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Improve your Google ranking: how to get found on Google

SERP TOWN Editorial · · 12 min read

Illustration: in a colorful cartoon town, a staircase of houses rises upwards; on the top step stands a small shop with a glowing shop window, and a large magnifying glass floats above it.

Improving your Google ranking means two things: Google has to be able to find and store your pages, and your pages have to be among the most relevant and highest quality results for the search. According to Google, no one can guarantee you first place. You can't buy a better position either: Google says it doesn't accept payment to visit a website more often or to rank it higher. But Google itself describes quite precisely what you can do if you want to get found on Google.

Here you will learn how Google Search works, which steps Google recommends, what breaks Google's rules, how long changes take and how to check your progress. Everything about Google is based on Google's documentation for website owners (Google Search Central and the Search Console Help). Where we recommend something that Google doesn't say in that way, we tell you so.

How Google finds, stores and ranks pages

In its "In-depth guide to how Google Search works", Google describes three stages. Not every page makes it through all three.

1. Finding and fetching (crawling): Google constantly looks for new pages, for example through links from pages it already knows, or through a submitted list of your pages, the sitemap. A program called Googlebot fetches the pages and renders them the way a recent version of the Chrome browser would. According to Google, typical obstacles are server problems, network errors and rules in the robots.txt file that lock Googlebot out.

2. Understanding and storing (indexing): Google analyzes text, page titles, image descriptions (alt text), images and videos to understand what a page is about. From several very similar pages, Google picks one as the main version. According to Google, common problems are low-quality content, instructions in the code that forbid indexing, and a website structure that is hard for Google to read.

3. Showing results (ranking): When someone searches for something, Google searches its index and shows the results it considers the highest quality and most relevant. According to Google, how relevant a page is depends on hundreds of factors, including the searcher's location, language and device. Google's example: someone who searches for "bicycle repair shops" gets different results in Paris than in Hong Kong.

According to the same guide, Google doesn't guarantee that it will fetch, store or show a page, even if the page follows all the rules.

First check: can you be found on Google?

Before you change anything, check whether Google already knows your website. Google recommends this in its SEO Starter Guide. To do it, type site: and your domain into Google Search, for example site:yourcompany.com. If results from your website appear, it is in the index.

According to Google, you usually don't need to do anything except publish your website, because Google finds the vast majority of pages on its own. Submitting a sitemap isn't required either, Google says. What matters more at first is that people know about your website.

If your website doesn't show up, check whether something technical is in the way. The URL Inspection tool in Google Search Console shows you how Google sees an individual page.

Improve your Google ranking: the steps from Google's own guidance

In Google Search Essentials, Google sums up what a page needs to appear and perform well in Search. If you run a small local business, you can probably do much of this yourself, Google writes in its article "Do you need an SEO?". The six steps below are based on Google; the section after them is our addition.

1. Set up Google Search Console

According to Google's Search Console Help, Search Console is a free service. You don't have to sign up for it to appear in Search. But the tool helps you understand how Google sees your website. In its guide "Get started with Search Console", Google names these steps:

According to Google, you don't need to look every day; if new issues come up, you get an email. Google advises checking around once a month, and also whenever you change your content.

2. Write for people, not for the search engine

According to Google's page "Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content", Google's automated ranking systems are designed to prioritize helpful, reliable content that is created for people, and not content that is only meant to influence rankings. Google gives you questions there to check your own content, for example:

According to Google, warning signs include content that is mainly meant to attract visitors from search engines, or texts that only summarize what others have already written. Of all the aspects Google refers to as E-E-A-T (experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness), Google says trust is the most important.

Our recommendation (Google does not say this): write about what you are really good at, and show it with examples from your business, photos of your work and honest answers to the questions customers keep asking you.

3. Use your customers' words

Search Essentials recommends using the words people would use to look for your content, and placing them in prominent locations: in the title and main heading of a page, in alt text and in link text. You don't have to guess every variation, though: according to the Starter Guide, Google's systems can understand what a page relates to even if the exact search terms don't appear on it.

