Search engine overview - what they do and what they want
 To do any kind of business via your website, you first need to get visitors to your site. There are a couple of ways to do this. Search engine traffic is one of these ways.
Search engines are an important means of driving traffic to your website. But to get your share of this targeted traffic, you need to make sure your website is something the search engines like. To do this, you need a little background info on search engines, info like... - What search engines do and what they want
- How does a search engine work?
What they do and what they want
Very basically, search engines (the more well-known ones include Google, MSN, Yahoo and Ananzi)
provide internet surfers with a means to search for specific
information. If you want information concerning soccer clubs in South
Africa, for example, you'll type something along the lines of "soccer
clubs South Africa" into your search engine of choice and it will
display a list of results. Each of these results links to a specific
website that is supposed to contain information about the subject
you're interested in.
However, I've heard many people complain, "But when I use the
search engines and follow the links they give, all I get are hundreds
of websites that have little or nothing to do with the thing I'm
looking for!" And here begins the never-ending struggle between the
search engines and the website owners and webmasters who want their
sites to be listed...
To get an idea of why the search engines work the way they do,
it helps to look at things from their point of view. Search engine
companies, like Google, make their money by (among other things)
selling advertising space. For this business model to work (and for
them to stay in business), they must be able to ensure that their
advertisers get value for money by having large numbers of people
viewing their ads. And the only way to make sure large numbers of
people consistently come back to them so that these visitors can see
the adverts on display, is to give the searchers what they want...
What do visitors want from a search engine?
Fast, accurate, relevant results, time after time. A search engine
that lists results that don't lead to the type of information you're
looking for actually wastes your time as it is only after you open the
irrelevant link that you realise that it's of no use. By then, the time
you have available to spend on the internet is severely limited and you
still don't have what you're looking for. Eventually you click off
feeling frustrated and determined never to use that search engine
again. Not a very good situation for the advertisers and so not a very
good situation for the search engine.
So, search engines want what visitors want: relevant,
accurate information that matches the intial search criteria. If the
searcher is looking for info on soccer clubs in SA, the search engine
does not want to spit out results concerning rugby, night clubs or
South America.
Now consider for a moment the aim of website owners
the world over:To get to the top of the search engine lists. Research
proves that sites that are at the number 1 position for a specific
search get far more visits than sites that are at position 8 975. So
obviously everyone wants to be number 1, resulting in a hardly
surprising scenario of severe competition with people trying all kinds
of tricks to force the search engines into listing them in top place.
Trick a search engine? For a while it was quite easy to con the
search engines into thinking your site was fantastic and so they gave
it great rankings. Although some older search engines still rely on the
old, trickable technology, good search engines today can see a scam
from a mile away and severely penalise sites that aren't above board. Websites and firms that use "Black hat" tricks to try to get search engine rankings are going to get more trouble than results!
How does a search engine work?Well, again very basically, the search engines send out little
program, called spiders or robots, to "read" your website. The
spiders analyse the content of your website according to certain
algorithms and then decide how relevant your content is to certain
search terms. The actual workings are all quite complex, but the only
thing that's really important and necessary to remember is that the spiders are evaluating your content.
Meta tags and keywordsSearch engine spiders consider two main apsects of your website to determine your SE ranking: meta tags and keywords.
Meta tags are "descriptions" or "information labels" placed in
the code of a website. The meta title tag, for example, tells the search engine
the title of a particular web page. It also displays at the top of a
visitor's browser when she views the website. Some search engines also
use this title, together with the description of the page given in the
meta description tag, when displaying the search results. By using your page keywords as part of a sentence in this tag, visitors seeing your title and page description, will know that you have the info they want and they'll be more likely to click through to your website.
The meta keyword tag, however, is the one to watch out for...
Keywords are simply the one or two main "themes" in your content
on a specific page. If we take this page, for example, the main
keywords are "search engine" and "website". Each page on your website
should be focused on only one aspect of your business.
By focusing on only one or two relevant keywords on
each page of your website, you offer really great information and
advice on a focused topic, which not only makes it a wonderful source
for your visitor, but a wonderful page for the search engines too. (For
example, while your website may be all about flowers, each individual
page will only cover one type of flower. The page about roses can't
also give detailed information about pansies; it will be too
confusing.)
If each page on your site tries to cover everything your
business does, the result will be a confusing mess of information that
turns visitors away instead of attracting them to do business with you.
And if that confusing page is one that comes from a search engine
results listing, the search engine isn't going to love you either
because you're not allowing it to do its job of serving useful,
accurate information. This simply means you'll move further and further
down the search engine rankings until no-one will find you.
While it is important to focus on your main keywords per page when writing content for your website, it is also important that you don't over-use them.
One of the main ways keywords are abused is by filling the keyword meta
tags with them. Some website programmers believe that because the
visitor can't see the meta tags but the search engines can, they can
fill the meta tags with lots of keywords - often words that have
nothing to do with that page and don't appear anywhere on it. They
think this will trick the search engines into thinking the page
contains lots of useful info about those topics.
But search engines are using some of the most advanced technology on the planet and immediately pick up that this is a trick. Their reaction? They ban that website
for keyword stuffing, or, if they're feeling slightly more lenient,
only move you to the bottom of their list. Many search engines now
don't even consider the meta tags when it comes to allocating rankings
and place you based solely on the relevance of your content.
(The meta tags are still needed for the description the search engine displays when someone is looking for your info though.)
The best way to get good rankings on the search engines is to
- make sure that the content you place on your website is relevant to
your business and target market,
- focused on one specific topic at a
time and
- well written with one or two main keywords per article.
Isn't it nice to know that, even in cyberspace, good old fashioned
honesty and integrity is still what people are looking for and still
the way to go? Some things never change. :)
Find out How to use keywords to help your search engine rankings.
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