Search Engine Optimization Fundamentals
Search Engine Optimization at its root is the process of increasing exposure to a website by enhancing the sites relevance and importance in the eyes of search engines. In order to gain this exposure or reach more customers the process of SEO sets out to make a website more rank worthy. The higher that a website is ranked on a search engine the more likely people are to access it.
A search engine has four main purposes that
include Crawling, Indexing, Ranking, and Providing Results. The World Wide Web is a massive network where everything is connected through linking. A search engine navigates or crawls through the network locating web pages, images, or video files using mechanized devices called crawlers or spiders. These devices are launched, scouring the Internet, reading pieces of code from websites. The pieces of information copied by a crawler allow the searched location to be indexed or saved on one of their massive databases. Search Engine companies have data centers that hold the databases located all around the world in order to quickly recall the information upon request of the user.
In those first two tasks the search engine sought out and returned only the relevant pages. After searching and indexing, the next duty of the search engine is to calculate the indexed webpage’s relevance and determine its ranking. From here it assigns an importance which usually comes from the quantity and quality of the information as well as the webpage’s popularity. In addition there are many other ranking factors and various search engines value each factor differently. Once a rank is designated the page is then ready to be displayed for a user to access. Although all that is visible to us when performing a search are our search terms going in and the search results coming out, while behind-the-scenes there is a tremendous amount of action and effort going on to provide us with the information that we request.
According to Google these are some tips to get a better webpage ranking with them.
- Good webpage Content!
- Design the pages for users and not for the search engines.
- Don’t use cloaking (presenting different information to the search engine than the information you show to your users.)
- Use interior text links, and present a clear website hierarchy.
- Use as much helpful and relevant information as possible.
- Make sure that the “Title” and “ALT” attributes are accurately detailed.
- Have fewer than 100 links on a webpage.
Now that we have discussed the fundamentals of a search engine, check out the links below to discover how they determine which pages rank higher than the others!
Thanks for reading! For more SEO topics check out our other blog entries!
Dustin
See more SEO tips for business.
Tags: engine, rank, ranking, ranking factor, seach engine, search
