There are more than 200 Google ranking signals. But if you desired to rank well on Google, you may not have to keep to them all. Anyway, it isn’t that easy to keep all of those factors in mind
The reality is that Google has some of those ranking factors kept secret away from everyone, and no one can precisely say how many such factors have been introduced again and again as the search algorithms keep changing with time. An example is the machine learning system (RankBrain) which is a top 3 Google ranking signal (The 3rd signal to be precise).
However, there’s a specific rule which, if sheepishly followed, creates greater impact in SERPs than just trying to follow all of those factors at once. As a matter of facts, it’s the only ranking rule everyone needs to follow even if the rest of the rules cannot be committed to. To figure this out, you should first learn how Google Search works.
How Google Search Works
There are three distinct phases with the Google Search:
- Crawling the entire web to look out for pages
- Indexing the found pages
- Submitting the found pages based on the search query
This is practically how Google Search works. The ranking systems are programmed to sort through billions of pages on the web, find the most useful, relevant results in a fraction of 1 second, and have these results presented in a way that will assist users with finding what they’re searching for.
The ranking systems are designed with a whole sequence of algorithms. To ensure you get the most accurate and useful information from your search, Google Search algorithms consider several factors which include the relevance, phrases of your query, the skill of the sources, the page usability, and your settings and geographical location.
Pay specific attention to the word “Relevance”.