How Search Engine works

How does Search Engine work?

As Search Engines returns Search Engine Result Page based on the user’s Queries or Keywords, the contents on a website should revolve around those Queries or Keywords to rank well.

Search Engine are designed to provide answers to their users, therefore websites which are able to best answer users’ queries generally ranks better.

There are several kinds of SEO efforts such as on-page SEO and building backlinks that are well known.

I strongly suggest users to check out Google Knowledge Panel and Google Shopping as these are SEO efforts that are not commonly discussed, which makes them low lying fruits for ranking on SERP due to lower competition.

SEO meaning

SEO is short for Search Engine Optimization. It refers to the process of increasing the visibility of a website on the SERP.

SERP meaning

SERP is short for Search Engine Results Page. It is the result page of a Search Engine, displaying websites based on the user’s query or keywords input.

What are Search Engines?

Search Engines are software programs designed to perform searches on the internet for particular information based on the users’ input. The users’ input are known as Search Queries or Keywords.

Index

Every Search Engine have their own Index. An Index is the library of registered website. For a website to be shown in the SERP, it has to be crawled and added to the Index first.

Web Crawler

Every Search Engine has a Web Crawler which is a bot that systematically browse the Internet to discover and scan websites. The bot will then add the new website into the Index, or update the Index for websites with new content.

Organic vs Non-Organic Results

Organic Results are websites that ranks strictly based on SEO efforts, while Non-Organics Results are websites that ranks because of Advertisements.

The first few results that appear on the SERP are typically Ads as they paid for the space.

The more prominent examples for Search Engines are:

Google Chrome
Microsoft Bing
Mozilla Firefox
Apple Safari

Why is SEO good?

SEO can put your website on the top of the SERP after the ads, so potential customers will see you first before your competitors.

SEO is a long term investment, so the benefits are long term as well. Once a website ranks on the first page of a search engine, it will take awhile for competing websites to outrank the website organically. Competitors will have to double down on their SEO effort as well.

While you can pay for ads to show your website at the top of the SERP, you cannot pay for a higher organic ranking on a search engine. SEO specialists have to put in the work to achieve first page organic ranking.

Why is SEO important?

SEO gives visibility to your website. This provides business opportunities and helps you to stay competitive online.

Research has shown that the top 5 organic results on the SERP owns 80.8% of the total click-through rates. Meaning less than 20% of the users bothers to check out websites beyond the 5th organic link on a SERP.

If a website is organically ranked at the first position for a keyword with 5,000 monthly search volume, the website will be getting 1,980 monthly visitors. And the website ranked second will be getting 920 monthly visitors.

Quick analogy – The first shop at the front of a street gets 1,980 visitors browsing the shop daily, while the second shop deeper into the street gets 920 visitors browsing the shop daily.

It’s natural for the first shop to have higher sales as they get more visitors daily and every visitor is a potential customer.

The point to make here is that SEO is important for organic visibility that translates to opportunities to fulfill your objective.

Have more questions on Search Engine Optimization?

Reach out to me to share your queries and thoughts!