📌 How Google Ranks a Website
Explore Top Digital Marketing Certifications on Aprove4u to master Google SEO, indexing, and ranking for career and online growth.
Basically, Google follows three basic steps to rank a website:
- Crawling – Google bots crawl your website.
- Indexing – They store your pages on their servers.
- Ranking – Your pages appear in search results when users enter relevant keywords.
✅ Learn more: SEO Tutorial for Beginners
🔍 What is Crawling?
Crawling is simply a process done by which Google has bots, and what these bots do is they go to your web server and crawl every page they can find.
How do they find these pages?
- They follow links
- This is also known as “spidering”
So basically, Google is building a web of all the links they follow. When they crawl these pages, they take that content and store it on their servers so it’s available in their index.
🧠 Why Indexing Matters
Based on this method, Google finds out:
- Which websites have relevant content
- Which ones don’t
Because if they can’t crawl your website, you won’t be indexed — and if you’re not indexed, your website won’t show up for relevant keywords.
📌 Related: SEO for Beginners
🧪 Example: Simply Learn
Let’s go to Google Search. If we type in the keyword Simply Learn, you’ll see about 1,10,000 results.
Simply Learn is ranking organically #1, and there are over 1 million pages related to this keyword.
🔗 External Resource: How Google Search Works (Google Official)
🆚 Organic vs Paid Search
Don’t confuse organic search with paid search.
- Paid search shows a label like “Ad”
- Organic results show naturally below paid ads
So, Simply Learn ranks #1 organically because Google is able to crawl and index their pages efficiently.
✅ Importance of SEO
If your webpage is not available for indexing, you’ll never show up for that keyword.
That’s why it’s important to make sure your website is available for crawling and indexing.
When users type a query, Google shows the most relevant pages from its index.
📘 Related: SEO Ranking Strategies for 2025
🔍 Why Simply Learn Ranks #1
There’s a lot of relevancy for Simply Learn:
- It’s the brand name
- Pages load fast
- Good user experience
- Users stay on the site (low bounce rate)
Other ranking factors include:
- Page load time
- Session duration
- Bounce rate
- Language & location
🌍 Location-Based Search Results
Google’s index is continuously updating, but not synced in real time.
So, search results differ:
- In India vs USA
- Due to local indexing and different bot activities
Example: If you search café in San Francisco vs café in Mumbai, the results will be different due to local SEO and separate Google indexes.
🔎 Explore more useful tools:
🌐 Also read: Digital Marketing in 2025 Guide
📈 Summary Table: SEO Concepts Explained
| Concept | Description |
|---|---|
| Crawling | Google bots visit and scan your site |
| Indexing | Your pages are stored on Google’s servers |
| Ranking | Your indexed pages are shown based on keyword relevancy |
| Relevancy | Based on content, user experience, brand keywords |
| Page Load Time | Faster pages rank better |
| Bounce Rate | Low bounce rate indicates better user engagement |
| Local SEO | Location affects search result |
