Google SEO

What search engine optimisation is in general and which building blocks it consists of is explained in the entry on the SEO definition. This entry looks at Google itself: which rules does Google publish, how does the search engine assess pages, and what does that mean for an online store? Bing and other search engines work according to similar principles; whoever optimises for Google is usually well positioned there too.

What Google itself specifies

The binding foundation is Google Search Essentials. It consists of three parts: the technical requirements a page must meet to appear in Search at all, the spam policies describing what leads to demotion or exclusion, and the key best practices for good content and a good user experience.

Google also publishes the guidelines for its quality raters. Thousands of people use them to evaluate search results according to criteria such as expertise and trustworthiness. Their ratings do not feed directly into the ranking of individual pages; Google uses them to test and improve its own systems. The guidelines therefore show very precisely where Google wants to go. At their core is the concept of E-E-A-T: experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trust.

What Google doesn’t reveal is the weighting. Nobody outside Google knows how much a link is worth compared with a faster loading time. SEO professionals derive this from observations, tests and statements by Google. Anyone who claims to know the exact formula doesn’t.

How Google assesses pages

Google doesn’t speak of a single algorithm, but of many ranking systems that work together. Google has described some of them publicly. In simple terms:

• Language understanding: Systems such as BERT and MUM understand the meaning of a search query and of a text, not just individual words. That is why a page also ranks for terms it never mentions literally.

• Helpful content: Google prefers content written for people that fully answers a question. Content produced mainly for search engines loses out. Since 2024, this has been part of the core ranking.

• Reviews and product tests: A separate system rewards product reviews with real experience, original photos and reasoned comparisons.

• Passages: Google can recognise and rank a single section of a long page as an answer.

• Freshness: For topics where a lot changes, Google prefers current content.

• Spam detection: SpamBrain detects manipulative links, mass-produced pages and other tricks largely automatically.

• Page experience: Loading time, mobile display and security play a role, especially when several pages are equally good in terms of content. This can be measured with Google PageSpeed Insights.

Above all these systems are the core updates. Several times a year, Google fundamentally adjusts the weighting. Afterwards, rankings often shift significantly without anything having changed on your own website.

From keywords to answers

A few years ago, Google SEO was highly technical and keyword-driven. Whoever placed a term often enough in meta tags, links and copy ranked. That no longer works. Today Google recognises topics and entities instead of individual words and evaluates above all whether a page really answers the question behind a search.

AI Overviews and AI Mode add another layer. Google summarises answers itself and names the sources. For merchants, this means visibility no longer comes only from a position in the results list, but also from being named in an answer. How the results page is structured today is shown in the entry on SERPs; how to get named in AI answers, in the one on Generative Engine Optimization.

When visitors drop after a core update

For a store, this is a moment of shock: after an update, organic revenue collapses and nobody has changed anything. Panic is the worst adviser here. A core update usually rolls out over one to two weeks, and only then is an assessment worthwhile.

Then comes the analysis: which pages and search queries have lost out, and who is now ahead? Often a pattern emerges. Google reassesses the intent behind a search and shows guides instead of category pages, for example, or competitors simply answer customers’ questions better. Quick technical tricks rarely help here. What helps is making the affected pages genuinely better in terms of content. Google itself points out that improvements often only show fully with a later core update.

Google SEO in an online store

For stores, Google has its own surfaces and requirements. Product pages with structured data for price, availability, shipping and reviews can appear in search results with this information. Via Google Merchant Center, products also make it into free product listings and the Shopping tab, independently of Google Ads. Incidentally, paid ads do not improve organic rankings; Google keeps the two strictly separate.

In most stores, category pages offer the biggest lever. They serve the search queries with buying intent and therefore need more than a product grid: a helpful introduction, useful filters and answers to typical questions. For Google to find all this, Googlebot must be able to crawl the store efficiently without getting lost in filter and sorting variants. How this is implemented in the two most important store systems is shown on Shopware SEO and Shopify SEO.

Five misconceptions about Google

• “If you book Google Ads, you also rank better organically.” No. Ads and organic results are completely separate at Google.

• “Longer texts rank better.” Google assesses whether a question is answered, not the word count. A short text that fits exactly beats a long one that writes around the answer.

• “Google penalises AI texts.” Google assesses the quality of content, not how it was created. What violates the guidelines is mass-producing content without added value, with or without AI.

• “The meta keywords field is important.” Google has ignored it completely for many years.

• “Optimise once, stay at the top for good.” Competitors optimise too, customers change their search behaviour and Google changes its systems. Rankings have to be defended.

How to tell whether Google SEO is being done professionally is described in the entry on professional search engine optimisation. What Google SEO looks like in practice for Shopware and Shopify stores is shown on SEO for online stores.