One of the big questions people like to ask about search engines like Google or Bing are how exactly they figure out how to rank your site. To explain better, it's best to start from the beginning:
A brief explanation of how search engines work: The internet is so great because there are literally thousands (if not millions) of pages about any topic you could ever imagine. Unfortunately, this same fact can be a bad thing, because the internet is over-saturated with information irrelevant to what you may be looking for. Thankfully, we have search engines. These are basically sites on the internet that allow people like us to find information from other sites around the internet. There are both human-powered directory sites as well as spider or crawler-based search engines, but I'm going to focus only on spider/crawler-based engines, like Google, Yahoo, or Bing.
These search engines all use different systems to calculate results, but they do have certain things in common. They all search the net based on important words (keywords or keyphrases), they keep indexes of these words and where they found them, and allow users to search for these keywords within these indexes.
During the crawling process, search engines use small programs called crawlers or spiders that are continuously browsing the web. Spiders are directed by a program that provides the URLs for the spider to scan. During the indexing process, a copy of the web pages that have been found and scanned by the spiders is stored. From this copy, the website's indexing program records the words from each page along with the URLs where this word has been found, in a large table. When the search engine returns the results to search queries, it is able to present the most relevant results to that particular query. Results appear according to ranking criteria, which is determined by formulas or algorithms used to quantify the relevance of the content against the words that the user is searching for. Although the algorithm formulas are a secret, the numbers of times that a particular keyword and its position in the web copy are the main factors that determine the relevance of the page to that particular keyword. The most relevant results are listed first in the search engine result pages. Other things that influence search engine rankings are use of bold text, internal links to other pages, page titles, meta tags and incoming links from other respected websites.
What's the difference between Organic and Paid results? Most engines send a user back results in two forms - 'paid' and 'organic'. 'Organic' refers to the results that occur as a result of the process we talked about above, whereas 'paid' results are different. Paid inclusion is offered by all of the major search engines, and allows site owners or administrators to pay the engine to make sure their sites will appear in the results for a given query. Different engines treat these paid results in different ways. Some argue that these results are advertisements, whereas some prefer to see them as results that appear alongside the organic results. Either way, the more you pay, the higher you generally rank.
What is search engine marketing (SEM)? SEM refers to the process of building or making changes to a web site in order to increase its ranking in the results pages of search engines and directories. Mostly, the term SEM refers to the paid methods on improving a site's ranking, including pay per inclusion, pay per click, banner ads or any other marketing programs offered by search engines.
And what's SEO? SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. This is different to SEM in that is refers to the process of building a site or writing copy so that it ranks higher in the non-paid, organic results of search engines. This might involve the following techniques: * writing body text with SEO in mind * titles and meta tags * removing flash content and crawler-unfriendly material * making internal links, incoming links, and exchanging links with related and reputable web sites * URL optimisation * directory structure optimisation * site maps, and a crawler-friendly 404 page
A brief explanation of how search engines work: The internet is so great because there are literally thousands (if not millions) of pages about any topic you could ever imagine. Unfortunately, this same fact can be a bad thing, because the internet is over-saturated with information irrelevant to what you may be looking for. Thankfully, we have search engines. These are basically sites on the internet that allow people like us to find information from other sites around the internet. There are both human-powered directory sites as well as spider or crawler-based search engines, but I'm going to focus only on spider/crawler-based engines, like Google, Yahoo, or Bing.
These search engines all use different systems to calculate results, but they do have certain things in common. They all search the net based on important words (keywords or keyphrases), they keep indexes of these words and where they found them, and allow users to search for these keywords within these indexes.
During the crawling process, search engines use small programs called crawlers or spiders that are continuously browsing the web. Spiders are directed by a program that provides the URLs for the spider to scan. During the indexing process, a copy of the web pages that have been found and scanned by the spiders is stored. From this copy, the website's indexing program records the words from each page along with the URLs where this word has been found, in a large table. When the search engine returns the results to search queries, it is able to present the most relevant results to that particular query. Results appear according to ranking criteria, which is determined by formulas or algorithms used to quantify the relevance of the content against the words that the user is searching for. Although the algorithm formulas are a secret, the numbers of times that a particular keyword and its position in the web copy are the main factors that determine the relevance of the page to that particular keyword. The most relevant results are listed first in the search engine result pages. Other things that influence search engine rankings are use of bold text, internal links to other pages, page titles, meta tags and incoming links from other respected websites.
What's the difference between Organic and Paid results? Most engines send a user back results in two forms - 'paid' and 'organic'. 'Organic' refers to the results that occur as a result of the process we talked about above, whereas 'paid' results are different. Paid inclusion is offered by all of the major search engines, and allows site owners or administrators to pay the engine to make sure their sites will appear in the results for a given query. Different engines treat these paid results in different ways. Some argue that these results are advertisements, whereas some prefer to see them as results that appear alongside the organic results. Either way, the more you pay, the higher you generally rank.
What is search engine marketing (SEM)? SEM refers to the process of building or making changes to a web site in order to increase its ranking in the results pages of search engines and directories. Mostly, the term SEM refers to the paid methods on improving a site's ranking, including pay per inclusion, pay per click, banner ads or any other marketing programs offered by search engines.
And what's SEO? SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. This is different to SEM in that is refers to the process of building a site or writing copy so that it ranks higher in the non-paid, organic results of search engines. This might involve the following techniques: * writing body text with SEO in mind * titles and meta tags * removing flash content and crawler-unfriendly material * making internal links, incoming links, and exchanging links with related and reputable web sites * URL optimisation * directory structure optimisation * site maps, and a crawler-friendly 404 page
About the Author:
Rick Crawford is a seasoned web expert with years of experience. Click here to find out more about what search engines are, and how search engines work.
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