Chances are, at some point in your life, you have searched for something online and received pages and pages of possible results instead of just one clear answer. Have you ever wondered whether the order of those websites is random, or whether they appear in a specific sequence that only seems disorderly? The answer is that search engines use a very elaborate system to decide where a website appears in search results. That process is called search engine optimization.
Search engine optimization is the science and art of making web pages attractive to search engines.
The next time you run an internet search, look at the bottom of the page. Chances are good that you will see a list of page numbers, usually written in blue, that you can click if you do not find exactly what you are looking for on the first page. If you look beyond the second page, you are part of a minority. Studies and research have shown that the average internet user does not look farther than the second page of potential results. As you can imagine, it is very important for websites to be listed on the first two pages.
Webmasters use a variety of techniques to improve their search engine ranking.
The first thing most webmasters, or website designers, do is check their meta tags. Meta tags are special HTML tags that provide information about a web page. Search engines can easily read meta tags, but they are written in a special type of text that is invisible to internet users. Search engines rely on meta tags to index websites accurately. Although meta tags are a critical step in search engine optimization, they alone are not enough to help a website receive a top ranking.
Search engines rely on a small tool called a web crawler to locate and catalog websites. Web crawlers are computer programs that browse the World Wide Web in a methodical, automated way. They are also sometimes called automatic indexers, web spiders, bots, web robots, and/or worms. Web crawlers find a website and then "crawl" through it, reading the algorithms and storing the data.
Once they have collected all the information from the website, they bring it back to the search engine, where it is indexed. In addition to collecting information about a web site, some search engines use web crawlers to harvest e-mail addresses and perform maintenance tasks. Each search engine has its own web crawlers, and each one has variations in how it gathers information.
Most webmasters believe that proper use and placement of keywords helps catch the attention of web crawlers and improve their websites’ ranking. Most webmasters prefer to design their websites for ultimate search engine optimization from the beginning, but there are no rules saying you cannot go back to your website at any time and make improvements that will make it more attractive to search engines.
