What is SEO?

Internet search engines have become a very common tool in our daily lives. As the dominant name in internet data processors and search engines, Google handles 5 to 6 billion searches every day. We use it so often and talk about it so much that it became a transitive verb in English. In fact, it is now one of the common words in our daily conversations according to the American Dialect Society. In this blog, we explain what is SEO and how does it affect Google search ranking.

When we search for something on Google, say a ‘mechanics shop’ in the area, Google shows a long list of websites. This list can sometimes consist of dozens of pages. In this example, there are more than 100,000 auto repair shops in the United States. Many of these shops actively try to present their business on Google. Almost nobody wants to go through the entire results list for this search, which can be hundreds of thousands of rows long. Only the search results shown on the first few pages have some chance of getting your attention and winning your business.?Among these results, the few on top of the list have ten times the likelihood of a click than the ones at the bottom of the page.

But how does Google decide about showing some of these search results on the first page and how can we get our website to show at the top of the list? In this blog, we are going to explain the basics of Google’s evaluation and decision-making processes to help with understanding the answer to this question.

Why is SEO important?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of increasing the quality and quantity of traffic to a website from search engines; most importantly from Google. This process can be different for every website based on its audience and the goals it means to achieve; therefore, you will need an SEO strategy to make the best use of your time and money in addition to generating actual results. SEO is a continuous closed-loop operation meaning that after performing an SEO-related activity, its impact should be monitored, measured, and analyzed to plan for any necessary adjustments or new operations.

SEO is a vital part of developing and maintaining any website that has any interest in reaching out to internet users and receiving higher traffic. Without letting the search engines know about your website and what it is about, it will be almost impossible to receive visibility amongst the 1.2 billion websites that are on the web; 200 million of which actively seeking more traffic. It is also important to remember that SEO aims at bringing natural or ‘organic’ traffic to a website. This is in contrast to paid traffic which is brought in through various advertising channels. This makes SEO very cost-efficient in the long run. In fact, your initial investment will save you on expensive advertising campaigns to earn the same amount of traffic.

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Website Ranking

For every term and topic that is searched on Google, it ranks your website to decide where on the search engine results page (SERP) your website will be shown. Google performs this ranking by looking at over 200 factors on your website and through a very complex and ever-evolving algorithm. Although the details of this system are proprietary information, Google provides some guidelines about this algorithm that it has developed over the decades. It is common sense that with scoring a higher rank on the terms and topics of your interest; your website will show at the higher spots on the list.

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Website Ranking Process of Search Engines

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Understanding the overall logic behind Google’s ranking system can help better realize the importance of SEO to your website visibility. When an internet user runs a search in Google, the engine performs the following main functions to rank webpages and display them on the search engine results page (SERP):

1. Intent

The first step is to interpret and understand the user’s intent based on the inputted words. This part greatly depends on understanding the language and culture. When the user searches “what time is the cowboys game today”, it basically means the same as “when is the next cowboys game”; or even “dallas game time today”. The algorithm also should know that by ‘cowboys’, the user most likely means the Dallas Cowboys team, and that conclusion can be made based on using the term ‘game’; otherwise, cowboys could have different meanings in movies, tv shows, history, etc. Considering the fact that Google provides its search services in 149 languages with different cultures around the world, you can imagine how complicated this algorithm can be.

2. Relevance

The next important step in the ranking process is to find the webpages that fit the intent of the search words. Google’s algorithm for finding relevant pages is heavily dependent on the page keywords. In the next step, Google narrows down the webpages list based on additional keywords and relevant content such as pictures and videos. For this reason, using the right keywords that are relevant to your page content is one of the most important tasks for your website SEO.

3. Content

Google checks the quality of the content on webpages to determine if they truly fit the search words. The test also includes scanning for any manipulative efforts to artificially increase web traffic. Considering the huge impact that search engine ranking has on directing traffic to websites, it is easily imaginable that some website managers may try to finagle some traffic to their pages through whatever means possible. For instance, they may include some stories about celebrities in a hidden text form on their page to trick Google into believing that their website offers information about such search topics. Another example would be embedding proprietary content such as popular movies on their pages to attract more traffic. On the other hand, a website can prove its attentivity and good intentions by having links on prominent and reputable websites that are continuously checked, such as national news networks.

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3.1 What is E-A-T and how does it affect your website ranking

As per the latest guidelines issued by Google, its algorithm looks for signals on webpages that prove expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness, known as E-A-T, on a given topic. In addition to providing the users with accurate search results, a major part of the ranking algorithm tries to spot and filter spammers who try to generate fake traffic. For that reason, when working on your?custom website?SEO, you should try to stay away from practices and content that may cause a negative impression from the E-A-T point of view.

• Expertise:?Google’s algorithm looks for websites that have demonstrated some level of expertise in the search topic. It uses various factors such as feedback from the previous search results on the topic, links from other reputable websites, and website keywords to determine the expertise level of all webpages. This is even more important when the search is about a sensitive topic such as healthcare questions or legal advice. As an example, no user wants to get guidelines on using medications from a website that sells clothes online.
• Authoritativeness:?The algorithm also tries to determine whether the page author and content are generally the best resources for finding answers about the search topic. For instance, is someone’s personal webpage the best source to answer questions about the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy? Are we not better off going to the Fed’s official website?
• Trustworthiness:?Google cannot guarantee the truthfulness and accuracy of the webpage contents that it shows on the search results list. However, it does a thorough check on the page contents using factors such as search feedback and users’ behavior to give a higher rank to the more trustworthy pages.

