Google works behind the scenes and silently works to organize the world’s information. They rank sites based on a variety of factors and deliver their findings in just a few seconds or less. SEO helps small businesses rank higher in search results, but it’s very hard to do effectively. In an easy to understand way, because understanding this guide can help you create an SEO strategy that works. Let’s take a look at what’s going on behind the scenes.
What does Google do?
Google is a leading technology company that provides a wide variety of internet-based services and products. These include powerful advertising platforms, search engine technologies, cloud computing solutions and software. The company’s mission is to organise world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.
The company’s main product is the Google search engine, which allows users to search for information on the internet. Google also offers a wide range of other products and services, such as the Android operating system for mobile devices, the Google Chrome web browser, and the Google Drive cloud storage service.
Read more: The Blogging In SEO: How To Blog With SEO In Mind
How does Google work?
Google uses a sophisticated algorithm to search the internet for information based on the keywords that a user enters. The algorithm ranks the search results based on several factors, including how relevant the information is to the keywords, the quality and authority of the sources, and how often the information has been shared on social media.
Google also uses advanced artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies to improve its search results and provide more relevant and useful information to users. When a user performs a search on Google, the algorithm quickly scours the internet and presents the most relevant results in a list on the search engine results page (SERP). The user can then click on the results to access the information they are looking for.
Read on: How to Start a Blog: a Free Beginner’s Guide
Google index
Search engines like Google crawl the web. Among other things, they look for links from one page to another and update their index with links they find. The algorithm is what determines which pages are most relevant to a search query and why. The crawler utilizes the links on the internet and saves a copy of every single web page in a gigantic database called an index. This allows Google to provide relevant and quality results to users.
The Google index will update itself if the crawler revisits your web page and detects any new or revised content. Only the newest version of this page will be saved. You can think of crawlers as visits coming to your business site. Depending on the traffic on your site, crawlers will come around more or less often. Some websites receive thousands of crawler visits every day while others might get a couple hundred.
To get found by Google, links from other sites need to point to your site – which only happens if your site is mentioned on another site in the index. If a crawler follows that link, it will lead to the first crawler-session and your site will be saved in their index. They might appear in Google’s search results from then on.
SEO basics: What is SEO?
Google’s secret algorithm
Google’s algorithm is not a secret, and the company has actually been quite open about how it works. The algorithm is constantly being updated and refined, but in general, it uses a combination of advanced artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies to search the internet for information based on the keywords that a user enters.
The algorithm ranks the search results based on several factors, including the relevance of the information to the keywords, the quality and authority of the sources, and how often the information has been shared on social media. Google’s goal is to provide the most relevant and useful information to users in response to their search queries.
Keep on reading: The Importance of Blogging for SEO
Google Factors
Google’s ability to show your site in the search results is contingent on it “indexing” your site beforehand. The search engine tries its best to find a match for a certain query and rank web pages accordingly. As such, Google uses an algorithm to rank pages in search results. Nobody knows exactly how this mysterious algorithm works, but it shouldn’t matter as long as it gets the job done.
The algorithm is never the same. Updates are constantly made that change what factors order content and how much weight each factor has. Although the exact algorithm is undisclosed, Google does provide insights on what to prioritize. We don’t know how important they are, but we can still use them in order to improve our website ranking.
One of the smartest things you can do is to experiment and test often. This will give you a really good idea of what’s going on and what changes need to be made. I love using Yoast SEO for this because it incorporates all Google factors, which makes it easier for me when deciding what changes to make.
Read more: How to Create a Website in 19 Minutes
Google’s results page
When a user performs a search on Google, the search engine returns a list of results on a page called the search engine results page (SERP). The SERP displays a list of web pages that are relevant to the keywords that the user entered, along with a brief description of each page.
The results are ranked according to Google’s algorithm, which takes into account factors such as the relevance of the information, the quality and authority of the sources, and how often the information has been shared on social media. The SERP also typically includes other types of results, such as images, videos, and news articles, as well as advertisements. The user can click on the results to access the information they are looking for.
SEO basics: What is on-page SEO?
Topics
Google’s SERP or search engine results page shows about 7 or 10 links to the sites that is most likely what you were looking for. This can either be due to better ranking or it could result from your location. These set of results are called organic search results. If you scroll to the second page of the result page, you’ll find even more results. The lower down on the list your website is, the less likely it is that somebody will find it.
It is common for there to be a few paid links at the top of the first page when you search for certain topics. These are an ad, sponsored by someone who has paid Google. Prices for these ads often vary greatly, depending on how much competition there is for a given search term. Alongside these organic and paid listings, there are other elements that can be found on Google’s search engine results page.
The value of links for search engines
When other websites link to your site, search engines take that as a sign that your website has relevance and authority. In general, the higher the quality and relevance of the links on your website, the more likely it is to rank well in search engines.
This is because links serve as “votes of confidence” from other websites, indicating that the linked-to website contains useful and relevant information. People believe that acquisition of high-quality links will help improve their search engine rankings, and as a result sites will try to do this.
However, it’s important to note that search engines also consider the quality of the linking websites, so having many low-quality or irrelevant links can actually hurt a website’s search engine performance.
Read more: The Rise of AI in Digital Marketing
Types of links
It’s important to have a basic understanding of how Google and the majority of other search engines use links. The number of external links leading to a page is a good sign of how important that page might be.
So, the more quality links a certain site has, the more important it is to search engines. This can happen both internally-links coming from the same website as well as externally-links coming from other websites. Both types of links can contribute to page ranking in Google. Some links are more valuable than others. Links from websites that receive a lot of clicks are obviously more common than those from smaller sites, which only have few.
The importance of links to good quality content led to the development of link building quickly. That said, it’s worth bearing in mind that link building can be a good strategy for SEO. The only downside is if you buy or collect bad quality links – Google may penalize your website.
SEO Basics: What is Search Intent and Why is it Essential for SEO?
Google and SEO
Researching, promoting and achieving a prominent position in the search results is what SEO is all about. The ultimate goal of SEO is to focus on Google’s algorithms so that your website appears high up on page one.
It’s true that we do not know how the algorithm of Google works, but by looking at the search results we can notice how it changes based on the question. All this being said, this algorithm is aimed at giving online users a good experience and well-adapted answers. The best way to stay on top of what works in the Google Search engine is by monitoring all the changes in their algorithm and then testing those updates.
SEO basics: What is Local SEO?
With StartUpAm, I embrace holistic SEO. It’s not about “tricking” the search engine when you are tailoring your SEO strategy. The best way is to let the search engine do its job and focus on creating compelling, high quality content that a user is more likely to engage with.
It’s right in the name – It is this principle that makes Google work. Make it easier for them to find your site by using great content, provide your users with a great online experience, and then you’ll start ranking higher on their search results for that keyword.
2 thoughts on “What does Google do? The SEO Basics for Beginners”
Happy to tweet this. Great job on this post. Google often seems confusing because what it does and how it benefits bloggers creates a divergence in mind. Bloggers just want traffic but until you understand how Google works it feels difficult to drive visitors through the search giant.
Thank you, Ryan! That’s great to hear, keep it up 🙂