4. Give every page a good title and its own description

According to Google's page on title links, the title of your search result is often the primary piece of information people use to decide which result to click. Google creates it automatically from several sources, but you can influence it:

Google calls the short text below the title the "snippet". According to Google's page on snippets, it is mainly created from the content of the page itself, sometimes from the meta description if that describes the page better. Google recommends a separate description for every page, at the very least for the home page and the most visited pages.

5. Make sure you have good links, inside and out

According to its link best practices, Google uses links to judge how relevant a page is and to find new pages. Two things matter here:

According to the Starter Guide, links from other websites happen naturally over time. You can help by making your website known: through social media, in communities, with advertising and by word of mouth. Google also advises putting your website's address on your business cards and letterhead.

6. Pay attention to a good page experience

According to the page "Understanding page experience in Google Search results", Google's core ranking systems look to reward content that provides a good page experience. Google asks questions such as: do your pages have good Core Web Vitals? According to Google, these are measurements from real-world use for loading, responsiveness to input and a stable page layout. Are your pages served securely? Do they work well on mobile phones? Do they avoid distracting ads and intrusive pop-ups?

According to Google, though, good scores don't guarantee a top position. Google uses the Core Web Vitals for ranking; other parts of page experience, Google says, don't directly help, but they make the page more pleasant to use. And Google always tries to show the most relevant content, even if its page experience isn't ideal.

Our addition: customers near you

In our view, for businesses with local customers, the Google Business Profile also counts, that is, your listing in Google Maps and in local search. How to create and maintain it is explained in our guide how to create and optimize your Google Business Profile. What matters for businesses with a fixed address is covered in the district SEO & GEO for Local Business; for businesses that travel to their customers, see the district SEO & GEO for Service Area Business.

What doesn't help and what breaks Google's rules

In the Starter Guide, Google clears up some common misconceptions:

On the page about helpful content, Google adds: adding or removing large amounts of content just to seem "fresh" doesn't help. And according to "Do you need an SEO?", advertising with Google has no effect on your position in the regular search results.

What is forbidden: Google's spam policies list methods people use to try to deceive Search. According to Google, sites that violate them may rank lower or not appear at all. These include, among others:

Be careful with outside offers too: in "Do you need an SEO?", Google advises being skeptical of providers who guarantee rankings, claim a "special relationship" with Google or send unsolicited emails. If you have someone review your website, according to Google you should only give them read access in Search Console. And according to Google, other providers' tools don't have access to Google's internal ranking data.

How long it takes before anything happens

According to the Starter Guide, every change takes time before Google takes it into account. Some take effect after a few hours, others only after several months. Google advises that you usually wait a few weeks before you judge whether your work has paid off. Not every change has a visible effect. If you are not satisfied, try further changes.

For individual new or changed pages, according to Google's help on the URL Inspection tool, you can request in Search Console that Google indexes them again. Google gives two figures there: indexing can take up to a week or two, but typically only about a day, and sometimes much longer. A request doesn't guarantee that the page will get into the index.

Checking progress: what Search Console shows

Many people search for a "ranking check" to see what position they are in. Google itself shows you data on this in the Performance report for Search results in Search Console. According to Google, it shows you:

According to Google's help on the performance reports, you can see there which search queries your website appeared for, which pages perform best and how time periods compare, for example this week against last week. If the click-through rate is low for an important search query, Google advises searching for it yourself and looking at what comes up instead.

A note on tools: Google's spam policies forbid automated queries to Google without express permission, including scraping results to check rankings.

Our recommendation (Google does not say this): don't just look at the position. What matters more is whether more people come to your website with the right search queries and whether that turns into inquiries. Write down what you changed and when, so that you can later link the changes you see in Search Console to what you did.

How you can also show up in AI answers such as ChatGPT or Google's AI Overviews is explained in our guide GEO: How your business shows up in ChatGPT, Gemini and co.. You will find more guides in the SERP TOWN Library.

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