Search Engine Optimization

There are many websites on the internet. When you open one of the search engines, be it Google, Bing, Yahoo, or any other, and when you type a word or phrase into a search, do you know how that search engine knows what to show you on the first page? How did he decide which website would be at the beginning of the first page and which would end somewhere at the end of the first or second page?

Have you heard of SEO so far, and do you know what the meaning of this abbreviation is? 

Search Engine Optimization or SEO is the process of redesigning a website with the help of practice both on the page and off it, all to be indexed and well ranked by search engines.

In this lesson, we will learn…

what are search engines, how they work, and how you can optimize your website.

What are search engines?

Search engines are Google, Bing, Yahoo!, Ask.com, AOL, Baidu, and Yandex. They use very sophisticated computer programs to view a large number of pages that are on the Internet. They all work in practically the same way. When a person wants to find something on the Internet, he types a certain word or phrase in the search engine, which is a search query The search engine then compares that query to a catalog of web pages found on the Internet and extracts the best results to display for that search. These results appear on the search result page for the person who typed a particular word or phrase.

Resource: Pixabay

The goal of search engines is to create a list of results and rank websites on that list so that the list is as relevant as possible to the user who entered the appropriate keyword.

How do search engines work?

Now that we are familiar with what search engines are, let's see how they actually work. Each of the browsers uses its software, but each of these software works similarly. All search engines perform three steps.

1. Crawling

In this, the first step, search engines ‘crawl’ the internet to discover content. The content they discover and which they have permission to see, they review. To navigate through the pages, search engines use computer programs called ‘spiders’, ‘bots’ or ‘crawlers’. These ‘spiders’ never stop. They are constantly moving from page to page, following the links that are on the same. Their purpose is precisely to see the web pages and return to them looking for new content and links to include in the indexing.

2. Indexing

Indexing is the second step in this process. In this step, each piece of content is categorized. ‘Spiders’ find websites and content. All those pages they find are on one huge list. This list is called the index. Search engines then use the index as a source of information to display to the user when searching. We must emphasize that it does not complete all the content that spiders find in the search engine index. A large amount of content can be found on the internet that is the same on many websites. It is for this reason that it is very important to have unique content on your website.

3. Ranking

The third and last step that search engines perform is ranking, deciding which of the content is most useful for the user. When a user types the desired word or phrase into a search, the search engine compares what the user typed with its index, looking for the right results. There are a lot of ways a search engine ranks you. Some of the criteria are the number of words on the page, the freshness of the content, the number of links that lead to that website.

How do you optimize?

Now that we know how search engines work, let’s look at how you can optimize your website to get it ranked as well as possible. There are two optimizations you need to do: on-page and off-page optimization.

On-page optimization

On-page optimization refers to the technical optimization on your website. With this optimization, you make it easy for search engines to read, understand, and navigate through your website. An on-page optimized site allows the browser to navigate the pages of your site to index it properly. As the word itself says on-page optimization, what you can do on your page to be better ranked by search engines. The first step in this optimization is to search for keywords. A keyword is a specific word or phrase that is related to the content on your website. Keywords have a very big impact on on-page optimization, so you should dedicate yourself to this step. Explore what your target audience is searching for and what is related to your business or industry. Use the information and keywords you come up with to build content on your website. Your site should be organized around the right keywords, both the content that users see and the metadata.

Off-page optimization

This optimization method involves techniques that are used to influence a site's position in organic search results, which you cannot influence by optimizing your website. Off-page optimization is a long-term process, determined by what other sites say about you. Therefore, with the help of this optimization, you can build the authority of your website and gain credibility in the online world.  The purpose of off-page optimization is to improve the ranking of a website, based on the number and quality of links that lead to the website. Links can be internal or inbound. Internal links connect on your site, linking website pages. These links help spiders search your site and move from one page to another within your site. Inbound links are those that come from another site and lead the user directly to your website. This is one of the most important factors in ranking your website on the SERP (search engine results page). What others say about you is very important to search engines.

Conclusions

It is now clearer to us why when we search for something in the search engine, the results are displayed in the exact order given to us.

Here you have the contents of the lesson in PDF: