Search Engine Optimization
Let us try to understand what exactly this search engine is?
Internet has huge collection of websites, blogs, post, etc. As per general survey, the total number of websites in the world exceeds 1.5 billion in 2019! And, there are 31 million bloggers having more than 600 million blogs online!
Out of this many website, the required information is in which of the websites / blogs would be not known completely to any of the user. Also, which of the them are more relevant, would also not be known.
Thus, there requires some search mechanism which can perform searches of the required information all over these websites distributed in the world and return the most relevant results in the form of websites, blogs, etc. This search mechanism requirement over the internet is taken care by so called search engine.
Examples of search engine are as follows:
Google (www.google.com) – 5.6 billion searches per day
Bing (www.bing.com) – 122.8 million searches per day
Baidu (www.baidu.com) – 3.3 billion searches per day
These massive figures highlight the importance of search engine and its usage being done by internet users to search various contents, information, blogs, website, etc. over the internet. This in turn reveals the crucial role played by the search engine in increasing the traffic to the websites which are in the higher position of the search results. Let us try to understand the importance of having the websites appearing in the first page of search engines results when searched for some keyword. As seen, the search engines are having millions of searches. So, the website in first page of search engine will be always exposed to that big set of people doing search for some keyword. Please note the difference between the first page and other pages. Website in the first page will be always exposed but for websites in the second page, it will be exposed only when user clicks the next page and whose probability reduces. So, other page websites will not have always exposure and so the chances of it being hit reduces. This is applicable for successive pages also, where the chances of website being clicked reduces. This scenario thereby leads to the requirement of designing the website to always rank higher in the search engine results to have more visitors on it. This requirement is what it means for Optimization of websites in search engine results and thus called search engine optimization.
So, question may arise as to how does this search engine determine whom to be listed in their top-ranking search results?
This is determined by the complex algorithm of these search engines. Search engine algorithm will check multiple factors for each website and after evaluating them with its algorithm, it will give rank to various websites for information being searched by the user and thereby display them accordingly in the search results.
What are key features of the algorithms?
Algorithms used by Search engine to give ranks to various websites for returning the search results for query being searched are having lot of factors to evaluate ranking of the Website. Let us try to understand some of the major factors in use by Search Engines algorithm:
- Quality Content
Websites having qualitative content will be ranked higher than others. Text should be with correct grammar, properly formatted text, no distracting images, etc. The content should not be duplicate or copied from other websites and should be original. The content should be helpful to the users. It should be trustworthy. Also, the content should be relevant to the keyword being search from the search engine.
- Links towards the website
If various trustworthy sources point towards the website then that will be ranked higher. Similarly, if sources are having content which contain links towards the website, then that kind of website again, will be higher ranked in search engines. This is because, sources will not give link to lower quality websites but will link to only higher quality and trustworthy links.
- Page HTML Structure
Another important component of optimizing the website in search engine result is website page HTML structure. Web pages are sets of HTML coded content. Algorithm will evaluate website at its HTML level. Thus, having relevant keywords in URL, title and headers of the HTML page can help to improve rank of website in search engine results.
What are SEO Tools?
SEO Tools are set of various tools which can help for optimizing the website for search engine return results. Let us try to understand commonly used Tools and its features.- Search Console from Google-
This is free tool provided by Google. It provides Search Appearance, Structured, Rich Cards for SEO, HTML Improvements, Sitelinks, Search Analytics Report, etc to help in optimizing the website to increase ranking in search engine results.- Keyword Planner from Google Ads-
The tool Keyword Planner is free tool provided by Google, as part of their Google Ads product. It provides keyword suggestion and keyword volume based on the geographic location, which can be used for optimizing website Text contents with necessary keyword to have higher rank in search engine results.
- Backlinks Analysis Tool
There are many tools available for analysis of outside links from other websites which are linking to the website.
Popular Tools are :-
AHREFs (https://ahrefs.com/backlink-checker), Majestic (https://majestic.com), etc. This detail can be then used for building new links towards the website and increasing the rank in search engine return results.
- SEO Platforms
SEO Platform has many sets of tools at one place to optimize the sites for search engine results to have higher rank. Popular tools are as follows:
Moz (www.moz.com/)
BrightEdge(https://www.brightedge.com)
Searchmetrics (https://www.searchmetrics.com)
Linkdex (https://www.linkdex.com)
These platforms can track various keyword rankings, provide assistance for keyword research, identify various SEO opportunity and such other task related to optimization of website for search engine results.
- Social Media
Social Media Platform can be used for building links towards the website from trustworthy source which in turn can help to optimize website for search engine results for various keywords.
Thus, we have understood meaning of the keyword Search Engine, its massive usage in the world and had thereby understood the importance of having higher rank website in search engine results because of which there arises the need to optimize the websites. Further, we have understood the key features of the algorithm used by various search engines and various SEO Tools available for optimizing the website for search engine.
