How Search Engine’s Rank Your Website & How to Improve It

Improve search engine ranking by quality content, website performance, optimization, user experience, and engagement.

This article explains the principles behind search engines and how they rank the vast amount of information from the 1.3 billion websites globally. With 200 million websites actively maintained, that’s a lot of data to sort! (Source: Forbes)

Learn more about the components of your website that play a role in how and where your web pages appear in the search results. Learn how to structure and format your content and improve website performance, speed, user experience, and domain authority.

Table of contents:

Search Engine History & Principles

Google sets the benchmark for search engines, so aligning your digital presence with its standards and best practices is a great place to start. Video, social media, other search engines, and discussion platforms like Reddit and Quora have additional algorithm layers to consider when adjusting your strategy for higher visibility and rank.

4 key components make up G’s advanced search algorithms:

1. PageRank – authority based on backlinks
2. RankBrain – AI for search intent
3. BERT & MUM – contextual search results from natural language
4. Helpful Content System – people-first content prioritization

PageRank: G’s Foundational Algorithm for Web Ranking

Let’s start with the PageRank algorithm, initially created by Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Standford University. PageRank assigns a score to web pages based on the quantity and quality of links pointing to them. A link to your web page is like a vote of confidence that the page contains high-quality content. If people value your page’s content and relevancy to their content, they’ll link to it. The higher the quality of the web page that points to your page, the higher the vote quality.

That’s more than enough math to understand how page ranking works. Now, let’s discuss Link Quantity vs. Link Quality.

The more links you have pointing to your web page, the higher the page rank; however, a link from a high-authority page like Wikipedia carries more weight than smaller, low-quality websites. Links from spammy websites or irrelevant links do not help your PageRank and can actually negatively affect it.

How to identify bad backlinks:

• Go to the referring link and evaluate the quality and relevance of the content to your page.
• Check the domain authority using tools such as SEMrush, Ahrefs, Moz’s Link Explorer, and BACKLINKO.
• Look for keyword stuffing and unnatural copy in the anchor text.
• If the referring website looks like it was created solely for backlinks, it is a black-hat SEO tactic used by Private Blog Networks.

How to remedy bad backlinks:

• In most cases, simply request the referring domain owner to remove an improperly matched link to your content.
• You can report the link using the Search Quality User Report, which flags the page for deceptive behavior or low quality.
• Disallowing links in the Search Console is no longer recommended due to an upgrade in the algorithm’s ability to identify and disregard spammy backlinks. However, you can still use the Disavow Link Tool if you’re concerned that spammy links are severely hurting your site.

PageRank still matters for SEO

Websites with high-quality inbound, outbound, and internal links simply rank higher. So, being strategic with your linking structure will always pay off. Review the following best practices to improve PageRank:

➛ Naturally earn links from trusted, relevant websites like editorials, industry leaders, and reputable news sites.

How? Publish high-quality, relevant content optimized for the intended audience, platform, directory, etc. Items like original research, data studies, experiments, trials and tests, in-depth reviews, guides, and trending topics gain authoritative backlinks.

➛ Link to core pages such as products, services, and high-performing blogs from high-authority domains.

➛ Include descriptive anchor text so search engines can accurately link content.

➛ Distributing PageRank internally by linking from a high-authority blog to a product or service page. Use pages with fewer outgoing links to help pass link equity.

➛ Avoid spam links from link farms and PBNs. Note: penalizations from paid links.

➛ Promote content through public relations, social media, influencers, affiliates, events, networking, etc.

PageRank matters, but it is no longer the sole ranking factor. A baseline SEO strategy is still built around G’s PageRank core principles. Today’s more sophisticated algorithms factor in AI, content quality, user engagement, and PageRank.

RankBrain – AI Powered Search Ranking

Understanding search or user intent based on behavioral signals was introduced in 2015 as part of Google’s broader Hummingbird algorithm. RankBrain uses machine learning to analyze ambiguous or unique queries and matches them with the most relevant results.

Designed to assist with understanding synonyms, natural language, and long-tail queries, RankBrain measures user behavior based on how users interact with search results.

Key metrics include Click-Through Rate (CTR), Dwell Time, Bounce Rate, and historical data and trends. RankBrain prioritizes relevance over exact keyword matching, making content contextual and user-focused rather than keyword-focused.

BERT & MUM

BERT – Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers) introduced in 2019, an AI-based natural language processing (NLP) model that helps understand the context and meaning behind search queries. BERT processes words in relation to all other words in a sentence rather than one by one.

MUM is an advanced model of BERT introduced in 2021 and is much more powerful at understanding complex queries across different languages and media formats, such as text, images, video, and more. 75+ languages. MUM is also multimodal, covering all media types and insights from multiple sources.

Both BERT and MUM enhance Google’s ability to understand user intent and complex queries, making SEO more context-driven and experience-focused. The future of search is shifting from keywords to holistic, multimodal content—so brands must adapt their strategies accordingly.

Helpful Content System

Introduced in August 2022, this algorithm update prioritizes high-quality, user-focused content while demoting content created solely for SEO or ranking purposes.

• Site-Wide Signal: Authority is applied website-wide
• Uses Machine Learning: Detects patterns of low-quality and unhelpful material
• On-Going & Automatic: runs continuously in the background

When crafting content, use a People-First Approach and write for humans, not search engines.