What You Need To Know About Google’s Ranking Algorithm

Sure, you can learn to drive without formal lessons. And you can finish an Ironman. But you’re going to have a harder time and won’t get the same results as someone who prepared themselves.

So before you optimize another website, take some time to understand how Google’s ranking algorithm works. It’ll make your life — and your job — much easier.

What Is PageRank?

You wouldn’t drive a car without taking Driver’s Ed. And you wouldn’t participate in an Ironman Triathlon without extensive training. The same goes for website optimization — yet many people do it without learning how Google’s ranking algorithm works.

Sure, you can learn to drive without formal lessons. And you can finish an Ironman. But you’re going to have a harder time and won’t get the same results as someone who prepared themselves.

So before you optimize another website, take some time to understand how Google’s ranking algorithm works. It’ll make your life — and your job — much easier.

So what is Google PageRank?

PageRank is an algorithm that ranks websites based on their importance in the search results. According to Google,

❝ PageRank works by counting the number and quality of links to a page to determine a rough estimate of how important the website is. The underlying assumption is that more important websites are likely to receive more links from other websites.❞

That last sentence is important to note because links are at the heart of Google PageRank. The higher a link’s PageRank score, the more importance (aka authority) it has.

Links pass authority from page to page (aka link juice), so if you get a bunch of high-authority links pointing at your site, you’ll get lots of “link juice.”

If you think about it, Google PageRank, and particularly backlinks, are a lot like a popularity contest.

A visual representation of Google PageRank.

Google PageRank Scores

Google PageRank is anything but linear, but when it comes to SEO, it’s a straightforward depiction of a logarithmic scale ranging from 0 (low-quality) to 10 (highest quality) that was once a part of the now-defunct PageRank toolbar.

Before you go and look up what a logarithmic scale is, here’s Wikipedia’s simplified explanation:

❝ A logarithmic scale is a way of displaying numerical data over a very wide range of values in a compact way—typically the largest numbers in the data are hundreds or even thousands of times larger than the smallest numbers.❞

And according to a 2014 Search Engine Watch report,

❝ It has an estimated base of 4-5. In other words, assuming a base of 5, PR2 links are comparable to 5 PR1 links; a PR6 link is comparable to 5 PR5 links, and so on. ❞

So if you landed a single link with a PageRank score of 10, it would be akin to earning thousands of individual links with a score of 1.

How Google PageRank Works

Understanding Google PageRank is essential to SEO because it provides context about the importance of backlinks as ranking factors.

But how does Google PageRank work?

The developers who created PageRank did so based on the idea that websites could pass authority and votes of confidence between each other through links.

The more links that were directed to a specific page, the more trustworthy it was and the better its rankings.

In their first paper about Google’s first ranking algorithm, the developers explained that, “PageRank extends this idea by not counting links from all pages equally, and by normalizing by the number of links on a page.”

This is where things get technical, so buckle up.

In the same paper, the developers of Google PageRank explored the calculations, explaining,

❝ We assume page A has pages T1…Tn which point to it (i.e., are citations). The parameter d is a damping factor which can be set between 0 and 1. We usually set d to 0.85. There are more details about d in the next section. Also, C(A) is defined as the number of links going out of page A. The PageRank of a page A is given as follows:

PR(A) = (1-d) + d (PR(T1)/C(T1) + … + PR(Tn)/C(Tn))

Note that the PageRanks form a probability distribution over web pages, so the sum of all web pages’ PageRanks will be one.❞

In other words, multiply Page A’s PageRank by 0.85 to find Page B’s PageRank. This calculation is called the dampening factor.

So when Page B links to Page C, Page C gets 85% of Page B’s PageRank (or 72.25% from Page A).

But what about pages that don’t have any external links? Well, it doesn’t mean it will have a Page Rank of 0 — it’ll be closer to 0.15.

And what if a page has multiple external links? According to Barry Schwartz’s 2004 Search Engine Roundtable post,

❝ If you put a link from page A to page B, page A will distribute PageRank to page B. Page A’s PageRank does not get diluted by linking out, but the links are worth less, in terms of the value of the PageRank, when there are more links on the page A. ❞

How Does The Google Ranking Algorithm Work?

Now that you know about Google Page Rank, we can learn how the Google ranking algorithm works.

To begin, Google collects information from a rainbow of sources such as:

And literally thousands, if not billions, of other places. Google uses multiple ranking algorithms (including PageRank) to organize and sort through these sources.

Google has a strict process to ensure that its ranking algorithm provides its users with nothing short of perfection. These processes include real-time assessments performed by highly-trained Search Quality Raters who follow equally rigorous regulations.

Without Google’s ranking algorithm, the internet would arguably be unusable. But thanks to Google PageRank, we can find everything we need in a matter of seconds.

