Imagine trying to decipher the mind of a super-smart AI that’s constantly evolving and changing its ways of thinking.

That’s kind of what trying to understand Google’s search algorithm feels like! It’s a super complex system kind of like a giant puzzle with a million pieces that Google uses to figure out which websites are most relevant to a search query and show them first.

They say the algorithm considers hundreds of different factors but some of the biggest ones are how relevant and useful the content is how high-quality it is and how good the user experience (UX) is.

It’s like Google is trying to give us the best possible answers for our questions and they’re constantly trying to make their AI even smarter and more accurate.

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Table of Contents

Understanding the Algorithm: What We Do Know

The exact details of how Google’s algorithm works aren’t public information.

It’s like a secret recipe that Google keeps under wraps.

So trying to completely understand it is like trying to solve a riddle with missing pieces.

Instead of trying to crack the code it’s way more helpful to focus on what Google tells us about their process.

They’re kind of like a teacher who gives us clues to help us figure out the answers.

Think of it this way: Google wants to show us the most relevant and helpful websites first.

They want to make sure the pages we see are actually useful and trustworthy not just filled with a bunch of random words.

Unlocking the Secrets: Key Ranking Factors

While the algorithm is a mystery there are some things that Google has shared about what makes a website stand out in search results.

Think of it as a guidebook to help us navigate the world of search ranking.

Content is King: Relevance and Quality

So you want your website to be at the top of the search results right? Well the first thing you need to do is understand what people are actually searching for.

It’s like trying to write a story that everyone will love so you need to know what kind of story people are looking for.

If you want to rank for a specific keyword you need to understand what people are searching for when they type that word into Google.

Then you have to create content that answers their questions and gives them the information they need.

It’s like writing a blog post about “how to make a cake” when someone searches for “best cake recipes.”

Before you even try to rank for a keyword you need to check out the websites that are already doing well for it.

This gives you clues about what people are looking for.

Pay close attention to the format and type of content that’s already ranking.

For example are the top websites showing a list of products or are they mostly providing information? How is the information organized?

Imagine you search for “fish oil.” The top results might focus on the health benefits of fish oil meaning people are probably searching for information on that topic.

It’s a good idea to include the keywords you want to rank for on your website.

You can do this naturally by using them in:

Page titles: Think of this like the headline of your blog post; it’s the first thing people see.
Headings: This helps break down your content and make it easier for readers to understand.
Body text: This is the main content of your website.

But remember it’s important to be natural.

You don’t want your website to sound like a robot repeating the same words over and over.

Google wants to see content that’s written for people not for search engines.

Building Trust: Expertise Experience Authority and Trustworthiness (E-E-A-T)

Google wants to make sure the content we see is reliable and trustworthy.

They don’t want us to be misled by websites that don’t know what they’re talking about.

That’s where E-E-A-T comes in.

E-E-A-T is a measure of how knowledgeable experienced and reliable a website is.

Google doesn’t use E-E-A-T directly as a ranking factor but it’s a strong indicator of content quality and content quality definitely influences rankings.

How do you show off your E-E-A-T?

First you need to follow some basic principles:

Be accurate: Make sure your information is correct and up-to-date.
Be objective: Don’t be biased or try to push a specific agenda. Just present the facts.
Back up your claims: Provide evidence and sources to support your information.

Beyond these basics consider hiring authors who are experts in their field if you can.

Show off their credentials and let your readers know why they’re a reliable source of information.

If you can’t hire experts try to find experts who can contribute or review your content.

Look at how Healthline reassures its readers by having their medical advice reviewed by a qualified professional.

This demonstrates their commitment to accuracy and trustworthiness.

Finally if it makes sense for your topic showcase your personal experience.

It’s not the same as expertise but many readers appreciate hearing firsthand accounts.

Think about a car review article.

Some people might prefer to read the opinion of an expert while others might want to hear directly from someone who owns the car and drives it every day.

User Experience Matters: Speed Design and Navigation

Google wants to make sure we have a smooth and enjoyable experience on the websites we visit.

They don’t want us to get frustrated because a website is slow or confusing.

Google values page loading speed and Core Web Vitals (which measure how good the user experience is).

You can check your page speed and Core Web Vitals using Google’s free PageSpeed Insights tool.

It provides a report with suggestions on how to improve your website’s loading speed.

Here are some quick wins to look for in the report:

Optimize images: Make sure your images are properly formatted and compressed.
Minify CSS and JavaScript: This means making your code files smaller which can help your website load faster.
Use a CDN: A Content Delivery Network (CDN) can help deliver your website’s content faster to users around the world.

To go even deeper into your website’s UX performance try using Semrush’s Site Audit tool.

It’s a powerful tool that can help you identify potential issues with your website’s performance and usability.

The Power of Backlinks: Building Trust and Authority

If lots of different websites in the same industry link back to a website it’s a good sign that the website is useful and relevant.

And remember Google wants to give users useful and relevant results.

These links are called backlinks and they’ve been a part of search ranking systems since the very beginning.

