You may not think that you need to understand the Search Engine Algorithms, but if you are planning on optimizing your webpage for Search Engines to increase visibility and of course traffic, you need to understand how the search engines work.
Since search engines rank WebPages you should understand what is ranking your competition higher than you so you can change it and possibly find yourself in the number one position with the search engines results. Being able to optimize your site to secure a better position in the search engines results will lead to more traffic, more business and more money for your business.
Search engines users are not like an ordinary customers. You would not expect a person to walk onto a car dealership and simply blurt out “Car” and the salesman know exactly what type of car the customer wanted. The search engines on the other hand do have to deal with this; users will insert a keyword and expect results that are relevant to the word.
In earlier search engines, text was the main component to the search engines success but over time the World Wide Web increased in size and the amount of text became astronomical. Just placing a search term of printer driver in the field would bring back millions of results. The search engines now use advanced algorithms to determine out of those millions of web pages that are returned which ones are the best, most relevant, and more informative.
There are two key factors in searching the web, content analysis and linkage analysis. By having the web broken down into different communities of information the search engines can more easily determine where to look for the requested information and provide it to the user quicker. Users want the information they requested and they want it fast. This has made it more difficult for search engines with the over abundance of information available and the search algorithms have had to evolve to keep up with the high demand of the users.
Understanding how the search engines index and sort the web pages can increase your chances of having your web page come up in the top results. The main goal of any site is to be optimized for the top spot on all search engines. Many search engines will cache a portion or all of your page and others will index every word. It is important that you ensure that all the information on your site matches the theme of your site, is not copyright elsewhere, is informative, useful, and current.
The search engines strive to return the best results to their users so having the page rankings on the WebPages they deem to be the best makes it easier for the search engines to return results that are going to please the user. If you have other sites linking to your site the search engines will count them as a vote for you and your site and will consider this when calculating the page rank they give you.
