[Video] How Google Is Ranking Pages in 2026

great video. now this guy on twitter cant say you are AI anymore

TomBelfort said:

Yeah you're right, it really needs that. Also the start is BAD. The first minutes make it seem like I'm going to teach you something really retarded like LSI keywords.

The problem was I was nervous and struggling to get into flow, so I woffled a bit until I relaxed.

Thanks so much for the kind words. It's much appreciated.

I posted my first articles here in 2015, and I was suppose to start videos then, but I was too scared. 11 years of fear.

But I'm old now, so those fears naturally just go away, and I really wanted to have done some videos before I die.

Next time I'm going to try to structure it a bit better to make it more digestable/organised.

This video was also an accompaniment to the guide I wrote, which is on my linkedin. I'm going to write a dedicated one from scratch on this topic on bhw though.

I'll probably do the theory one first, then try to turn it into a process and make a 2nd one showing how to apply the process to any site.

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TBH, I didn't pay attention to the accent or nervousness. I saw that it was you who posted this video so knew it wasn't some guru BS. Normally, I don't watch videos people post here.
The topic was a bit heavy so using the timestamps I can easily re-watch different sections... now, I don't really need to watch the whole thing.

I'll come back and watch the whole thing
Congrats, you're a black hat youtuber now

congratz, it definitely has value on it, you will improve with more videos
and consider starting an onlyfans page, i see potential

thank you for sharing,

Nimra-Guest Blogger said:

Interesting topic, especially the idea that traditional keyword targeting is changing. I’ll check out the video and see how you approach building pages with AI.

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You can use AI to help you, but you first need to understand yourself so you can prompt it properly.

Congrats on this, Tom... I think this buttresses the post you made recently here on Keyword

Just subscribed to the channel and looking forward to seeing it grow and getting more insights from you.

Thank you : )

SirTop said:

Congrats on this, Tom... I think this buttresses the post you made recently here on Keyword

Just subscribed to the channel and looking forward to seeing it grow and getting more insights from you.

Thank you : )

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Thanks!

I'm not going to post a lot. I'm not doing this for money.. Just for fun. Just for the personal development, and because frankly I like to talk and share.

I'm likely not going to post TOO much about SEO because.. It's not THAT complex. You don't need 100 videos. Maybe another 10 max and you've got everything you need to dominate.

I'm going to start doing more AI/agent videos. Showing people how to run their business with AI. Manage their life. Do anything.

the example sounds like the most useful part did you track the page over time to see which changes actually improved rankings?

Oh so you are doing it for public speaking skills

not bad for your first video. you get more comfortable camera with time.btw you were younger because your profile pic makes you look way younger lol

nildonor said:

not bad for your first video. you get more comfortable camera with time.btw you were younger because your profile pic makes you look way younger lol

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I'm about 33 in the profile pic, and 44 now.

Hey Tom,
trying to reach out but not able to fill form, any other way to connect

@TomBelfort , another great point you made. It's impossible to talk about a Persian cat without actually saying "Persian cat".
It's not keyword stuffing or whatever. It's just natural.

praetserge said:

@TomBelfort , another great point you made. It's impossible to talk about a Persian cat without actually saying "Persian cat".
It's not keyword stuffing or whatever. It's just natural.

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Yep. The keyword in places is still needed, but the pertinent difference is, if you do

Persian cats lorem ipsum blah blah you won't rank.

In the past you did, because Google was only using keywords. It's all they *could* use.

Now, it understands the meaning, so it knows the difference between you just talking about persian cats, and you talking about it in a way that resolves what the user wants.

And one thing to say: You will still be able to rank for low comp keywords with slop. Google won't have meaning understanding for every query. Some are too thin, so they'll probably resort to keyword matching for more obscure keywords.

I think keywords still matter but they are not enough anymore search intent and how well the page answers the query seem much more important now

What a brilliant video.

I'm literally just saying this: I think I like the way you add to the position of your video. I think it looks so natural, just someone sitting and having a chat.

What comes to my mind first was you having to be on the video call, the way you post, and the way you try to elongate and explain some of your write-up. When you're talking I was literally just thinking, "Okay this sounds cool," and having the thought of you actually writing all those guides and posts over the years, it's really so nice.

I think it's so incredible to finally see you talking in real life. I guess this is also a push for myself. It's something I've been wanting to do for a long time. I guess it's just time to come out and be visible and do some personal branding, like you said, or say personal development.

