Search Engine Insight | understanding how search engines work

By David Lakins, Managing Director of Key Multimedia

The ultimate goal for most companies with an online presence is to achieve that 1st page listing on Google – and stay there! But in order to achieve such a position it takes time, effort and understanding.  In this short article Dave Lakins explores how search engines work, and what you need to understand in order to make best use of them.

The history of search engines is quite a short one and only five years ago achieving a high ranking in the search engines was relatively easy. However, times have changed as using gimmicks such as “keyword stuffing” to achieve a high page ranking is now impossible.  Currently, the best way to achieve a top spot is to develop a collection of pages about specific topics and gain authority - by other people (and websites) agreeing that it is the best and linking to it.

At this point is important to understand some of the basics behind search engines. One of the first things to recognise is “what job each of the search engines are trying to deliver”.  The simple answer is that each and every search engine is out to delivery accurate and relevant results. A search engines popularity will be driven by its ease of use – but more importantly the accuracy of its results. Remember how searching has progressed over the last few years. In the early days it was quite easy to have a mixture of results that weren’t anywhere near relevant to the search string you had just entered. Now if you type in the words “tiger woods” somehow the search engine knows that string is related to golf!

Google became the number one search engine in such a short space of time because it invested heavily in ensuring its results were the most accurate. But a search engine can only deliver those relevant results if there is the content out there on individual web pages to capture. So if you want to improve the performance of your web pages with the search engines then give them what they are looking for – content, content, content.

Search engines use a technique called indexing and this includes scanning the content of a page in order to see what it is about. Of course there are several other things that a search engine looks at but none of those things matter if the content does not match what people are actually typing in a search engine.
So, if you want to rank high in the search engines, you must create a great page that targets a specific topic and includes relevant content on the page.

Structuring your copy
I have written about structuring copy in the past, and the techniques are worth revisiting. One of the things search engines look at now is natural language and how text appears on the page. You should refrain from just repeating a search term on the page. It is true than once upon a time that worked. But stuffing search terms no longer works.

Search engines look at a number of things including how many times a term shows up in a sentence and how many times it shows up in a paragraph. In a normal paragraph you will not have a search term that shows up six to ten times. That is not the way a paragraph is normally constructed. When a search engine sees this it counts against you and not for you. The same is true about sentences. So be careful how you craft your content. Try not to put the same term multiple times in a sentence or several times in a paragraph.

Writing web page copy often means tailoring content exclusively for the search engines – but one shouldn’t forget the user. It is also a good idea to make sure you write in complete sentences and make your content read well. This is not just a good idea for search engine consideration but also for the reader of your page. You want them to find the page informative and easy to read. Having them come back and telling their friends about the page is important. If they find it interesting enough, they may just give you that all-important link to your page.

Here are some other things to consider about content:-

• Heading Tags (H1, H2, H3 ……)
  The content of your page is not just limited to the words written on the page. Search engines also look at how you present your content and what you say about it. For example, every page in your site should have a title. This is the first thing written on the page such as the title to an article. When you present a title you place it as a heading. Heading tags are a way to tell the search engines this is what my page is about. To be effective your heading needs to be about the same thing as the rest of the content of your page. You can also put sub headings on the page. You can title different sections of the page with heading 2 or heading 3 tags.
• META TAG Title & Description
  Search engines also give you two places to tell them what you think your content is about. This is done through your META Title and Description tags. These are the only two META tags that most search engines look at so far as determining how they are going to rank your page. I do not even add a key word tag to any of my pages. The META title is the place where you tell the search engine what your page is about. It can be exactly the same as the title on the page itself (your H 1 tag or page heading). Your description tag gives you the opportunity to describe the content of the page to the search engine. The Description needs to be short and to the point. It should be no more than two sentences but preferably only one sentence. There is no reason a good description of a page cannot be made in one simple but complete sentence.
• Page Content
  Last but not least is the overall content of the page. Make each page about one thing. The more topics your page talks about the less credit you get for each topic. For example you want to make a page about the three most influential people in medicine today. You can make your first page generic and mention the names of the three people and their general contributions to medicine while concentrating on making sure every paragraph is about the main topic of "most influential people in medicine". Then, if you want to go into detail about the three individual people, make a separate page about each and have them linked to from the "most influential" page.