What really moves the needle in SEO?
Google has many ranking systems, and each system has its own purpose in the algorithm. However, even though there are many ranking systems, there are key systems that relate to one another forming the pillars of ranking.
Freshness Systems
These systems are used to leverage and prioritize novel content. Here is the confusion with this concept about “freshness”.
Freshness is NOT:
- A blog/page you just published.
- A blog/page with original ideas no one’s thought of.
The real meaning of fresh content is how your content is related to the present.
Let’s take hurricane season as an example.
If we look at the last 2 tropical storms from 2021 and 2024 we are dealing with hurricane Ida (2021) and hurricane Francine (2024). If you were to write content about preparing for Ida, you would have a higher chance of ranking up because Ida is related to a current event (a bad one at that…). Fast forward 2024 when you publish an identical article about preparation but for Francine, even though both are about preparing or a hurricane, specifying the name of the hurricane makes all the difference. Since Ida is long-gone, the article about Francine would rank up and Ida would fall into irrelevance.
Link analysis systems and PageRank
PageRank is Google’s official scoring system which inspired the creation of DA/DR scores used by many SEO tools. Because Google made PageRank private, SEO has become a guessing game when it comes to strategy. Even though Google does hold events and leaves behind clues on what we need to do.
So, how does PageRank work?
From what we can observe, PageRank and Link analysis systems map out how different pages link and relate to one another. This is how Google can determine which content is “helpful” (popular) and relevant.
Let’s take a post about sharpening knives as an example. If this post ranked up easily for low-hanging fruit, the few visitors that read it, liked it then linked to it. Over time, this repeated linking to your page help you win the “popularity contest”. But on the other side, if the page linking to your post is completely irrelevant to sharpening knives, this link isn’t going to help you much. In contrast, another page about knives linking to your post will absolutely help because they are topically/contextually related to one another.
RankBrain & Passage Ranking systems
RankBrain is similar to PageRank in the sense of how they analyze your page. While PageRank focuses on how pages link in your website, internal and external. RankBrain focuses on how pages contextually relate in your website – focusing on content.
Like our example of an article about sharpening knives, contextually if your entire post discusses different ideas and topics related to sharpening knives – it is understood this page is clearly about “sharpening knives”.
Passage ranking system works in a similar fashion but focusing on how your content relates to the search query. When you make a search on a search engine, often you notice that certain words are boldened in the link description(s).
Even though the words or phrases in bold are not the exact words your searched for, contextually, they still relate to your search query. This is one of the reasons Meta tags are not as important as they used to be – Google picks what it shows.
The pillars of ranking
Putting these 3 systems together, we can start to correlate what are the important factors in ranking.
| Fresh Content (with exceptions) | Relevant Internal/External Links | Relevant Content |
| How your content relates to current events (Except evergreen content). | How your page/domain relates to other pages/domains. | How your content relates to other content and search. |
| Builds short-term relevancy | Builds long-term domain authority | Builds long-term topical authority |