Google Ranking System That Every Webmaster Should Know

Every search engine has its own algorithm and ranking system, including Google. Many webmasters optimize their websites in order to win Google Ranking. 

In this guide, you'll find out more about how Google ranks and displays results in the SERPs. Read more below.

What is Google Ranking?

Google Ranking is a ranking system that the Google search engine uses to show the search results most relevant to a user's search query.

Google is constantly improving the algorithms used in Google Ranking to produce more accurate searches. The algorithm will determine the feasibility of a site to be recommended in user search results.

The web pages with the highest levels of relevance and credibility will appear at the top of the list. A website will benefit a lot if it is successfully served as a top search result. Starting from better content visibility, increased organic traffic, to potentially increased conversion rates.

In an effort to increase the website ranking, on Google, you need to know the following Google Ranking factors.

Google Ranking Factors

The main factor in this Google Ranking can change from time to time referring to the development of search engine algorithms. Here are the factors that determine the ranking of a web page in Google search results.

Content Quality

Users’ main purpose in using search engines is to find the information they need. This makes search engines like Google prioritize web pages that contain useful information and keep the user’s in mind as the top search results in the SERPs.

Therefore, it is important to produce high-quality content to rank high on Google Ranking. It can be supported by writing SEO-friendly articles. Here's a list of things you need to pay attention to in writing content:

• Content. Make sure the content presented contains complete information and includes related discussion points that visitors may need.
• Provide up-to-date content. Create the latest content so that you can keep up with your audience. The content will be relevant to the user's search goals over time.
• Create relevant content. Complete and up-to-date content is not enough. Make sure the content has a correlation between the title and the discussion delivered.
• Pay attention to the structure of the content. It will make it easier for visitors to find the important information they are searching for. In addition, it can also help search engines in the indexing and ranking process.

User Experience (UX)

UX is the user experience while using or interacting with digital products such as websites or applications. A website that can be navigated easily will provide a good experience for its users.

Websites with poor user experience tend to be abandoned by their users. In fact, search engines will consider it a low-quality website. Indeed, this can affect the website's position in Google Ranking. Indicators that show the good or bad user experience of a web include: CTR, Bounce Rate, and Dwell Time.

Some of the things you can do to improve the user experience on your website are:

• Optimizing web page performance. Optimized site performance will provide a better experience for users. One way that can be done is by optimizing core web vitals.
• Develop a mobile-friendly site. More than half of searches are done via mobile devices. That's why web owners must provide sites that can be accessed both via desktop and mobile devices for the users’ convenience.
• Maintain website security. To provide a better user experience, use a secure communication protocol such as HTTPS. That way users will put their trust in your site.

Core Web Vitals Score

Core web vitals are one of the factors that determine the quality of a website’s user experience. Therefore, core web vitals become one of the most important factors in Google Ranking.

There are three important metrics that affect core web vitals, including Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS). You must achieve a minimum score on these three metrics for your website to get the optimal core web vitals score.

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)

LCP is the time it takes for a website to load the largest page element. These elements can be images, videos, long text elements, and more. The recommended LCP is 2.5 seconds from the first time the page loads.

Page loading times that are too long can degrade the quality of the user experience. This causes visitors to leave your website. Optimizing LCP can be a way to rank in search engines.

First Input Delay (FID)

Besides the LCP, FID is also a metric that affects the assessment of core web vitals. FID is the time it takes a website to respond to a user's interaction. User interaction can be either clicks or input. FID is said to be good if it occurs in less than 100 milliseconds. If it's more than that, you need to do FID optimization.

Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)

The last core web vitals metric is CLS. This metric relates to the stability of the layout of the web page to support the user's visual experience. In page loading, sudden layout changes can worsen the quality of the user experience. You need to optimize CLS to keep it in ideal condition at 0.1 or less.

Domain Authority

Domain authority is one of the determining factors in Google Ranking. Domain authority indicates the level of trust and credibility of a site in Google.’s point of view In other words, a high domain authority indicates that your site is a credible and quality content provider on a certain topic.

Websites with high domain authority tend to rank better in organic search. One way to increase domain authority is by link building to get backlinks from good-quality sites.

Google Ranking Process

Google continuously updates its algorithm so that it can display the most relevant results according to the user's search intent. This search engine uses a combination of many algorithms to show answers to all user queries.

With complex algorithms, Google is able to sift through billions of content to display the most relevant results within the shortest time. Google also conducted algorithm testing on many testers to ensure the relevance of the displayed results.

Google's algorithm assesses many factors in the ranking system. Some of them are search terms, relevance, source reliability, location, user settings, and more. The weight of each of these factors also depends on the search terms entered by the user.

The following is an explanation of the Google ranking process step by step according to Google’s guidelines.

Sorting The Search Terms

Google performs an analysis of search terms to show relevant results. This search engine has a language model that works to understand the search terms in the index.

Research to understand language naturally is also optimized to understand users’ terms. This includes synonyms, interpreting typographical errors, and more. Not only that, Google tries to understand what format the user is looking for, for example, images, maps, real-time information such as match scores, or others.

Matching Terms to Content

After Google understands a user's search term, the next step is to find the page that best matches that term. The algorithm function to find this information in the index by analyzing the location of keywords and their frequency.

If a web page has relevant keywords, it will tend to be displayed. In addition to matching keywords, the data is used as an assessment to improve relevance.

Furthermore, the displayed language is also filtered. This search engine prioritizes languages ​​according to the query. However, it is possible that other languages ​​are also displayed because they contain relevancy.

Ranking The Pages

From the previous process, there are thousands of pages that are relevant to the keywords. So, to sort it requires ranking the most relevant to the less relevant pages.

The algorithm will analyze other factors to show the best results for users such as release time to user experience offered by the website.

Relevant but poor-quality sites such as keyword spamming will be identified and removed for violating Google's webmaster guidelines.

Showing Results

Google makes sure to show the best results for its users. They evaluate all the information that will be displayed. The evaluation includes the focus and interpretation of the user's query, the most suitable format to display, and the ranking system.

The algorithm task is also to analyze the signal to ensure that the result will perform well on all browsers and all devices (desktop and mobile). The algorithm also takes into account the required loading time to ensure user convenience.

Pay Attention to Context

Google's algorithm can also take into account the context of the user's query. Personal information such as location, browsing history, and settings help the search engine to customize the results they display.

For example, if the user types in "meatballs", the search results are likely to be meatball outlets around the user's location. Browsing history can also affect search results. If the query entered is still relevant to the context of the previous search, subsequent search results will show similar results.

That's how Google displays the search results that are most relevant to its users. You need to know the Google ranking factors to determine the most appropriate web optimization strategy. That way, your website can get better performance on Google search engines.

But keep in mind that the algorithm in this Google Ranking is ever-changing. So, it is important for web owners to follow the updates of the factors so that site performance remains well from time to time.