: You want quality backlinks built over a long period. Read about link velocity and why it’s essential to make links slowly. Also, all links leading to your website must be of high quality.

 

Page speed

We live in a world where everything moves.

Therefore, people are now more impatient than ever.

If your website is slow, if it’s slow to load, the bounce rate will shoot up.

Therefore, make your website as fast as possible. This will improve the UX and likely increase dwell time.

 

Mobile-friendliness

As a minimum requirement, your company website must be responsive.

However, you must go further and consider improving the user experience. Gradually improve the design, aim to lower that bounce rate, and work hard on this. Make it a piece of cake for your customers to get the right product or service as efficiently as possible.

Improve load times, lower the bounce rate, increase the dwell time, and work hard on this.

It differs from business to business, yet roughly and generally speaking, it is thought that approximately 50% of traffic comes via mobile.

 

Significant Google updates

Google rolls out updates as regularly as the weather changes.

Google is roughly thought to roll out hundreds of various updates every single year. Yet these updates, although they are all different, all share the same purpose: to improve the overall quality of the search results.

At the end of the day, whether a shopper on Google is looking to buy a paddleboard or research their next electric guitar purchase, the shopper just wants a quality answer.

A page which answers the questions that they may have.

Now, to separate the quality pages from the non-quality pages, Google has rolled out many different Google updates.

Let’s jump into explaining some of the more critical updates:

 

2015 mobile update

Google rolled out a significant update that rewarded businesses with a responsive website.

 

2021 page experience updates

In 2021, Google rolled out a page experience update, which rewarded businesses with faster load times.

 

How often does Google roll out new updates?

Updates can be divided broadly into three main categories: minor, major, and core. With some updates, your business might not be ranked in Google’s SERPs at all.

However, with some updates, such as major or core updates, a company’s Google ranking can greatly alter.

 

Spam

Businesses that use spammy methods of organic search engine optimisation are the websites that get impacted most by a Google algorithm change. So, for example, when Google rolled out a huge update at the time called Google Penguin, businesses that had spammy backlinks—that’s a lot of low-quality links—would see their organic rankings change drastically.

It’s also possible for some businesses that use spam methods, such as building spam links, to get deindexed or receive a Google penalty.

A business that receives a Google penalty, such as a Google Penguin penalty, can sometimes be “de-indexed”—which means totally and completely removed from Google.

This is why you should read Google’s Webmaster Guidelines and also learn about Google E-EAT to ensure you are implementing only quality work.

 

Machine and A.I

It’s now widely thought that Google’s algorithm doesn’t just use conventional algorithms to decipher where to rank a website. Google now uses A.I., that’s artificial intelligence and machine learning, to work out, well, is a shopper spending a long time reading the answer?

Therefore, machine learning is thought to be in use in the following ways:

• Dwell time, also known as time-on-site
• Bounce rate
• Number of pages visited.

 

How does Google use machine learning to improve its SERP’s?

This is a fundamental question.

We say that because Google uses data from 1,000 different shoppers.

Then Google’s RankBrain will ask:

Well, how long did the average shopper stay on that website?

How many pages did they visit?

What’s the bounce rate like?

All of these factors will be calculated by Google’s algorithms and AI. From this data, they will spot, say, one website where the dwell time is very high, over 7 minutes. The competition may only be at less than 60 seconds.

Therefore, it’s clear to Google, that’s Google’s algorithm, that that business is holding the shoppers’ interest for longer, and therefore, the average shopper is more engaged with that website.

Therefore, Google is likely to reshuffle the order and move that business up, as its dwell time is far exceeding that of its direct competitors.

A.I. is and has been an important part of Google’s algorithm, such as Google RankBrain, helping to spot businesses that are holding shoppers’ interest for longer. Where the dwell time is higher, the bounce rate is low, and shoppers spend a long time on that website because it offers good advice and good U.X.

Therefore, if a large percentage of shoppers are doing this, it’s clear that that business is answering the question better. Therefore, Google is likely to rank it higher in the SERPs.

 

On-page SEO

What are some of the first areas agencies look at to improve a company’s search rankings?
Well, a good place to start is the on-page SEO
This includes:

– Optimising the content marketing
– Adding the right page titles
– Optimising the meta titles and meta descriptions for a better CTR
– Improving the alt text
– Adding internal links
– Adding H1 through to H6 tags
– And much more

 

Relevant

Your whole company website must be crystal clear about the products or services you offer and your business.

Improving the authoritativeness, well, involves gaining favourable reviews, plus also gaining good quality backlinks.

However, relevance is different.

Relevance ensures the whole website is helpful and supports your customer’s needs.

And relevant. For example, if you’re selling a product to which customers often ask the same thing, make sure that you add an FAQ.

By following these steps, you can avoid potentially sending a customer elsewhere. Being relevant is, therefore, about being as helpful and informative as possible.

 

Content Quality

Everything boils down to quality.

For those who don’t know much about SEO, they often believe that more is better.

That’s why having more than focusing on quality is better.

However, this is most definitely, without a shadow of a doubt, the wrong approach to SEO. To improve your business’s search engine optimisation, focus on quality. Focus on producing work that’s top quality. Think about quality as the key to success.

Quality is key.

Let me give you some examples of what we mean:

Having a handful of quality links is better than many spam links.

It’s better to write a quality article than countless rubbish spammy articles.

Take your time, and publish quality work.

 

Our final thoughts

As an agency with over 10 years of experience, we are well-placed to offer our advice on how Google ranks websites.

Now, the most crucial factor that we would strongly recommend is to think about quality.

Think about quality when writing your company’s content marketing, improving the on-page SEO and building links.

Be patient because, trust us, you could have the best SEO minds in the whole world working on your website, and it will still take many months to see the results of that hard work feed through.

Good results don’t happen overnight; they do take time.

Google rewards businesses that implement quality work over a very long timeframe. They don’t want to see a ton of changes made in a short timeframe. It’s better to make changes slowly, implement quality work, and monitor the results in your Google Search Console account and Google Analytics.

Businesses that think they can shoot to the top of Google in record time and see results overnight shouldn’t invest in SEO.
SEO is a slow, long-term process, and you need a good agency or consultant who keeps their fingers on the pulse. You also need an expert, somebody who really wants to learn about the latest Google updates.

That implements quality work.

This is why so many businesses come to Walsh & Partners.

 

Come to use for a bespoke quote: