How Google’s Search Result Ranking Affects My Page Ranking

There is a common misconception among those starting out in the digital marketing industry that a blog post does not merit the same ranking on Google as a webpage does. However, this line of thought has just been shattered recently when Google’s webmaster trend analyst John Mueller revealed that Google does not distinguish between someone’s blog post and their web pages during his weekly SEO hangout.

So what does this mean? Well, there is a possibility of your post ranking higher than your main webpage on Google’s search results. The difference in ranking has more to do with your internal linking than the content. If you are wondering how this can impact your webpage’s ranking, allow me to break down Mueller’s statements and what you can do to improve your Google ranking.

How does Google treat the contents published on its platform?

During Mueller’s weekly SEO stream, a website owner asked him why the owner’s website does not get as much traffic as his service pages. I think that is an excellent question as many users have expressed similar sentiments to me before.

Two of the most common questions I get are:

1. Does Google rank my contents differently depending on how I label them?
2. Does the webpage I upload my content to affect my ranking?

Mueller’s response to the question provided numerous users with greater clarity on these two questions by definitively stating that Google prioritises internal linking compared to where the content is published. Therefore, the Google ranking of your blog posts and web pages has no relation to where said content was published.

Let us go into greater details about what he meant. Whether your content is determined to be a post or a page depends on how you set it up in the backend of your website’s content management system (CMS). However, Googlebot is not able to make that distinction. It can only identify the content as an HTML page and rank it based on how the internal links are structured on this specific page.

Therefore, if you have more internal links that direct your users to your website’s services page, Google will consider said page more important. In contrast, if there aren’t any links, Google cannot fully assess its relevance, which may explain why the ranking is low.

How you can act accordingly

Here’s the essential takeaway from Mueller’s explanation – if your webpage is not attracting as much attention as you would have liked, consider adding more internal links to direct users to your desired page. In addition, I would recommend you add more contextual links to the web pages you wish to highlight. You may consider adding these links in your higher ranking pieces of content or web pages where relevant.

However, if your website is new, you should consider building backlinks to your homepage through various brand mentions. This is because a small website may struggle to build its domain authority with only a handful of web pages. These high-quality backlinks can help to improve your website’s authority.

Conclusion

There is a steep learning curve before one can get to grips with the various SEO tools available. However, it can be gratifying when you succeed and watch your website grow alongside your business. This is why many entrepreneurs seek to capitalise on them, given the digital age that we are in.

If you are a business owner struggling with your website’s SEO ranking, don’t hesitate to reach out to our digital marketing agency! We can help you to promote your brand and improve your website SEO.