How do search engines work? How do I improve my site's SEO? How do I improve my page rank?

Relevancy. That’s the name of the SEO game. A search engine wants to make sure that when you type in keywords and click enter, it returns the most relevant list of sites possible. This makes sense and sounds simple, but there are many factors that complicate this seemingly simple task.

Search engines use extremely complex sets of formulas (algorithms) to accurately determine what your site is all about. Their spiders will literally read every word on every page of your site and then make an educated (automated) guess about your site’s content. It will then generate a list of keywords that it believes are relevant to your site's content. When someone types one of those keywords into a search engine, it will display your website as a relevant result.

Web developers can give search engines hints about what their site contains by creating META TAGs-- labels that define keywords, descriptions, and other useful information. But these have become less and less important in the big SEO scheme of things. There are many reasons for this, but the primary reasons are that 1) meta tags can be exploited, and 2) search engines have become smarter, so they don't really need help. Rather than allowing people to manipulate search results by bloating their site with keywords, most search engines have begun to take a more organic (and accurate) approach. They crawl your site’s content and decide the importance of each word according to a set of pre-defined rules.

This doesn't mean that keywords are no longer important-- they’re just used a bit differently. It's wise to pick a small set of keywords for your site and use them often (and in specific contexts) in your page text. There are many subtle and clever ways of crafting your site’s content so that certain keywords are emphasized. These include 1) using keywords in headings, links, and boldface font, and 2) putting keywords closer to the top of the page.

It can be difficult to keep your site relevant and legible for your visitors while also keeping your content relevant and crawlable for search engines. It’s important to strike a balance between these goals which, from a search engine’s point of view, are one in the same. Many site owners make the mistake of ignoring SEO all together-- finding themselves practically invisible to any internet user that already looking for their site. Others will bloat their pages with keywords, links, and titles until the page is no longer worth reading! I’m sure that many readers are familiar with these advertisement-ridden internet blackholes that are devoid of all visiting value.

Written by Matthew Grasmick