How Google decides the order

Google decides the order of search results with an algorithm that weighs hundreds of signals against each other, from the relevance of your text to the authority of your domain and the experience a visitor has on your page.

That weighing happens again with every search. Google looks at what is being asked, pulls up the pages that come closest in substance and ranks those on quality and trust. A page at number three today can sit at number seven tomorrow because a competitor published something better. That makes SEO an ongoing process without a fixed end date.

What decides relevance

• Keywords in context. Google weighs whether the whole text fits what someone is looking for, so a page that repeats one word ten times loses to one that covers the subject more broadly.
• Search intent. A page that answers the question behind the search does better than a page that merely contains the words. More on that in recognising and using search intent.
• Freshness. For subjects that change, such as prices or regulations, how recently a page was updated counts. An old page that nobody has touched loses ground to a competitor who stays current.

What decides trust

• Authority of the domain. Links and mentions from other trustworthy sites count, as does the reputation a brand has built outside its own site. A new domain often starts at a disadvantage that closes only over time.
• Experience on the page. Loading time, mobile display and usability all count, so a slow page loses points however good the text is.
• E-E-A-T. Google looks for real experience and expertise behind a text, through a recognisable author or mentions elsewhere on the web. Building that is covered in building E-E-A-T on your site.

These are not separate boxes you tick off one at a time. A page with strong text but a slow server loses as much ground as a fast page with nothing to say, since Google weighs both at once.

Want to know where your site stands? Take the free AI-zichtbaarheidscheck.