The Shopify SEO Handbook | Part 1: Understanding SEO
A comprehensive guide to Shopify SEO, with easy to follow instructions written by experienced industry professionals
Understanding Google's Search Algorithm
The key to understanding SEO is to first understand Google's search engine algorithm, and the best way to understand the algorithm is to read the instruction manual.
That's right, Google has an instruction manual called Google Search Central that contains mountains of resources, lessons, FAQs, and even a full beginner's course called the SEO Starter Guide.
Google's documentation gives us insights into how Search Engines work, and what site owners and SEOs should (and shouldn't) do to improve our search presence.
How does Google's Search Engine work?
Google Search is, at its heart, a referral website. Google's customers (aka users) expect high-quality, relevant results for every query. Google's reputation is directly tied to delivering the best possible search results for over a trillion search queries, and the number just keeps climbing.
In another must-read Google property, entitled How Search Works, Google explains to us exactly how they rank websites for quality:
To give you the most useful information, Search algorithms look at many factors and signals, including the words of your query, relevance and usability of pages, expertise of sources, and your location and settings. The weight applied to each factor varies depending on the nature of your query. For example, the freshness of the content plays a bigger role in answering queries about current news topics than it does about dictionary definitions.