SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is a set of optimization strategies for sites, blogs, and pages on the web, which aim to improve your position in organic search engine results.
Every second, millions of searches are being processed by search engines — mainly Google, the most popular search engine around the world.
Users are looking for answers to an incredible range of questions in their daily routine – from the best-rated hotel for an upcoming trip to an explanation of the theory of evolution.
For every search, Google organizes the results by ranking the best answers first. The numbers below show just how much users trust the judgment of search engines:
The first three organic links receive approximately 30% of all click-throughs. Only 0.78% of users access a link on the second page of the results.
What are Search Engines?
Search engines are systems or algorithms used to crawl, index, and rank web content to display it in an ordered way based on user searches.
When we refer to search engines, we’re not just talking about Google, but also Bing, Yahoo!, Baidu and others. Even YouTube and Pinterest can be thought of as search engines since they’re often used to discover content. But Google is the clear category leader, with almost 92% of the search market share.
Each search engine has its own methodology and ranking criteria. But in the end, the goal is always the same: offering the best results for what users are looking for.
How do Search Engines Work?
Have you ever considered exactly what Google does when you search for something? Despite only taking milliseconds, there’s a long process to be able to display a list of results that answer your question.
First, search engines crawl through web content using bots, also known as spiders. At Google, it’s known as their Googlebot. These bots follow the connections of links across the web, searching for new and updated pages.
After that, the crawled pages are added to the search engine’s index, which serves as a vast library for the web’s content. There, pages are organized according to the information the bot collected about them, such as loading time and keywords.
These processes of crawling and indexing are continuously taking place. The bots are always finding and organizing the content on the web. But the order in which they display their results to users is defined through ranking.
Ranking occurs every time a user searches for something — this is the focus of SEO. According to the keywords used in the search, Google quickly goes through its index to find pages that coincide with those terms and respond to the question.
Thus, classification is determined by the best relationship between keywords and a series of ranking factors that make up the search algorithm.
They serve to offer a better user experience and, as a result, increase your page’s position in the search results.
Google’s Algorithm and Updates
Google’s algorithm is the combination of operations that define how links are classified on the organic search results page. Its function is to create a hierarchy of pages to provide results in the most relevant order for each user.
The algorithm adopts a series of criteria to achieve this and is continuously updated to become more and more relevant.
Through these updates, Google aims not just to improve the classification of results but also to eliminate or decrease the position of malicious and low-quality content, which can harm the user experience.