How Google Ranks Websites

Although there is no surefire way to guarantee that you will rank high on organic (non-paid) Google searches, there are some things that you can do to improve your rank.

It starts by understanding how Google ranks websites.  It’s really great to see the direction that Google has gone in respect to SEO. It is all about the user experience.  The better the experience, the higher the ranking.

I don’t know about you, but I love a website that is fast, secure and contains quality content.

And so does Google.

Let’s talk a little about this, shall we?

Fast Websites

Google can tell by the code whether or not your site is fast.  A fast website is one that is not bogged down by a whole bunch of unnecessary code. And a faster site is a more usable site and one that Google likes.

When we designed the new template we designed for mobile first – lean and clean code.

Secure Websites

Google announced in December that it will start prioritizing websites with a secure https domain.  In the release they state “Browsing the web should be a private experience between the user and the website, and must not be subject to eavesdropping, man-in-the-middle attacks, or data modification.”  This is good news for us as we moved to https during our last big upgrade.

To learn more about this check out the Quratz article What is HTTPS and why does Google like it so much?

Quality Content

We can write an entire blog series on this (and probably will). We’ve always stressed this – the design of your website won’t mean much if your content is a mess. Using keywords frequently in the right places is crazy super important.  But it’s more than just keywords. Google now looks at content length, grammar and spelling, site usability, number of pages, the use of bullets and numbered lists and oh so much more. It’s pretty cool really, they prioritize quality content that was crafted with an audience in mind.

I am 100% behind that.

The Complete List

Even though the algorithm that Google uses to rank sites is complex and ever changing (and fair enough, they do this so that people can’t trick the system), there are some things that we know for sure.

For an indepth list of ranking considerations, check out this Google Ranking Factors article from backlinko.com.