When was the last time you googled something? Were you happy with the search results you got? Have you ever wondered how search engines, like Google and DuckDuckGo decide which results to show you? If yes, you have come to the right post.
Search engines crawl websites. They collect information about every page that is part of the site. When you look up a specific keyword or phrase, like “pizza recipe”, the search engine goes through data and finds the “most relevant” pages that match your search term. I put “most relevant” in quotes because what a search engine considers relevant depends on a website’s content, meta data and engagement.
Relevance
Algorithms are sections of code that sort through data to find a solution for a “problem”. Search engine algorithms solve the problem “show the most relevant results for search terms”. Engagement is a key criterium.
This means, that the more people have clicked on a website, linked to it and looked at different pages, the more relevant it is for a certain topic. If you search for a pizza recipe, for example, you get the websites other people have most often visited in the past at the top of the search results.
Meta Data
Another criterium for search engines is meta data. When you create a page or a post for your website, you add data that tells search engines what your page is about. It consists of the title, the site description, the featured image and its ALT description, the slug (that’s the bit at the end of the URL that’s specific for this post, so for example the bold word on this site https://ei-forlife.com/blog/) and most importantly the focus keyword or key phrase for SEO optimization.
You can add several keywords and phrases to a post. The focus keyword or key phrase ideally sums up the content of a page. Search engines use it to measure how relevant a page is. They count how often the keyword/phrase is used on the page, whether it appears in the title, in the first paragraph, in subheadings and image descriptions and so on. The more criteria the page ticks the higher it will rank in searches for that particular keyword or phrase.
Optimizing meta data
Search engine optimization means knowing about this, choosing your keywords/phrases wisely and then doing your best to create content that looks good to search engines. Take this post as an example. If I choose SEO as the keyword, its SEO rating is low. I only use the abbreviation in the title but rarely in the text.
There are two easy options to optimize: I can either rewrite the post (as you can see I didn’t) or choose a different key phrase. I picked “search engine” and just like that my meta data is optimized because those two words are in the title, the first paragraph, I made sure to include them in the image ALT for the featured image and the meta description for the post.
Instead of writing SEO in the slug, I wrote the words out. Anyone searching for “search engine” or using a phrase that contains these words like “search engine optimization” is much more likely to see this page in their search results.
Optimizing content
But search engines look at more than just meta data. When they crawl a page, they analyse the content and judge it by certain criteria. There are probably more criteria than the ones I am aware of but these are a pretty good start.
A post is considered “better” if the content is broken into sections with subheadings. Ideally, you want to have images on the page as well, with the main keyword in some of the ALT descriptions. Inbound links (links to pages of the same website) and outbound links (links to other websites) make your page look legitimate.
More…
If another website links to your page and sends people over, search engines consider this a sign of quality too. Some search engines, like Google, remember your searches and learn from your engagement with previous search results, meaning they are more likely to show you the same results every time.
How exactly search engine algorithms rank sites is unclear and it changes over time. If you have seen SEO specialists offering their services, this is why. The basics are simple enough. If you want your website to rank on the first page of a certain keyword or phrase, though, consider hiring a professional. For now, optimize your content and focus on getting the basics right. It’s the easiest way to ensure that your readers, clients, and fans will find you when they search for your topic.
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