They’re still important today as they demonstrate that your content is valuable and trustworthy.

The more popular a keyword is the more backlinks you usually need to rank for it.

To see if backlinks might be holding your content back use a keyword research tool like Semrush’s Keyword Overview tool.

It provides an estimate of keyword difficulty (KD) which is a measure of how competitive a keyword is.

Type in your target keyword choose a location and click “Search.” You’ll see the KD and an estimate of how many referring domains you need to rank.

You can also check out the top-ranking pages for your target keyword and see how many backlinks they have.

You can find this information by scrolling down on the same page in Keyword Overview.

If you see a big gap in the number of backlinks between the top-ranking pages it might be a good idea to focus on building more backlinks for your content.

Building Topical Authority: Becoming an Expert in Your Niche

For your website to have “topical authority” it needs to cover your chosen topic comprehensively.

Regularly publishing high-quality content around specific topics over time establishes your credibility as a trusted source of information.

Google doesn’t explicitly mention topical authority as a ranking factor (except in Google News). However it’s a concept that’s widely recognized by SEOs and there’s plenty of evidence to support it.

Think about Shopify and Amazon; they have topical authority in the e-commerce industry.

Google seems to trust their information and ranks them higher than other websites for many e-commerce searches.

Shopify is also more likely to get backlinks on e-commerce-related topics as authors are familiar with their brand and trust their expertise in the area.

This helps boost their traffic and rankings.

You can start building topical authority by creating topic clusters.

These are groups of pages that are connected to each other and cover similar topics.

For example if you want to rank for “fish oil” you might increase your chances of success by publishing content on related topics such as:

Health benefits of fish oil: This could cover topics like heart health brain health and joint health.
Different types of fish oil: You could compare Omega-3 fatty acids cod liver oil and krill oil.
How to take fish oil: This could discuss dosage side effects and interactions with other medications.

Semrush’s Topic Research tool can help you generate data-driven content ideas to develop topic clusters like this.

Start by looking for ideas that have “Topic Effectiveness: High.” This means that the keyword search volumes are high compared to the difficulty of the keywords.

Click “Show more” on any content idea to see questions related searches and more.

For example you could delve deeper into each benefit/side effect related to fish oil (for example high blood pressure). You could also start creating content to answer long-tail questions like “Is cod liver oil bad for you?”

The key here is to focus.

If you have limited resources choose a specific topic cluster and cover it extensively.

By focusing on a single topic it’s much easier to demonstrate that you’re a trustworthy source of information.

Beyond the Basics: The Hidden Factors

While you can’t control everything it’s good to know that Google’s search algorithm also uses context to determine rankings.

For example search results can be personalized based on your search history or location.

In the SEO community some “ranking factors” are widely accepted even though Google denies their importance as actual ranking factors.

Here are three common ones to watch out for:

Domain Age: It’s true that the longer your domain has been around the more time it has to build authority and acquire backlinks. But domain age itself is not intrinsically a ranking factor.
- Source: JohnMu on X (formerly Twitter).
A simple tweet from a Google employee isn’t always definitive proof to completely debunk a ranking factor.

However domain age (and the next two factors) have strong arguments against their influence.

Bounce Rate: Google claims it doesn’t use any Google Analytics data in the ranking algorithm and bounce rate is no exception.

Bounce rate is simply the percentage of sessions that didn’t engage.

An “engaged session” is one that either lasts longer than 10 seconds has a conversion event or has less than two pageviews.

It would be problematic to use bounce rate as a ranking factor because it doesn't always indicate how useful a page is.

It’s possible for someone to click on your page quickly find the answer they need and leave in a few seconds.

This would be recorded as a bounce even if the content was useful and the user got the information they needed.

Domain Authority: Domain authority (like Domain Rating and Authority Score) is a third-party metric that Google has repeatedly confirmed it doesn’t use in any way.
- Source: JohnMu on X (formerly Twitter) in 2018.

The Evolving Landscape: Google Algorithm Updates

Google makes thousands of algorithm updates every year to improve the quality and relevance of search results and prevent spammy tactics.

Let’s look at five important updates throughout the history of Google’s algorithms.

Name and Date	Descriptions	Learn More
RankBrain Oct 2015	Google’s first deep learning model that helped it better understand new search queries.

                                                                                       | (https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-rankbrain-update/416242/)                                                                                                                                                                            |

| Hummingbird Sep 2013 | An improvement to how Google can understand the meaning of search queries and match them with relevant results.

                                                                | (https://www.searchenginejournal.com/hummingbird-update-everything-you-need-to-know/377874/)                                                                                                                                                  |

| Penguin Apr 2012 | An update designed to penalize websites engaging in spammy SEO tactics like keyword stuffing.

                                                                             | (https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-penguin-update-what-it-is-how-it-works/333408/)                                                                                                                                                            |

| Panda Feb 2011 | An update designed to lower the rankings of low-quality websites and content that isn’t very helpful.

                                                                              | (https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-panda-update/170362/)                                                                                                                                                                             |

| Florida Nov 2003 | An update to prevent simple manipulations of the algorithm like keyword stuffing.

