For many, this question might be surprising, but the truth is that for new business owners, especially those who are trying to navigate the world of SEO it is crucial to understand what Google does. 

That’s why we decided that it’s time to take a look at the basics and discuss how Google works and what is going on behind the secret algorithm we all try to approach in a way that benefits our business.

Ready? Without further ado, let’s get it started.

What does Google do?

Basically, Google goes through links from one webpage to another. It has 3 main elements: a crawler, an index, and an algorithm. To understand what each of these does and how they are connected, here’s a quick summary:

• Crawler: Goes around the internet and follows links 24/7. It saves the HTML version of pages and collects them in a huge database, which is called an index.
• Index: This is very the crawler collects the HTML version of all pages on the internet. Once the crawler finds new versions of pages and revises them, the index will be updated.

Scroll down to find out how the third element, the algorithm works.

How does the algorithm work?

Well, the truth is that we don’t know this for sure. The algorithm is not static and due to new updates, it changes often. 

What we know is that once Google is done indexing a website, it will show it in the search results. To show the search results for a certain search query, Google relies on an algorithm that decides the order of the pages. But how that algorithm works and what are the factors that decide the ordering of the results, is still a secret.

As the algorithm changes, so do the factors. Google tells us which things are important and what we should focus on in order to improve the ranking of our pages, but we are not sure Google shares all the factors that matter. This way, no one really knows which factors exactly matter and which are more important than others.

Google’s result page

Google’s results page (SERP) shows 7 to 10 organic links (search results) that according to Google fit the best the certain search query. Obviously, by clicking to the second result page or even further down, people can see more results. But the further down your page ranks, the less likely people will click on it and navigate to your website.

That’s why it is crucial to improve your ranking and be among the very first results on Google’s result page. 

Sometimes, we can see paid links above the first 10 links on the first result page. These are ads, meaning that people or businesses paid Google to show these links at the top of SERP. These links are not organic, you need to pay a price for these links to appear and the price varies depending on the competitiveness of the search terms.

The importance of links

As we have mentioned already, links have a crucial role in making your pages visible for Google. When it comes to ranking, Google uses the number of links pointing to your page to determine how important your page is for a certain search. The more links your page has, the more search engines will find your page relevant. 

Both internal and external links are key, however, some are more important than others. Links you get from websites with more incoming links are usually more important than small websites with a few incoming links.

SEO

We simply cannot discuss ranking on Google’s search result page without talking about Search Engine Optimization (SEO). If you want your page to appear in a higher position, you need to gain a good understanding of SEO. Many people think that Search Engine Optimization is about putting the right words to the right place, but the truth is that SEO is so much more than keywords. 

To help you learn about SEO, we created a list where you can see some of the most significant optimization rules you can rely on to improve your Google ranking. 

Final thoughts 

 In case you need help with improving the ranking of your pages in Google, don’t hesitate to fill out the contact form on our website and get in touch with our talented team of SEO specialists! 

We are looking forward to helping your website reach more clients and grow your business!