It is largely unclear exactly how search engines such as Google determine their search result order (SERP). What is clear, however, is that it is done, at least largely, automatically using search ranking factors, with each factor assigned a weight. Several SEO professionals have attempted to rank all of those factors by importance. In 1997, it became known to search engines that webmasters were making efforts to be ranked high in organic search results. Old search engines, such as Infoseek, adjusted the algorithms accordingly, to prevent webmasters from manipulating the results. Because of the high marketing value of targeted search results, there is the potential for hostile relationships between search engines and search engine optimization providers. AIRWeb (Adversarial Information Retrieval on the Web) was created in 2005 to minimize the damaging effects of aggressive Web providers.
Google's original PageRank algorithm was presented in 1998, then under the banner of Stanford University, where Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin were working on their search engine at the time. In 2018, Google conducted 654,680 experiments and made 3,234 algorithm changes, Google's algorithm changes every day. Most algorithm changes are not announced by Google, but many algorithm changes are tracked by various websites. Nowadays, Google search results are increasingly user-oriented and especially regionally different, which is also known as local SEO. This has made it more feasible for small businesses to become findable in their region. In addition, obtaining trust and implied links seems to play a major role in determining rankings. However, recent Core updates from Google show that RankBrain is gaining weight in building results.
Some technical ranking factors include:
***Load speed:*** The speed at which Web pages load is a factor in Google's ranking algorithm. Google's goal is to provide people with relevant pages quickly. When a website loads slowly and they found it through Google, users quickly link this to Google's ease of use (or lack thereof) and the quality of the search results. Therefore, a page that loads quickly has an edge over websites that load slowly. Moreover, a slow website makes for a poor user experience and visitors will quickly leave the website without success. This causes an increase in the bounce rate and thus affects the position.
***Indexation:*** Before a page becomes visible in Google's search results, it must first be included in their database. This process is called indexation. The duration of this can vary from days to months, depending on the size of the website, quality of the (new) content and any commands passed to crawlers.
***Errors:*** Technical errors (errors) also affect the search result order of a page: an error negatively affects its ranking. These are the most common errors:
A 404 page is displayed as soon as a page no longer exists. This can happen, for example, when a new website is delivered but the pages have not yet been redirected. It can also be due to a typo in a link on the page.
A 301 and a 302 message (also called a redirect) both indicate that a page has been moved to a different URL. The difference between the two is that a 302 indicates a temporary move and a 301 indicates a permanent move. With a 302, the original URL remains. With a 301, on the other hand, the original location is removed from the index and the new URL replaces it. The biggest benefit besides ease of use for the visitor is that a redirect redirects to the new page.
A 500-error is a server-side problem that needs to be addressed there.
A 200 code indicates that the page is present and the content on it may be indexed under that URL.
***Duplicate content:*** Duplicate content occurs when two or more pages have the same or nearly the same content. This creates internal competition that prevents a search engine from determining the correct ranking value.
***Security:*** A Web site is secured using HTTPS (HyperText Transfer Protocol Secure). This protects the integrity and confidentiality of users' data. Search engines value this protection, which makes these Web pages rank higher than Web pages without security.
XML sitemap. An XML sitemap (often called sitemap.xml) is an XML file created specifically for the search engines and also used primarily by the search engines. It is similar to a table of contents in a book. It allows search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing to index the content of a site more quickly.
National and international targeting. Google uses specific information to recognize differences between countries and language variants. This can be indicated either from a tag (Hreflang tag) in the source code or from the XML sitemap. The Hreflang tag is intended to let Google know, for Web pages in multiple languages, in which language the content is written and which region the content is targeted.
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