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Danemco Website Services

Idaho Falls based web design and programming

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How Search Engines Work

Did you know that U.S. Internet users conducted nearly 10 billion searches on the top four search engines in the month of December 2007 alone? Did you know that people rely on search engines to help them find their final destination on the web 50% of the time? And very few people look past the first few pages of search results? With so much dependence on Internet search technology, understanding how search engines work and how to adapt your site to rank higher can pay off.

First, a glossary of terms:

Spider – a program that “crawls” the web looking for web pages

Engine – a complex computer program that gives you the results from what you searched

Index – think of this as a phone book's yellow pages, a directory of web pages sorted by keywords and subjects

Step 1: The Spider Crawls the Web

The “spider” is like a robot web browser. It visits your web site link by link and remembers the text, photos, etc. on the web site. The spider gives the information it found to the engine.

Step 2: The Engine Crunches the Spider's Data

The engine takes what the spider found and organizes it. Understanding how the engine organizes this data is the key to bettering your search engine rankings. The result of the “crunching” is something called an Index. Search engines change its process from time to time– that's why nobody can claim to “guarantee” placement. Competing search engines, such as Yahoo and Google, have a different methodology as to how their engines work.

Step 3: Users “Query” the Search Engine

We ask the search engine a question by specifying keywords or phrases. The Engine looks up which pages best fit the query in its index, and sorts them by relevance. The more accurate and reliable the search engine, the more people will trust it and return to use it.

What does this mean to you?

By better understanding how search engines work, you can make subtle changes to your site to increase the chance that people will find you when they do a relevant search online. The science (and art) of figuring out how to improve search engine rankings by bettering your web site is called “Search Engine Optimization”, or SEO for short.

Thankfully, many SEO experts publish practical tips on increasing your search engine rankings. Here are some of them:

• Plan Ahead. What keywords do you think people will use to find what you offer? Come up with a list, with the most important keywords at the top.

• Use Keywords In Your Text. After you come up with your list, use those keywords on your web pages in the text of the web page. Search engines assume the text towards the top or front of the page is more important than the bottom of the page, so put your important keywords first.

• Bold, Italicize, and Highlight important phrases. Search engines assume that if you've made a phrase bold, italicized, or big, then it must be more important than the rest of the text. Make sure your keywords are in there.

• Use Descriptive Links. A link that says Click Here is not as helpful to humans or search engines as a link that says Learn More About Our Products. When appropriate, use keywords in the links.

• Get A Keyword Analysis Audit. SEO experts invest in special software tools, reports, and programs and can give you a detailed roadmap of what to do to increase your search engine rankings. Warning: There are many SEO scams out there. You probably get SPAM e-mail from some of them. Stay away from “experts” that guarantee placement. Stick with companies you trust. See below for our recommendation.

I hope these tips are useful to you. There is so much more that could be written. Please feel free to call or e-mail us if you would like some pointers on where to go to learn more on the subject.

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