Before you research a single keyword, it helps to know the three jobs a search engine does, because most SEO problems are a failure at one of them.
- Crawling: automated programs (Google’s is Googlebot) follow links and sitemaps to discover pages. If a page is not linked from anywhere and not in a sitemap, it may never be found. If it is blocked by
robots.txt, it will not be crawled. - Indexing: the search engine processes what it crawled, works out what the page is about and decides whether to store it. Pages can be excluded because they are duplicates, thin, marked
noindexor low quality. - Ranking: when someone searches, the engine selects and orders indexed pages it judges most helpful for that query, in that location, on that device.
What influences ranking
Google does not publish a formula, and it uses many signals. Its public documentation emphasizes a few broad areas:
- Relevance: does the page address what the searcher actually wants?
- Quality and helpfulness: is the content original, accurate and written for people rather than for search engines? Google’s guidance refers to experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness (E-E-A-T).
- Links: links from other relevant, reputable sites are one signal of importance.
- Page experience: mobile-friendliness, HTTPS, reasonable speed and no intrusive interstitials.
Be sceptical of anyone claiming a secret ranking trick or guaranteed position one. Durable SEO is mostly making genuinely useful pages that are easy to crawl and understand.
Try this
Search Google for site:yourdomain.com. Roughly how many pages appear? Are there pages you expected that are missing, or pages you did not expect? Note both; Module 4 explains how to investigate.