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4. Technical Check

In addition to the content check, Google’s ranking algorithm runs a technical check on webpages. This algorithm evaluates the usability of the page and asses the users’ experience when vising the page. The algorithm looks for pages that are easy to read, and well organized. Furthermore, they should be displayed properly on different devices such as desktops, smartphones, and tablets. In addition, “page speed” is an important factor in Google ranking which by itself is a measure of several other factors.

Optimizing a website for Google’s technical check is a very complex and multi-faceted task. Hence, we particularly advise our clients to leave this part to the experts. Using the tools and plugins that are designed to help with speed and usability checks usually come with the risk of damaging your website structure and losing content. It can even backfire if not done right and result in ranking penalties by Google.

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5. Context

Another very important factor in ranking a page for a particular search is the location and context within which the Google user makes the search query. Google and other online advertising companies continuously try to provide users with more personalized search results and advertisements. This will enhance user experience and also with more personalized advertising, the likelihood of clicking on the ads increases, which by itself results in higher advertising income for companies like Google.

The location of the user is very important in ranking the search result and providing personalized search results; especially when the search relates directly to the local news, services, or trends. Moreover, Google tracks the search history and personal interests of its users to be able to provide more personalized services. The personal habits and history of each user also have a great impact on the ranking of the search results that they view on the SERP. For instance, searching “New York” in Google can generate very different results based on the user’s search history and interests. Depending on these variables, the results can lean towards very different topics like news, weather, sports teams, colleges, tourism, etc.

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Does your website ranking change over time?

When working on your website SEO, it is important to remember that the ranking of your website is not an absolute number that is assigned to your website, and it will not remain unchanged forever. On the contrary, Google’s ranking is a dynamic system that depends on numerous factors. In reality, some of these factors are completely dependent on the user’s intent and search context.

For example, if you are located in Philadelphia and google “Toyota dealership”, you will see the websites for your local dealerships with Philadelphia address on the first page. But if you run the same search when you are in Los Angeles, the first page will show a different set of websites.?Moreover, you will probably find it very difficult to find the Toyota dealerships in Philadelphia by going through the SERPs. Therefore, the ranking of each Toyota dealership website greatly depends on the location where you made the search query among other parameters. On the other hand, although the technical optimization of a website requires a much higher level of expertise, it can be done in a more pre-defined and robust manner that requires minimal effort for maintenance over time.

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What is Google Crawling?

Sorting through hundreds of billions of webpages for every search query on Google is not an easy task. Even this quick overview of Google’s ranking system can show how extensive the process is. Obviously, no computer in the world can get all of this done within that fraction of a second that Google takes to put the search results list together. In fact, most of the work for reviewing and ranking webpages is done beforehand by ‘crawlers’ which are programs that automatically discover and scan websites.

Since there is not a central registry for internet websites, these crawlers (also called search robots, or spiders) have to search through the web constantly for new websites, and come back to the already known websites every once in a while, to render their pages and scan all of the text and non-text contents for changes or new additions. The most well-known crawler on the web is Googlebot; however, Google uses several other crawlers depending on the page contents and crawling goals such as?AdSense, AdsBot, Feedfetcher, and Favicon. Some knowledge about the methodology behind these crawler programs will also help with improving a website’s SEO. That is because the better Google can understand your website, the better it can rank it. Consequently, the way you set up a website does have a significant impact on how well crawlers can interpret it.

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What is Google indexing?

Indexing is the process of scanning and interpreting the web pages once crawlers find a new page or detect a change on a previously known page. During this process, Google renders and analyzes all of the page text, pictures, videos, and embedded programs. Once the page content is understood, Google sorts and saves this information in a huge database, called Google Index, which is one of its distinguishing factors among all search engines. There are several SEO techniques that can help a website get a better ranking by making it more index-friendly for Google. For example, Google’s indexing process is very good at reading and interpreting text, but it does not do as good of a job in interpreting pictures. Therefore, it is much better to convey your page’s intent by text and only use pictures for visual support of your content.

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What is Google search serving?

‘Serving’ is the last part of the ranking process that we explained in the previous section. Serving normally takes place after a user types a search query on Google. At this stage, the algorithm interprets the search query and ranks all relevant pages on the Index database. Then, it ranks and displays the sorted results on the SERP (search engine results page).

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This brief overview of Google’s process for ranking websites and gathering search results can clearly show the importance of Search Engine Optimization for getting organic web traffic and visibility for your website on the web. It is important to note that deep knowledge and familiarity with the details of this process can dramatically improve your SEO management at all strategic, tactical, and operation levels. On the opposite hand, a lack of this knowledge can cost your website huge drops in ranking by just making simple adjustments that Google may interpret differently.

When it comes to developing an SEO strategy and optimizing the technical aspects of a website, we strongly advise our clients to use resources with strong web-based software knowledge as well as a deep understanding of the website ranking process. This combination will usually yield the best result for your energy and budget. On the other hand, continuous content presentation, which is another important aspect of most SEO strategies, had better be done by experts in the topic who can create content with real value to the website users.