                                                                                         | (https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-florida-update/245253/)                                                                                                                                                                             |

Google algorithm updates can change what’s considered a ranking factor and how important those factors are.

For example meta keywords used to affect rankings.

But after webmasters abused them by stuffing pages with meta keywords Google released algorithm updates that decreased their importance and eventually eliminated their impact altogether.

In recent years algorithm updates like the September 2022 Helpful Content Update have increased the importance of content quality and E-E-A-T-related factors.

To keep up the best thing you can do is create high-quality content that’s as helpful as possible while following known SEO best practices.

But be prepared to follow algorithm changes and adjust those best practices accordingly (we’ll get to that soon).

Navigating Algorithm Updates: Staying Ahead of the Curve

If you suspect that an algorithm update is having a negative impact on you here’s what you can do:

First you can follow Google’s official channels for announcements:

Google Search Central blog: Google regularly posts updates and announcements on their blog.
Google Webmaster Central Help Forum: This forum is a great place to find discussions about algorithm updates and get help from Google experts.

You can also use SEMrush Sensor which reports on the volatility of search results.

It measures daily fluctuations for mobile and desktop SERPs broken down by industry and country.

It also has a personal score which allows you to understand if/how updates are directly impacting your websites.

Tip: Click “Subscribe to Notifications” to be notified about major fluctuations via email or browser push notifications.

If it seems like there’s been an update move to the next step.

However let’s say you notice a drop in organic traffic or conversions but there doesn’t appear to be an algorithm update.

Here are some other things to check:

Technical issues: Are there any broken links or errors on your website?
User experience: Is your website difficult to use or navigate?
Content quality: Is your content outdated or irrelevant?

To learn more: 5 Things That Are Hurting Your Website’s Ranking

OK so there has been an update.

Now you need to figure out what Google is trying to improve.

What specific factors does the update seem to target?

Sometimes Google will tell you directly.

For example in April 2023 Google released a page explaining their product reviews update.

It explains to webmasters how the system works and what kind of review content it aims to reward.

Other times you can learn from speculation on X (formerly Twitter) and other online communities.

And sometimes you might need to do your own digging.

Take a look at some of the affected SERPs in your niche.

What has changed? Who’s winning? Who’s losing?

Note what you see and any common patterns.

(You’ll use this in a later step.)

Taking Action: A Step-by-Step Guide

To wrap up gathering information and creating a plan of action you need to know:

What Google is trying to improve.
Which of your pages are affected.

If you use Semrush’s Rank Tracking tool this step will be simple.

Just open the tool click on “Pages” and look for the “Average Position” column.

Check if there are any pages with significant drops in average position.

If you’re not using a rank tracking tool check your Google Search Console data.

This might not give you the data you’re looking for as quickly as a dedicated rank tracker but you’ll start to spot trends after a few days if there’s a significant impact.

To find your traffic data go to Google Search Console and click on “Search Results” in the left sidebar (or “Full Report”). Then click on “Date: Last 3 Months.” Next click on “Compare” and choose a date range.

Now that you understand the update’s goal and know which of your pages have been impacted you can start figuring out a way forward.

But before you start making changes wait for the dust to settle.

Rankings tend to be more volatile in the early days of a new update.

So reacting too quickly could result in unnecessary work.

Wait until the ranking positions of your affected pages have been stable for a while.

There’s no hard and fast rule for exactly how long to wait but take into account all the signals you have.

Semrush Sensor your own websites and community discussions.

When it’s time to make changes start by taking your list of pages and find a way to prioritize them based on what’s most important.

For example based on traffic or conversions.

One by one take a look at the SERPs.

If you were previously ranking well but your competitors have overtaken you take a look at the newly ranked content.

What’s different from yours? The angle? The length? The structure?

By analyzing the top-ranking pages and comparing them to your own you’re much more likely to spot patterns.

Things that your competitors have (and that Google wants to reward) that you might be missing.

For example you might notice that all the pages ranking above you are offering helpful downloadable templates.

Or maybe they’re providing long in-depth answers while your content is more concise.

From there you can start working down your list.

Update your content accordingly.

Make the changes you think will make your content even more useful than what’s currently ranking above you.

To learn more: How to Survive Google Updates: A Step-by-Step Guide

The main goal of Google updates is almost always the same: to make it easier for users to find the most helpful content for their search.

If you create great content and focus on helping users you’re increasing your chances of being rewarded by algorithm updates.

In addition to that here are two things you can do to get ahead of algorithm updates:

First subscribe to SEMrush Sensor notifications to get the earliest possible heads-up on changes.

Second set up rank tracking using SEMrush Rank Tracking to get quick data on specific pages that are gaining and losing keyword rankings during future updates.

Remember the world of search ranking is constantly evolving.

By staying informed and adapting to Google’s updates you can ensure that your website continues to thrive in the digital landscape.

Comment fonctionne l'algorithme de recherche de Google : Un guide sans fioritures