An Introduction to Search Engines
Many clients have come to us with grand ideas about how search engines work and that by doing a few simple and inexpensive registrations they will have the answer to all the problems they are having with people not finding their Web site. Most of these ideas are from bad or outdated information. Search engines change constantly; they are very complex data structures; they work from well contained algorithms; and no one person or agency can guarantee any specific and constant result (without paid advertising options).
On the other hand, many Web sites have done very well using search engines as a marketing tool. In order to do well on search engines, without wasting a lot of time or money, a site owner must take an informed and (usually) long-term approach.
Getting ahead a little, the best advice we can submit to a typical Web site owner after witnessing the full evolution of search engine technology is this: Instead of expending an enormous amount of time an energy trying to do this yourself (with usually poor results), money spent on a formally trained search engine specialist will place you far ahead of your competitors. But before we get into exactly how to do that, let's understand a little about the landscape.
What are search engines? Search engines are Web sites that help people find information on the Internet. Major search engines maintain enormous databases that contain all kinds of information on Web sites. When a person types in a "key word" (single word or phrase) on these search engines, the search engine will produce a list of Web pages that have something to do with the key word. For each Web page in the resultant list there is a brief title and usually a short description. Find the item in the list that interests you, click on it and it will send you to the page.
The power of search engines to a Web site owner becomes evident when we can get their Web page(s) to show high on the list for specific key word searches. For instance, if I sell coffee on my Web site, I would want to be listed as high as I can and as consistently as possible whenever someone does a search for 'coffee' on a specific search engine. Therein lies the value in hiring the right person to make that happen. It takes knowledge of your business and your customers, knowing what specific search engines will work best for you, how to program (and how not to program) each individual page on your site for a successful listing and how each search engine works (and are interrelated with other search engines).
Search engines rely on computer programs called "robots" or "spiders" to compile their databases. These programs "crawl" across the web by following links from site to site and indexing each site they visit into their database. Each search engine uses its own set of criteria to decide what information from each Web site to include in its database. For example, some search engines index each page in a web site, while others index only the home page. Even further, each will decide what information and how much of that information from each site to index. And to complicate things even further, if certain rules are broken on how the Web site is constructed (duplicate or auto-forwarding pages, heavy usage of keywords, etc), some information (or even the entire Web site) may be penalized by exclusion or partial exclusion from the index.
Also unique are the criteria each individual search engine uses to organize information for its users. It's always a combination of weighted factors. Among these are link popularity (links from other sites), meta tags content, keyword usage, relevant content (content related to the keywords), internal hyperlinks, code to content ratio, W3C standards, etc, etc. There are dozens of ways results are prioritized and organized, usually through a large combination of many factors. Also, most search engines use information from other search engine databases, and this data is usually weighted differently. Of course, search engines are free to change the way they do things without notice and as often as they like... and they do. And so you can see how keeping track of all these changes can become a full-time job for anyone, let alone the actual time it takes to optimize the web site for the best results.
A good web marketing plan will almost always include specific search engine considerations. But the first step is understanding the complexity of how search engines operate and what it takes to keep up with the constant changes. The task of positioning a Web site to do well on a specific search engine for specific search terms is best left in the hands of someone who has devoted their career to this discipline. Journey Internet has a professionally trained search engine specialist ready to answer your questions and to help get your web site optimized. Call today for a consultation - 719-638-9925.
So, you may ask - What are the things you can do for us? Here's a quick break out of our task list for web site optimization.