Search engines have quickly become one of humanity’s greatest tools. Practically synonymous with the internet, they provide a service that allows you to trawl through the billions of websites and web pages available to help you find exactly what you are looking for. The first search engine, W3Catalog, was released in 1993. It is safe to say they have come a long way since then, with the search engines of today being nearly indistinguishable from their earlier, primitive ancestors.
Websites and Webpages that appear at the top of search engine results have a much better chance of attracting attention and gaining clicks than those appearing lower down. The search result that appears at the top will get approximately 30% of clicks, whilst the search results at the bottom of the first page receive approximately 5-10% of clicks. It is clear that if a company wants to maximize the number of online visitors they have they need to appear at the top of the rankings.
What is Search Engine Optimization?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the science of optimizing how a website or web page appears on a search engine. It's all about having the best possible positioning in relation to your competition. The best-positioned sites in the SERP (search engine results page) are the most visible to Internet users and potential visitors.
SEO includes the techniques and creative tools utilized to improve rankings, generate traffic, and increase a web page’s visibility in search engines. Whether in the choice of keywords, the quality of the content, or the hyperlinks on the page, the goal is to structure it to make it understandable and "appealing" to the search engine.
All businesses, from Fortune 500 companies to sole traders, can benefit greatly from SEO. The digital marketplace is increasingly becoming the main source of customer engagement and sales for many businesses, something highlighted and exasperated during Covid 19 Pandemic. If you think your business could benefit from SEO, find an SEO company near you and discover how they can add value to your online presence.
Why a site needs SEO
The majority of Internet traffic is generated by search engines, the main ones being Google, Bing, and Yahoo!. While a site may have visitors and generate sales through social media, or other means, search engines remain the primary method for visiting a website for the majority of Internet users. If a search engine cannot find a site, it is missing out on golden opportunities to generate traffic. Investing in SEO can have tremendous payoffs compared to other marketing or promotion campaigns.
How search engines work
Search engines have two main functions:
- Indexing sites and building a directory
- Providing search results
Indexing sites and building a directory:
Search engines use website links or URLs to browse the web. The links are then indexed by "crawlers" or "spiders". Web crawlers analyze the code of these sites and list them in a database that can be accessed later. These databases need a physical location, so data centers have been created across the world to store and process this gigantic amount of data.
Providing search results:
Search engines strive to deliver the most relevant results, which they rank based mostly on popularity. The relevance of search results has greatly improved over the years, providing great benefit to both the consumer and businesses. SEO aims to optimize the relevance and popularity of a site so that it can be better referenced on search engines. The relevance and popularity of a site depend on a lot of ranking factors that are determined by the search engine algorithms.
How internet users interact with search engines
The three types of requests that people usually make are:
- I want to do something
- I want to know something
- I want to go somewhere specific on the Internet (eg: Facebook)
When a user enters a search engine query and lands on your site, the question you need to ask yourself is "Are people going to be happy with what they find there?" ". This question is also posed by search engines because their primary function is to ensure that they offer the most relevant results to users. So, you really have to make sure that your website satisfies your target audience when they visit it.
Studies show that being well ranked (i.e. appearing in the first results offered) generates trust and credibility among users, hence the need to have a real SEO strategy on your page.
How to optimize search engine results
The algorithms used by search engines are incredibly complex, and it is near impossible to crack the code completely. However, there are guidelines on how to optimize a site's search engine results on the net. In fact, here are the recommendations from Google and Bing:
- Make pages rich in content and useful for Internet users and not for search engines
- Do not conceal the content: that is, a site must reflect in terms of content what has been indexed by the search engine
- You need a well-organized site and use links in the form of text
- Good use of keywords to create URLs that speak to users
- Use 301 redirects to avoid duplicate content
- Be careful that "rich media" such as Flash Player and JavaScript do not obscure links from crawlers. To do this, you must manually check the "rich media" to verify that no important links are hidden, for example, key information about a company that appears only in an image on the site.
Why Search Engine Optimization is necessary
As impressive and complex as they are, search engines aren't sophisticated enough to perceive human-like things, such as pictures. Indeed, a photo can express a lot of emotions, for example, which cannot be properly perceived by the indexing algorithm.
To be able to optimize the referencing of a site on search engines, it is also necessary to take into account its limitations. For example :
- Search engines sometimes have difficulty with duplicate content
- Websites can prevent search engines from finding them due to poor designer guidelines
- Poor link structure on a site can lead to poor SEO
- Search engines cannot yet index the content of "rich media" (images, videos, audios, etc.)
- Understand the subtleties of differences of languages or dialects
- Ambiguous signals about the title, metadata, and actual content of the site
Search engines cannot accurately judge the quality of content. In other words, you can't make the "ideal" website and expect it to rank well without promoting its content. Google takes into consideration how users interact with the site, such as time spent browsing, links clicked, and sharing content. These are factors that can be influenced by how a website displays information and the quality of the information that it displays.
CONCLUSION
So, hopefully after reading this article you should now have a better understanding of the fundamentals of Search Engine Optimisation and the important role it can play in helping you maintain and grow your businesses online presence.
We do not know what the future of web research will be, but it is constantly evolving. It is for this reason that SEO marketing will continue to be a priority for those who want to stay competitive. The ultimate goal of any search engine optimization tool or strategy is to get your site more exposure and traffic. Always bear in mind this basic principle when considering SEO.