Core Ranking Signals: Relevance, Authority, Experience

Why this matters

Google's ranking algorithm weighs hundreds of signals, but they collapse into three families — relevance (does the page match the query?), authority (is the site trusted?), and experience (does the page serve the user well?) — and knowing which family is weakest for a given query tells you where to invest. Teams that optimize only relevance wonder why high-quality competitors outrank them.

Try it yourself

1. Pick a query where you rank on page 2 and compare your page side-by-side to the top three results — for each result, score relevance (topic match), authority (domain strength via Moz or Ahrefs free), and experience (page speed, mobile usability) to identify where you lose.
2. Run your target page through PageSpeed Insights and record your LCP and CLS scores — these are the experience signals Google measures via Core Web Vitals.
3. Check your site's Domain Rating or Domain Authority in a free backlink checker and compare it to the DR/DA of the top-ranking page for your primary keyword — quantify the authority gap.

References

• Google Search Central — How Search Algorithms Work