Search Engine Optimisation

Search Engine Optimisation - what are Search Engines?

Search engines allow people to search on-line for information, products or services. The person using a search engine will type into its search box a few words or phrases (known as keywords) relevant to what they are searching for, then click the search button and wait for the results. The search engine will return results pages which are lists of links to websites that are listed in order of their relevance to the keywords used. These results pages are also known as SERPS (search engine results pages) and contain a mixture of natural organic listings and paid-for advertising. For more information regarding paid-for internet advertising see Minting Design’s On-line Marketing guide.

Why do we need Search Engines?

Pingdom.com, a leading website monitoring company, states in their article entitled ‘Internet 2009 in Numbers’ that there were 234 million websites on the internet as of December 2009 - and that by September 2009 there were 1.73 billion internet users worldwide - so no doubt by the time you read this there will be many many more! Search engines are the only way for anyone to find what they are looking for on the web. Get your website on the front page of a search engine with your chosen keywords and you will get instant traffic! However, with everyone trying to get the top spot, the competition is extremely fierce. Search engines want to make sure that when their users type in a search phrase - the results that they return are the most relevant.

Who are the Search Engine Companies?

There are many search engine companies worldwide but the major players are:

  • Yahoo
  • Bing (formerly Microsoft’s MSN Search)
  • Ask (formerly Ask Jeeves)
  • Google

Google, undoubtedly, is still the king of the search engine world with a 89% share of the UK market as at December 2009 (source: Hitwise).

How do Search Engines find the information?

Search engines send out spiders to scan through websites. Spiders are sophisticated software programmes which gather information about websites. The spiders will examine a website’s content including the text, images, links to and from it and the quality of its code. The information gathered is then stored in the search engine’s HQ ready for use when a search request is made. It is extremely important to be able to provide these spiders with food – the right information! Spiders are also known as robots and crawlers. They are all constantly crawling around the internet building up an index of all the websites in the world for the search engine companies.

How do Search Engines decide which pages they provide links to?

There are a number of ways that search engines decide this. Different search engines use different methods. All search engines strive to provide their users with the best possible web experience when deciding which websites will list highly in the results pages, so relevance to the keywords being searched for is essential. Google also uses PageRank together with many other ways, some of which are secret, and form part of a software algorithm.

Keyword Relevance

A search engine will decide the order of appearance in the results pages based on the relevance of the keywords used in a search request.

PageRank

PageRank is a Google link analysis tool named after Larry Page, an American computer scientist best known as a co-founder of Google. Google assigns a numeric weighting from 0 - 10 for each webpage on the internet - this PageRank denotes a site’s importance in the eyes of Google. The PageRank (as of 2010) for bbc.co.uk is 9 and for Google.co.uk is 8!

To get a front page listing on Google's results pages your website will need to have a combination of a good PageRank and relevant keywords.

What is Search Engine Optimisation?

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is a useful on-line marketing technique which allows your website to gain higher listings in the natural organic search engine results pages, so increasing the visibility of your website on the internet. The aim of SEO is to improve the ability of search engines to read and index your website so that the listing position of your website will be increased within the search engine results pages.

How does Search Engine Optimisation work?

Search Engine Optimisation is the process of improving a website’s chances of being listed higher in the results pages. Therefore, by knowing what the search engines look for in a website, it is possible to give your website the best possible chance of achieving a higher position in the listings.

Finally

Being ranked among the top 10 listings in every major search engines changes on a day-to-day basis due to the huge competition so maintaining a top natural SEO listing requires constant keyword monitoring and content updating. SEO never stops!

NB: this simplistic overview of search engine behaviour is designed to provide a basic understanding of how search engines function without technical jargon.

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