Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Tips

The Internet (or World Wide Web / www) is overcrowded with information today and search engines which help customers find their way to you have also become very sophisticated. Search Engine Optimisation or SEO is now a buzzword in digital marketing and at the same time creating a lot of new marketing job titles.

What is SEO? I am going to tell you more in this blog.

The most popular search engines in the world are Google, Bing, Yahoo! and Baidu, China’s leading search engine. Additionally, there are also a number of country specific search engines which specialise in searches in local languages in their native countries such as the Russian Yandex and the Korean Naver, and some less well-known ones.

Using complex algorithms that are constantly improving, search engines actually perform three major duties: crawling, indexing and retrieving data.

1. Crawling

Search engines send out automated computer programs known as “spiders” or “bots” to scan the more than 30 billion web pages on the Internet and take note of their information. This process never truly ends — because new websites are constantly being added, and the bots continually return to previously crawled websites to look for new content, new links and other updates. 

2. Indexing

Information search engines gather are stored in carefully organized databases that hold the billions of webpages they are monitoring on the web. This index is stored in vast data centers where search engine robots can quickly and easily access it to update information about the websites or to retrieve an answer for a user’s search query.

3. Data Retrieving

When a user enters a query, the search engine checks its database of websites and retrieves a list of web pages that are relevant to the query. What’s more, the search engine also ranks those results in order of relevance. When you look for something online, Google isn't actually scanning the entire World Wide Web — rather, they are searching through their own library, or index, of websites.

The exact algorithms used by search engines are kept secret, but there are some elements which experts agree have an impact on how well a website ranks in searches. These elements form the basis of SEO. Wix, an online web development company, has listed the following:

• Domain - Is the user’s search phrase found in a website’s domain name?

• Titles and Descriptions - Is the user’s search phrase found in the website’s page titles and descriptions?

• Keyword Frequency - How often is the user’s search phrase found in the website content or as image alt text?

• Freshness - How regularly and how recently was the website updated?

• Backlinks - How many other websites link to the site?

• Quality of Links - How reputable are the sites who link to the site? Are they spammy or professional and helpful?

• Engagement - How many people click on the website in search results and how much time do they spend on the website?

• Bounce Rate - How many people click on the website and immediately leave? A high bounce rate will negatively affect the website's rank.

• Brand Reputation - How often is the brand, business or site domain mentioned in news and media?

• Social Media - How often are people mentioning the website in Tweets, on Google+ and on Facebook posts?

I would also add the following:

• Domain location. If your domain name carries .nz in its name and you have defined your location to be in New Zealand, searches in New Zealand are more likely to show your website.

• After the completion of a website, the sitemaps of your website need to be submitted to the webmasters of the respective search engines for them to know your website exists and to start the crawl.

Using a combination of these factors and many more, search engines strive to provide each user with a list of web pages that will be most likely to answer their query.

You may also wonder why you could find your new website when you search, but someone else could not. It is because your browser store your browsing history. If you wish to test whether your website can be seen by other users, use the Incogito on Google or Inprivate on Bing (Microsoft) versions of your browser.

As many website owners recognise the importance of SEO and are competing with each other for higher ranking on search engines, this exercise has become more challenging especially for new and smaller websites. Even after the best efforts, it is still a challenge to appear on the first page of search for new users who have not visited your website before. SEO has become a hygiene factor. If you want to be placed on the first page of search, likely you may have to invest on search engine marketing. This means you have to setup ads on search engines, and bid and pay to get a position high on the search listing and hence more new buzzwords - search engine marketing.

#digitalmarketing #SEO