How do search engines decide your website’s ranking?
The simple answer to this is that a website’s ranking is determined by the search engine’s individual algorithm. Unfortunately that probably doesn’t quite do it the full justice.
The search engine algorithm is an extraordinarily technical piece of mathematics. It is fundamentally based around ranking sites through their many strands of links and keywords. The search engine algorithm will assign a weighting, in the case of Google this is often conveyed as PageRank, which will determine how high you feature in general.
However, you can improve your site’s authority simply by building up your internal and external links as well as optimising your copy and Meta. It’s a complex process that is designed to show the search engine crawlers that your site is stronger and more relevant for the search terms you’re targeting. There’s no guarantee that you can ever get to the top, but there are SEO services available that can provide professional assistance if needed.
All search engines update their algorithms at regular intervals. This helps them reorder websites that they’ve previously indexed as well as counteracting the latest black hat strategies to reach the top. When algorithms do change, just as Google has been doing with their new Caffeine update, your website may experience some fluctuations in positions whilst the search engine reworks their listings.
The search engine rankings have been set up by the engines to ensure that their users have the most relevant and best quality SERPs (search engine results pages) possible. Google cracked the market by providing their innovative PageRank algorithm, which managed to remove many of the issues that had dogged early frontrunners like Yahoo! This initial dominance has grown into a huge market lead, which sees Google control 90% of UK searches.
But to return to the initial question of how websites are ranked within search engines, the honest answer is that only the select few people who have access to the algorithm code truly know. There are so many factors that go into each algorithm that no one individual could possibly ever know how to completely dominate a search engine, which of course is no bad thing.
The only thing you can do to ensure that your website ranks well with all the search engines is play by the rules. There’s no point trying to find a short cut to success when it comes to rankings, you just need to be aware of the latest techniques and have a good solid understanding of SEO to improve your chances.
