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Search Engines, Algorithms and Ranking

First off let me say that I don’t want to turn you off by getting into mathematics (because maths has never been my strong point) but it will help if you have a basic understanding what an algorithm does.

Algorithm Definition

An algorithm is a set of decision making processes that are applied to a problem in order to solve that problem.

Any clearer?

search engine algorithm OK, our problem is quite simple; the search engine has to put the results in what it considers to be an order of relevance depending on the search term. What an algorithm does in this context is apply certain factors to each web page it finds to give it a ranking “score”. The details of these factors are a closely guarded secret.

The search engines only provide us with general guidelines on how this is done. Clearly, if anyone knew exactly how it was done the results would be easy to manipulate by web designers and this would affect the quality of the results. Anyway, here's a greatly simplified example of what happens.

Search Engine Ranking Factors

Let's say that a search engine algorithm judges the content of a site by four factors (Google actually uses more than 100). Let's also say that these factors are,

Number of inbound links
Site content relevant to the search term
Keyword(s) found in the text
Title of the webpage and its relation to the search word or phrase

For the purpose of this illustration we can say that each of these can get a score of zero to 10. When someone enters a search engine query the algorithm looks at each of the factors in turn for each site that is found, awards an appropriate number of points and sorts the results according to the highest score. OK, I will admit that this is a very much simplified explanation but essentially that's what happens.

Your Chances of Getting Found on a Search Engine

Your chances of getting found on the search engines are dependent on many factors including the number of inbound links, how your site is constructed and what content and keywords it contains. The market in which you are trading is also an extremely important factor. How much competition are you up against? If you are in some of the popular online selling businesses then it will be very difficult. On the other hand, if you have found a niche market, where there is not a lot of competition, you could be very successful.

Targeting Your Keywords

One of the most important factors in this equation is probably finding the correct keywords to target. Be careful with this. Target the wrong words and you won't get the targeting keywords amount of traffic that you could. You should not assume that you can just guess the keywords that will be used. Some research may be required into this.

Let's go back to the management training example we used earlier. If someone types in the words management training they will get many results. When I last tested this search on Google I got 630 million results. Essentially these results are for sites that have the words management and training occurring within their text content and on hyperlinks to their websites. Clearly there are many companies in this field so it would be very difficult to get a high ranking.

Do not despair! In reality most people who are searching for this will be looking for a company in their region. When they see the number of results they will probably amend their search to something like management training Manchester . When I tested this number of results reduced to 2.2 million (this is not a large number by Internet standards). By a process of elimination and amended searches our surfers will eventually find what they are looking for. The trick is to ensure that your website targets some of the common terms that they may use. (See also Browsing or Surfing the Internet.)

Getting Found - What can you do to help yourself?

Let me first qualify this by saying that if your website has been built using the wrong methods there is very little you can do to make it “search engine friendly”. If you are relying on it for traffic you may have to bite the bullet and accept that it needs to be redesigned. If it does have a chance as it stands you can try some of the following tips.

Seek Improved Google Pagerank
Pay for Placement
Invest in Link Building
Submit your website to Specialist Directories

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