Search Engine Optimization Fundamentals: How Do the Search Engines Rank Your Website?

Last month we started our article series on the basics of search engine optimization (SEO) by dispelling some commonly held myths and misconceptions.  Now that we talked about what doesn’t work, let’s continue by talking about what does work.

There are two main criteria that search engine evaluate when ranking your website pages in their indexes:

1. The CONTENT of the web page (the words on the page)
2. The LINKS pointing to that web page

Content:

This part is the most straightforward.  Search engine algorithms don’t see your page’s layout, design, or pictures.  All they see is a long string of words and text.  So how do they know what a particular web page is about?  By reading the words, of course. Suppose you had a website for a bakery company.  If the site pages have lots of words like “fresh bread,” “cakes,” and “chocolate chip cookies,” then they will be more likely to show up prominently when people search for those terms.  However, if the site was filled with text talking about the company’s history, equipment, employees’ bios, and so on, but doesn’t have much text talking about their actual baked products, then of course it will never show up in searches for specific baked products.  So make sure your website content actually talks about the subjects you’d like people to find you for!

Links:

When Google or the other search engines see two web pages with similar content, how do they determine which site is ranked higher for their corresponding search queries? Simple: whichever site has the most links pointing to it.  Basically, search engines don’t only look at your site content; they also look at links between sites to determine the relative importance of different websites’ content. For instance, if many different sites have links to one of your web pages that say something like “Bread Bakeries in Denver,” then that tells the search engines that your page must be a very important page about bread bakeries in Denver, and will increase your site ranking correspondingly.

Additionally, the incoming links to your website are weighted differently according to which website they came from. The search engines rank the importance and authority of the site linking to yours by — you guessed it — how many other sites link to them.  So a link to your site from CNN.com, for instance, is much more valuable than, say, a link from “Uncle Joe’s Crab Shack,” or some other small website.

So just remember:

• Links to your website = good
• Links to your site from high-profile websites = even better

With an understanding of these two key principles of search engine indexing, you’re well on your way to understanding how to increase your chances of featuring prominently on search results to your target audience.  Next month, we’ll discuss the most important areas on your website pages to focus your attention on as you optimize your website content to be search-engine-friendly.

In the meantime, if you have any additional questions about search engine optimization, feel free to contact us.

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