The algorithm in SEO means complex software used by search engines to estimate a website’s significance to a search result. There are hundreds of websites on the same topic. Some of them deliver the best user experience and well-researched content. The others have nothing but plagiarism and spam. The algorithm determines which of these categories websites belong to and pushes the most high-quality pages towards the top of search results.
All search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo, Yandex, etc.) use algorithms. However, they utilize different ones, meaning that for some search engines keywords are more important, others look at traffic more, etc. At the same time, no one knows exactly how these algorithms work because it is a top-secret of each search engine. All that we know about ranking algorithms either comes from analytics and experiments or bits and pieces of information dropped by search engines companies.
Usually, algorithms take into account the following:
- keywords
- title
- description
- URL
- website loading speed
- responsiveness
- linking to internal pages
- linking from other websites
- social media mentions
- alt tags
It is just a small known part and we do not know exactly what is a priority to the engines. However, as all search engines companies say, create the best user experience and amazing content and you will rank high.