← SEO FoundationsHow search works · Lesson 1 of 5
What Google is actually doing
Crawl, index, rank, and why each one matters for you.
Three jobs, in order
Before a page can rank, Google has to do three things in sequence. If any one breaks, nothing after it matters.
- Crawl it. A bot follows links and reads your pages. If it cannot reach a page, that page does not exist to Google.
- Index it. Google decides the page is worth storing and files it by what it is about. Thin or duplicate pages get skipped here.
- Rank it. For a given search, Google orders the indexed pages it thinks best answer the query.
Most "SEO problems" are really a failure at step 1 or 2. A page that is not crawlable or not indexable cannot rank no matter how good the content is.
Why this order matters
When we audit a site, we check these in the same order. There is no point tuning a title tag (a ranking lever) on a page Google cannot crawl. Fix the foundation first, then compete on quality.
The whole Vibe process is built around this: get the technical foundation clean so Google can crawl and index everything, then win the ranking fight page by page.