How Google’s Ranking Algorithm Organizes Search Results

When Google ranks websites and pages, it does three things:

Let’s take a look.

Crawling

Like the universe, the internet is continuously expanding. And since there’s no one place where websites are listed, Google endlessly looks for new content to include in its registry.

Google may already be aware of some pages if it previously visited them. It finds others when it trails a link from a known page to an unknown page. It also finds pages when you submit a sitemap (or a list of individual pages) that it can crawl.

When Google finds a new URL, it pays a visit and crawls the page to see what it’s about. As it does, it renders and analyzes all of the text, images, videos, and even the layout to determine the page’s rankings. The more Google understands about your site, the easier time it has deciding which users it should appear before.

Indexing

Indexing is when Google tries to understand a new page. During this process, Google evaluates its content, registers images and videos, and everything else — leaving no stone unturned. All of this data is sent to the Google index, which is a massive database.

Serving

When you search something on Google, it assesses a range of factors to determine which page in its index provides the most relevant answer. These factors include:

This means that if someone in Baltimore and another in Cancun both searched for “ice cream parlors,” the results would differ significantly.

Google Ranking Algorithm Ranking Factors

To keep its users (aka customers) happy, Google must consistently provide accurate, relevant information (answers) to millions of search queries.
Anything less than that and all of us will turn tail straight for another engine.

So to maintain its customer base (and reputation), the Google ranking algorithm takes a broad range of factors into account, such as:

Google weighs each factor according to the context of the query. For instance, if you search for pop news articles, Google will give you the latest news stories or social media updates (content freshness). On the other hand, if you searched for the meaning of “logarithmic scale,” things like E-A-T will be more important.

Google’s ranking algorithm uses hundreds of ranking factors. Some have more weight than others, some are more difficult to achieve, and some are no-brainers. We’ll take a look at them so you know what to watch for next time you optimize a website.

Domain Ranking Factors

Domain age: Google's ranking algorithm does account for the age of a specific domain, but it’s no longer a crucial factor.
Keywords in your domain: Again, it’s not the most important SEO factor, but it lets Google know that your domain is relevant to certain queries. What really makes a difference is if you place your target keyword as the first word of your domain name.

Websites with keywords in the subdomains perform better than those with the keyword in the domain extension alone

Exact match domains: Again, there’s a small advantage to exact match domains. But if the site is shite, Google may penalize it.
Keyword in subdomain: Expert opinion about this remains mixed, but if there’s a chance that having your keyword in your subdomain could boost your SEO, then why not do it?
Domain history: Google is likely to penalize dropped domains or those passed along by erratic owners, effectively eliminating that domain’s backlink profile and rankings.
Domain registration: Here’s what a 2005 Google patent says about this ranking factor: “Valuable (legitimate) domains are often paid for several years in advance, while doorway (illegitimate) domains rarely are used for more than a year. Therefore, the date when a domain expires in the future can be used as a factor in predicting the legitimacy of a domain.”
Private WHOIS: WHOIS is a commonly used online database containing the names and contact details of domain owners. If you use Private WHOIS instead of Public WHOIS, it can signal to Google that you’re a spammer.
Country Code Top Level Domain (TLD) extension (.ca, .de, .se, etc.): These extensions are great for trying to rank in a certain country, but can make it harder to compete with worldwide rankings.

Page Ranking Factors

Title tags with target keywords have higher rankings because they have higher user relevance signals.

Source: Backlinko

Term frequency-inverse document frequency (TF-IDF): TF-IDF signals to Google the importance of a specific keyword within a given body of text. Basically, the more a word shows up, the greater chance that word is the subject of the content.
Word count: Content length signals expertise. The longer the content, the more likely it provides high-quality, in-depth information to users. A growing number of studies show that long-form content (which has at least 700 to 2,000 words) performs better in search results.

Source: Backlinko

Keyword density: Google doesn’t give keyword density the same weight as before (we think to avoid keyword stuffing), but you should aim for a density of 1% to 2% of the length of the content so Google understands the purpose of the page/post.
Latent Semantic Indexing Keywords in Content (LSI): These keywords give search engines even more context about a page. For example, if you search “urban decay,” Google uses LSI terms to determine if you’re searching for beauty products or economic decline. For this reason, you should add LSI keywords to title tags and meta descriptions.
Page loading speed: This is one of the biggest ranking factors because it strongly correlates to user experience. We use Google PageSpeed Insights to monitor our site's load times for desktop and mobile.

Google PageSpeed Insights mobile results.

Google PageSpeed Insights desktop results.

