How does SEO work?

A page tells Google what it is about through its URL, title, headings and text. A page about bike repairs is making a claim to rank for bike-repair searches.

The document is the claim. Calling your own page the best answer doesn’t give it authority. That authority needs to come from outside your website.

Where authority comes from

Backlinks are links from other websites to yours. They provide third-party validation: another website is referring people to your page. Look for backlinks from pages that earn organic clicks from related searches.

Organic clicks are clicks on unpaid search results. They provide another form of validation: people search for a topic and choose your page. Pages that rank can earn clicks, building a search history that can help them compete for related queries.

Backlinks and organic clicks from relevant queries build authority around a topic. Writing more about that topic doesn’t create authority by itself.

Ranking position is the main driver of click-through rate, or CTR. Start with relevant queries where your current authority lets you rank in the top three or five. Those positions let you earn clicks and begin building click history before tackling harder related queries.

Authority is topical

A website can rank well for bike repairs and struggle to rank for bike insurance. Individual pages on that website can also have different amounts of authority.

Check which pages rank and which queries bring them organic clicks. A single score for the whole domain cannot tell you how strong each page is for each topic.

Internal links are links between pages on your own website. They pass existing authority to related pages. For example, a bike-repair guide that ranks and earns clicks can link to your bike-repair booking page.

The three parts of the model

• Query pipeline: Google processes the search, finds pages that could answer it, compares them and builds the results page.
• Authority flow: backlinks bring authority into your site. Internal links pass it between pages. Pages that rank can then earn organic clicks.
• Stored information: Google can use information it already has about a site’s links, topics and search history when comparing pages.

You can explore all 15 sections of the connected model on the overview page.

A page needs to be among the possible answers before it can compete for a top position. The diagram shows where finding a page, matching it to a query and ranking it fit together.

Apply it to one URL

1. Choose the search query you want the page to rank for, such as “bike repair London.”
2. Open Google Search Console’s URL Inspection tool and check whether Google has indexed the page. Make sure the page’s URL, title and main heading clearly describe that subject.
3. Use a backlink tool to find pages on other websites that link to it. Check whether those pages earn organic traffic for related queries.
4. Find links to the page from your own website. Look for related pages that earn organic clicks and could link directly to it.
5. In Search Console’s Performance report, filter by the page and query. Check impressions, clicks and average position. Impressions count how often your result appeared; clicks count clicks on those results.

Save the date and those numbers before making a change. Compare them again afterward using the same country, device and equal-length reporting periods. That helps you decide whether to fix an indexing problem, make the page’s subject clearer or build more authority.