What does Google use to rank your website?
This is something that has perplexed marketers, directors, the so-called “SEO experts” and just about everyone else (except for a few people that work for Google) for years. What IS Google actually using to decide how far up the list your website appears when someone searches for something?
Persevere with what we are going to put below here, because the start point might seem like a knock-back but trust us, get to the end and it’ll all make sense!
First things first – NOBODY actually knows!
Ok, so this isn’t strictly true – there are a few people who work at Google who do know – but aside from them virtually no-one has a complete picture. And there is a very good reason for this: Google doesn’t want everyone to know! If people knew EXACTLY what Google looked for in a website, then everyone would do it and, more to the point, some people would cheat the system. Therefore, the exact things they look for are a closely guarded secret.
They do give out hints and guides on what their algorithm focuses on, but these are quite loose in explanation and very light on detail. Again, this is so they don’t give too much away and open the system up to cheats.
Second, they move the goalposts from time to time
Yes, in case it wasn’t already difficult enough, they update their algorithm from time to time too. This is often in response to Google finding a way that the system is being cheated and adapting their algorithm to close that loophole. What often happens in these situations is that genuine, non-cheating companies are penalised for the sins of those who were. This is often as a result of black hat SEO companies mass-selling a service to hundreds of businesses and just using the same cheat on all of them – Google eventually catches on and down tumble the websites using the naughty techniques – often through no fault of their own!
A good example of this was a few years ago, for a long time Google used backlinks (links coming from other websites into yours) as a metric to attribute importance to a website. Lots of incoming links = very important website, move it up the rankings. However, a black hat SEO technique known as Link Farming became prevalent a few years ago. Disreputable SEO companies would outsource (usually to India) and have hundreds of dummy websites set up all with links back to your website in them. Creating the illusion of multiple links and high site importance. When Google caught onto this they came down hard and thousands of businesses found their websites plummeted down the Google rankings!
So, what DO they want now?
We believe that using SEO tricks is never going to be a long-term solution. Eventually Google will close that loophole you’ve found or that your “SEO company” has found and your site will likely suffer as a result. This could, depending on the severity of the clampdown, be a major hit. We have seen sites that were ranking in positions 1-3 on page one suddenly find themselves below page 5. That can sometimes be an unrecoverable position.
So we believe it is important to focus on the long term, not look for a trick or a quick-fix. It will ultimately benefit you much more.
Remember that Google’s main mission is to provide searchers THE MOST RELEVANT RESULTS based on what they type into their search bar. That is very telling – most relevant – remember that even though as a business you need to use Google, their focus (on their search engine at least) is on users. They want someone who types something in to find what they are looking for as quickly as possible – so bear that in mind. Your site needs to focus on that word – RELEVANCE!
How do they attribute relevance?
Well, Google’s latest string of algorithm updates has shifted the focus very strongly onto content. Content, for the uninitiated, is the actual written wording on your website. Google has reached the conclusion that the only thing that you can’t really “fake” on your website is the amount of work you have put into the content development and content creation. How well you have distributed that content and how much of the content in your website is relevant to the other content on your site.
Let us just focus on that point quickly – YES the other pages in your site have to be relevant to each other. Now this might seem foolish but to give an example: if your site sells tools, and you have a page on the site about hammers, then someone searching for “hammers” would ideally find your website. But what Google does is take someone typing in “Hammers” and also searches for related terms – i.e. spanners, screwdrivers, nuts, bolts, nails, screws, etc. If your site has pages and content on it that bear a relevance to each other (and the more pages you have all relating to each other) the better you will do as a result in Google rankings.
Why? Because a site that has what the person searched for AND a lot of similar things to what they searched for is seen as more RELEVANT overall to that person’s search.
So how do you make sure you’re building relevance into your site?
Well generally, this should be a self-fulfilling task – unless you’re a business which does not have a specific or even a general idea of what it does and what industry it is in – just by making sure you put up regular, similar and RELEVANT content then your site will naturally start to climb Google’s rankings. It DOES TAKE WORK, it requires you to actually do something with your site from time to time, add new portfolio items, add new news stories, update your content – a blog on your site is a very effective way of doing this.
Remember, Google’s customer is YOUR customers, they want to show them a site that matches what they are looking for, so keep that in mind, keep it in mind above all else and you’ll soon see a positive climb in Google rankings!