I think those are really cool things to do

for a first video the effort is there but 40 minutes can feel long when the main points are spread out adding a short recap at the end with the key steps would make it easier to take something useful from the video

Watched the entire video. You did a great work mate.

Ednaldo said:

the example sounds like the most useful part did you track the page over time to see which changes actually improved rankings?

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Nope, that's not a good approach. Google is far too complex to try to zoom in to that level.

We don't know exactly how Google works, only that :

1: They use embeddings to identify "meaning"
2. They figure out the "meanings" that we need. A meaning can be solving a problem. The way embeddings work you're matching, maybe a better way to say it is "true understanding of text", which allows google to match what they think a user wants, and what's on the page.
3. They do this at the chunk level. They aren't doing it on a page level. The best pages, are simply the ones that have the most chunks that help the searcher. (Obviously there are many other ranking factors, but this is your core "get in the races" part. Without it, you don't even get into the race.

But it doesn't matter. Their job is harder than ours.

We don't need embeddings. We are writing, not matching.

We just need to work out what parts should be on the page and what those parts should actually resolve for the searcher instead of just "writing blindly" the way we would with keywords in the past.

And the goal with on-page SEO btw, is not to reach #1. You can, in some serps dominate with on-page, but not in all. .

The goal is to reach the top 20 for easy keywords. Top 30-40 for medium. And top 50-60 for hard. From there. You're in the race, and you win through time, site power, topical authority building up, links and once you hit the top 10, engagement and ctr signals.

Topiano said:

What a brilliant video.

I'm literally just saying this: I think I like the way you add to the position of your video. I think it looks so natural, just someone sitting and having a chat.

What comes to my mind first was you having to be on the video call, the way you post, and the way you try to elongate and explain some of your write-up. When you're talking I was literally just thinking, "Okay this sounds cool," and having the thought of you actually writing all those guides and posts over the years, it's really so nice.

I think it's so incredible to finally see you talking in real life. I guess this is also a push for myself. It's something I've been wanting to do for a long time. I guess it's just time to come out and be visible and do some personal branding, like you said, or say personal development.

I think those are really cool things to do

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Thank-you so much..

I think what changed for me, despite being older, is that my way of doing things is suddenly going to be in-demand.

In 2018 no one really wanted a 40 minute video that looks like a video call(This is great btw. I'm going to keep the camera on the laptop rather than trying to go more professional)

People wanted broadcast quality.

Now, with AI. People are skeptical of quality. It looks fake. They want a real person sharing real experiences.

I never wanted to be a video editor.

I want to just be able to have a thought, then go record a video, whether it's 5 mins, 10 mins or 1 hour, no editing and publish. I'm too busy for anything else.

What I do need to improve on is be a little more aware that I won't edit, so record with that in mind. Keeping it a little more to the point. Omitting the 30% consciously while I record, rather than in editing.

I think what else makes this stand out is because it's completely non-scripted. The only thing I knew going into it was "persian cats", so there was points where I was surprised in the video, and that probably creates a sense of adventure, not knowing what comes next, like you're on a journey with me uncovering things. It makes the watcher feel like they are there.

I'm not teaching you. I'm taking you on a story. On a side note btw, if you want to be an amazing story teller. Talk in the present.

"I was walking down the street, and I looked left. There was this big fat hairy man selling carrots. I was a little shocked. Suddenly, he said to me "DO YOU WANT SOME CARROTS, LAD"

with

"Let me tell you about something that happened to me last week. I'm walking down this big, dark, danky street. The lights are dim. I can hear the sound of water dripping in the distance. I walk a little further down the street, and suddenly, "DO YOU WANT SOME CARROTS, LAD!". I look left and this big hairy fat guy is standing there, with a big bag of carrots!"


With the 1st one, your mind would likely be blank. With the 2nd, you probably saw the street in your mind's eye.

buttler233 said:

The key takeaway is topical relevance and satisfying search intent, not traditional keyword targeting.

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That's way too condensed, and topical relevance no. Intent matching is within the topic, but not every topic is what the searcher wants resolved.

thomasbehe02154 said:

for a first video the effort is there but 40 minutes can feel long when the main points are spread out adding a short recap at the end with the key steps would make it easier to take something useful from the video

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It's not meant to be easy.

It's an incredibly difficult thing to do and I've been working on this since Nov 2025. You're just seeing me put it plainly after a year.

If you want to be able to do it, you have to spend some time. If you can't take 36 minutes to learn something that give you an edge over 99.99% of SEOs, then..

drehdinho said:

Watched the entire video. You did a great work mate.

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Thanks so much.