When starting with SEO, the search engines are the key component. Why?
Search engines are the tools that are constructed to carry out web searches. They segregate and prioritise these web contents according to the user’s query. The process of differentiating between content and ranking is done according to the user’s search queries.
These search engines have spider bots that crawl from one website to another. These spider bots identify, segregate and rank the web content on the search engines as per the search query.
Search engines have two main essential tools to find and rank web content:
1. Search Index – It is like a library where all the web content information aggregate.
2. Search Algorithm – These are like the computer program that ranks matched content or information from Search Index.
Popular search engines examples that you must know about are Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo.
Why these Search Engines are important?
These Search engines serve the purpose of giving the most relevant data or information as per the search query. The most widely used Search engine or in other words, the most traffic-generating Search engine is Google.
These results generated on the search engine can be due to the following two reasons:
1. Organic Results: Search engine organically without any payment generates results.
2. Paid Results: Here, the advertiser pays search engines for generating results. This is also known as Pay-Per-Click advertising.
Let us look at the process of how a Search engine generates results.
Search engines have a huge database of contents for a user. It is important to segregate the relevant web content and deliver it conveniently to the user. Every web content has a URL link available with them when they upload their content to the worldwide web using which the spider bots can follow them.
These URL links are discoverable by spider bots using various ways such as backlinks, sitemaps, or URL submission. The backlink of web content can be seen on various backlinks software.
The Sitemaps displays the important web pages submitted to Google sitemaps. An individual URL link of a web page can also be submitted via Google Search Console.
Thus, the URL link plays an important role in organic traffic generation. Usually, there is a three-step process for working a search engine.
1. Crawling
Crawling is the process where the google bots or spider bots visit different web pages and downloads them. This process is generally dependent on a few factors such as:
a. PageRank of the URL
b. Frequency of changes made in the URL
c. Updating period of URL to know whether it is an old URL or a new one.
Since the number of web pages number keeps on increasing with each passing day, it is difficult for the crawlers to visit every page. Thus, the factors help it to work faster and conveniently.
If a crawler finds a new page in the database, then it reads all the content of the page. This may be due to the SEO performed by the website owner. Such new pages are then further processed to be indexed by Google.
2. Processing
When the crawler has performed its duty and gathers new web pages, the Search engine follows some process before delivering it to the users. Search engines use different processes to extract information from web pages for indexing. It usually involves running the page code to ensure how the web page is appearing to the users.
The process is complex and outsiders might not be able to understand it. But for sure, this step is important concerning the indexing of the web page.
3. Indexing
Indexing involves the process of tagging the extracted data in the database known as Search Index. When a user searches for a query, they are not directly diverted to this new page. Initially, they go through search index’s web pages.
Thus, it is essential to get the website indexed at search engines post which the new web page content lands its place in a large database to be viewed on the search index.
But that’s not all!
How do some Websites Rank higher on Google?
The working principle of search engines is the key to enter into the search index. After this, the search engines work on an algorithm to show up the matched query results to the user.
For this, the main components are the backlinks and content of the website. When the content is of optimum quality, it receives votes from people in the form of tagging the backlinks. The more tagging of the URL, the more organic traffic is generated to the website.
This results in the ranking of the page on the search engines like Google. A webpage with few good backlinks has more votes than a web page with a lot of low-quality backlinks.
Every search engine has some criteria fixed for rating a website as a good backlink.
The web page with backlinks from authoritative pages and websites has a great impact. The authoritative pages are those pages that have the maximum number of votes. Such pages can generate more organic traffic than others.
The relevancy of the backlink is also important. The relevancy of a backlink can be judged by the SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) of the search query and the maximum interaction with the backlink. Though there are many other factors to check the relevancy of the backlink, SEO and interaction data are the foremost component of them.
When a search query user visits a web page and the web page has backlinks that are relevant to their search query, then the chances of using the backlinks increases. For example, if the search query is for “Best Fictions books”, then the web page with backlinks of downloading the fictions books would be more preferable by the user than the web page with the names and descriptions of the fictions books.
The freshness of web page content is one of the factors for ranking higher on search engines. It also depends on the search query. For example, the results for search queries “Best songs of 2021” and “Best Songs” will be different. For the initial search query, the results will be from the last 2-3 months ago and for the latter search query, the results might be from the last 2-3 years ago.
The search engines are predominantly used widely on Mobile or Smartphones. Thus, a web page must be Mobile-friendly. For most, search engines, Mobile-friendliness is an essential criterion to index and rank a web page content.
Patience is the key to success but this phrase is not applicable for search engines. The speed at which a web page loads is also a criterion for ranking on the search engines. Page Speed is an essential factor when it comes to desktop searches. It is guided to use the Page speed testing tool to determine the loading speed of a web page.
How are search engines able to generate personalised results?
Often, the search engines deliver results based on certain factors of the query. These results are generally personalised based on their locations, language, and previous search history. It is also driven according to the search query and SEO.
For an SEO expert, it is mandatory to have detailed knowledge about how search engines work. Unless a webpage is optimised and indexed properly, the search engine pool will shallow your content in the dark. Every bit of data read and used counts to the steps of success in the search engine pool.