Entity matching: Page content that correlates with the “entity” someone searches for could help that page rank for the target keyword.
Duplicate content: Check your site for duplicate content or you’ll have two pages on your site competing for the same thing. You can possibly avoid penalties with the correct use of canonical tags.
Image optimization: Proper image optimization includes using relevant, accurate, and descriptive file names, alt-text, titles, descriptions, and captions.
Content updates: The Google Caffeine update places more importance on up-to-date content, particularly when it comes to topical or trending topics. That’s why it includes dates in the meta descriptions like this:

Degree of updates: In the same vein, when you do update past content, Google's ranking algorithm prefers complete content overhauls, rather than small changes like running the post through spell check. Google also looks for content that is regularly updated.
Spelling and grammar: Speaking of which, make sure you do use spell check. Misspellings and poor grammar is no way to build trust.
Keyword placement: A few good rules of thumb include placing your keyword in the first paragraph of a page as well as including it in your heading tags.
Outbound links: Not only should you include at least one link to another site on your page, but it should be a high-authority site since it acts as a trust signal.
Internal links: Likewise, having more internal links pointing to a specific page on your site signals its importance. It’s best to try and add internal links from pages on your site with higher authority scores since they can pass more link juice.
Mobile-friendly: More than half of people use their phone to browse the internet and Google rewards sites that are “mobile-first.” Making your site mobile-friendly should be a priority.
Tabs: Tabs are a nice way to keep your page organized and easy to navigate. But if visitors have to click on them to find more content, there’s a risk that Google won’t index it.
A high number of dofollow outbound links: These links can drain your site’s PageRank and negatively affect its rankings.
Multimedia content: Music, images, gifs, and videos drive engagement and can improve content quality — both of which boost rankings.

Source: Backlinko

Broken links: Speaking of links, check routinely for broken links. A lot of broken links can lead Google to think your site is low-quality or even abandoned. Not only that, but if search engine bots can’t crawl your site, they can’t index it.
Affiliate links: There’s nothing inherently wrong about affiliate links, but if you plug too many on your site, it can lower its quality and trust.
HTML issues: If your site is riddled with HTML errors or poorly coded, it can signal a neglected or low-quality site.
PageRank: High-authority pages typically perform better and rank higher than those with less PageRank.
URLs: Short and sweet URLs are best. You should try to include the page’s target keyword in the URL and avoid using numbers.

Source: Ahrefs

Citations and references: Adding a bibliography at the bottom of an article not only avoids plagiarism, but indicates page quality, expertise, and authority.
Bullets and lists: These improve readability, make your page easier to scan, look nice, and benefit overall user experience.
Ranking for multiple keywords: If your website or page ranks for more than one keyword, it can be a positive signal because according to Google’s “How Search Works” report, “We look for sites that many users seem to value for similar queries.”
Layout: Everyone likes a visually pleasing site, and a properly formatted site can go a long way to helping you rank.

Site Factors

Usefulness and value: Google has explicitly said it penalizes websites that don’t provide unique or helpful content.
Accurate contact information: Your site should have an easy-to-find Contact Us page with contact details that match your WHOIS record.
SSL certificates: Google has verified that HTTPs certificates are a direct ranking factor. These certificates are important because they mean your site is more secured/
TrustRank: This algorithm identifies spam websites to prevent them from ranking alongside legitimate sites.
Server location: This factor is particularly important when it comes to geographical search queries and affects where your site ranks across countries or regions.
Regular site updates: Whether you update your entire site or publish a new blog every week, regular updates keep your site fresh and active. Keep in mind that too much downtime caused by maintenance or server problems can lead to penalties.
Sitemaps: These make it easier for bots to crawl and index your site, boosting its visibility. But according to Google, HTML sitemaps are no longer “useful” for optimization.
Privacy and TOS pages: These let Google know that your site is trustworthy (which leads to better E-A-T).
Breadcrumbs: These improve navigation and let users see where they are at-a-glance. Google says, “Google Search uses breadcrumb markup in the body of a web page to categorize the information from the page in search results.”

Navigation: Speaking of breadcrumbs, Google's ranking algorithm penalizes sites with poor navigation. Additionally, users will become frustrated and quickly leave, which hurts your bounce rate (another direct ranking factor).
YouTube: Google’s Panda update gives precedence to video content from YouTube (though it also helps that Google owns the platform). If you create optimized video content and upload it to YouTube, you could appear higher in search results.

Backlink Factors

Link history: Some experts believe that backlinks from older websites have more authority than those from newer sites. Since Google PageRank favors older sites, this is probably the case.
Backlink count: The more backlinks you have, the more it signals your expertise, trust, and authority to Google. However, it’s better to have a few high-quality referring domains than a bunch of low-quality backlinks. Google also prefers backlink profiles composed of a range of domains from different niches. It’s also beneficial to have more individual pages linking to you, even if they’re from the same website.

