What SEO Means

Every time a query is entered into a search engine a list of results appear that correspond to that specific search term. The top of these result pages consist of what the search engines deemed most relevant to the search term submitted. Most of the time the top ranking websites in these results are actively administering SEO techniques required to achieve such results. This is especially true in cases where a website is attempting to rank well for highly competitive keywords and phrases.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a widely used technique that assists search engines with understanding a websites purpose and functionality. When SEO is executed properly, the search engines will view the website as being relevant to the specific services and information being searched and in return will rank that website higher in the search results. Due to the millions of sites that the search engines provide for any given search term, it is strongly advised that SEO be fully implemented throughout a website.

How SEO Works

Search engine optimization is a process which utilizes numerous techniques that work in conjunction with one another in order to entice the search engines into finding value in your website. Part of SEO consists of ensuring that your site runs smoothly and efficiently while fully engaging your targeted audience at the same time. This part of the process allows the search engines to efficiently navigate your site.

The next step in the SEO process is to verify that your site contains relevant material, thus drawing intended viewers from the search engines to your site. To do this it is important to strategically place relevant keywords and phrases throughout certain aspects of the site. The most important of these aspects include the pages title and description and above all, the content. This allows the search engines to deduce what your site pertains to and produce quality visitors.

Another main SEO factor the search engines take into account is how much authority a website has. This is comprised of how old a website is and how many other websites refer to said website. Because of this, patience is imperative.

There are many other SEO factors the search engines take in to account, and considering the fact that search engine optimization encompasses each and every detail of all the pages on a site, it’s important to ensure all SEO factors are in place and working in conjunction with one another.

How Search Engines Work

Search engines are text-driven, meaning that they cannot see the design of your site or any of the graphic features, they only have your textual content to go off of. Therefore, it is absolutely necessary to have relevant, concise information throughout your site. To understand a site the search engines perform a variety of tasks crawling, indexing, processing, determining relevancy, and retrieving. This entire process is done in order to provide the best search results possible.

Initially, a search engine will use a crawler to view the layout and content of a site. The crawler utilizes the links throughout the site to navigate the information. Considering the crawlers inability to view graphic material, it is not advised that your site solely consists of images, Flash, and frames. The crawler is also unable to view password-protected and restricted pages, therefore these pages will not be indexed into the search engines.

Indexing occurs after a page has been crawled. This process identifies the words that appropriately describe each page, thus allowing them to be assigned with relevant keywords. Once relevancy is determined, the pages are stored in a database for later retrieval during a search query.

Once a search query is entered, it is processed by the search engine. The search engines process requests by comparing the keywords being searched to the pages it has indexed for those specific keywords. Considering the amount of pages a search engine will have stored in its database for a certain keyword, it is important to ensure the content of a site reflects what is being searched. This is done so that the search engines determine how relevant your site is compared to other sites.

In order to determine relevancy, search engines create their own algorithms that place varied importance on several aspects of a site such as meta tags, URLs, content, and keyword density. Because search engines have their own algorithms, the search results each one returns usually vary widely. The search engines also consistently change their algorithms in order to ensure they return the best results possible to the end user.

The search engines final step is retrieving the results, and displaying them to the individual performing the query.

It is important to take into consideration that a crawler cannot possibly visit a site each and every time it is updated due to the exorbitant amount of websites out there, therefore you will most likely only be visited every month or two depending on how often your site is updated and how highly ranked it is.