Source: Backlinko

Anchor text: Backlink anchor text isn’t as crucial as it once was, but linking to a target keyword boosts relevance. According to the developers of Google PageRank, “...anchors often provide more accurate descriptions of web pages than the pages themselves.”
.edu and .gov domain extensions: While Google has confirmed that it often ignores these types of links, some experts think they benefit trust and expertise.
Competitor links: If you can get a competitor who already ranks for a specific keyword to link to your domain, it can boost that keyword’s SERPs.
Toxic links: Backlinks from low-quality or toxic sites can hurt your overall rankings.
Homepage links: Some people think that another website links to yours on their homepage, it can be an extra boost for that link’s authority.
Nofollow links: There’s a lot of debate about nofollow links. But Google claims that, “In general, we don’t follow them.” That doesn’t completely rule them out, though. Just to be safe, have a small percentage of nofollow links to mix up your backlink profile.
“UGC” or “Sponsored” links: Google indexes links that are tagged as “rel=UGC” or “rel=sponsored” versus nofollow or follow tags.
Contextual links: These are links found within the content of a page. These types of links have more weight than solo links.

301 Redirects: This Webmaster Help Video explains that links from 301 redirects do negatively affect Google PageRank.
Country TLD links: Backlinks from country-specific domains (like .in, .uk, or .an) can increase your visibility in that particular country.
Industry: Backlinks from websites in your industry or niche are much more beneficial than those that come from irrelevant sites. The same thing goes for pages, too.
Title contains keyword: Google favors backlinks that come from pages with titles that contain the same keyword you’re trying to rank for. It’s like a referral from one expert to another.
Velocity: Positive and negative link velocity affect your site’s rankings because they signal your site’s popularity among users.
Authority sites: Backlinks from high-authority websites have way more link juice to share compared to their less-authoritative counterparts.
Natural link profiles: These are made up of backlinks earned through whitehat techniques. Google's ranking algorithm rewards websites with natural link profiles with better rankings.
Number of external links: Google PageRank only has so much authority to disperse. If you earn a backlink from a page containing tons of outbound links, you won’t get that much link juice.
Forum links: Due to the large number of spammers who abused forums to build backlinks, Google PageRank no longer weighs these sites as much as they previously did.

User Experience Factors

RankBrain: This is another algorithm like Google PageRank, but it ranks search results based on user interaction, rather than authority.
Higher CTRs: Google states that pages with higher CTRs could receive higher rankings for that specific keyword. Plus, Google favors organic CTR for keywords.
Bounce rate and dwell time: Typically, sites with lower bounce rates and higher dwell times have higher rankings, which a SEMrush study confirmed when it found a direct relationship between rankings and bounce rate.

Source: SEMrush

Traffic: Besides CTR, the amount of traffic you receive (as well as the frequency) plays a large role in your SERPs. That’s because sites with more traffic are probably high-quality and well-established, meaning users likely visit multiple times to find information.
Comments: Posts with a high number of comments can indicate quality and positive user experience, much like social media comments.

Brand Signals

Branded searches: You might be a “real” brand, but Google won’t know it until users start looking for you. If you can get more branded searches, the ranking algorithm will respond with better SERPs.
Branded anchor text: This is one of the easiest but most effective ways to give off brand signals.
Branded keyword searches: If enough users search for your brand with certain keywords (like “EveryDayDreamers SEO checklist” or “EveryDayDreamers SEO”), the Google ranking algorithm could potentially rank you for those terms even if people just search “SEO checklist” or “SEO.”
Social signals: Google views likes, shares, follows, and reviews as trust signals, so your site could rank better in the search results just for having high engagement on social media. However, this only benefits you if the accounts that follow you are real people, not bots or accounts that you paid for.
Brand mentions: Whether or not these mentions link to you, Google registers them as brand signals.

Bottom Line

Google PageRank is immensely complex, but not impossible to understand. Knowing how the Google ranking algorithm works — and its ranking factors — lay the groundwork for website optimization.

Is there anything that stuck out to you? Or did we miss something obvious? We want to know! Just leave a comment below.

Sources

Dean, Brian. “Google’s 200 Ranking Factors: The Complete List (2021).” Backlinko, 22 Jan. 2020, backlinko.com/google-ranking-factors.
“How Google Search Works.” Google, Google, developers.google.com/search/docs/beginner/how-search-works.
“How Search Algorithms Work.” Google Search, Google, www.google.com/search/howsearchworks/algorithms/.
“PageRank.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 22 May 2021, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank.
Varagouli, Erika. “Everything You Need to Know about Google PageRank (Why It Still Matters in 2021).” Semrush Blog, 23 Dec. 2020, www.semrush.com/blog/pagerank/.