You’ve probably arrived at this post because you’re trying to get a better understanding of SEO. Although most people don’t realize this when a person goes to the search engine and types in something that they’re looking for, which we call a “search query”. The search engine will return results, which are usually relevant to the “search query“.
When these results are returned to the searcher, Google hopes are that they have provided the searcher with the most relevant information, on the first page of Google. Why the first page? because, in most cases, the public usually will not go past the first page of the returned results. On the other hand, some searches will go beyond the first page. However, they usually end up stopping their search by the time they get to page 3 and sometimes 4.
Moreover, usually, they do not scroll through the rest of the pages that were returned for the search query. There can be 40,100,000 pages returned to the end users during their search query so, they don’t take the time to go beyond page 3 or 4 and that is why you want to do your best to land on the first page of any search engine. Preferably Google but, if you end up on Bing or Yahoo that is still good.
What Is SEO For Beginners?
SEO stands for search engine optimization. It’s a method applied during your online marketing days to improve the visibility of your website by non-paid or free search engine results. In return, you’ll be able to drive organic traffic, grow the visibility of your website by the search engines, and you’ll have the possibility of getting ranked into a search engine by, search engine optimization or SEO.
Why is SEO For Beginners Important?
According to internetlivestats.com, there are over 1 billion websites on the world wide web today. Isn’t that a lot of websites? Of course, it is. So, without proper SEO there is a possibility that your website is invisible. It may never be seen. And, what point is it of having a website without anyone seeing it? I’ll tell yeah, you may never get visitors to your site.
It’s essential to properly build and format your website in an SEO friendly way so, that the search engines can easily digest your web content. It’s also important to know that not only does your website need to be SEO friendly for the search engines to digest but, it should be user-friendly for people too, so, that they can have a better experience while visiting your site.
Before Accomplishing SEO Friendly Sites
Before, accomplishing SEO friendly sites, you’ll need to first, learn, and understand the limitations. and the abilities of a search engine. For example, Google, Bing, and Yahoo are the most common search engines that are used. Nonetheless, search engines are very smart, but they aren’t as smart as a human being. With this being said, a search engine still needs help in understanding what to return for better results, to its end users.
In fact, this is the same way GPS works. I always thought that our GPS was determined by Satellites and some other kind of magical technology until I applied to be an Online Map Quality Analyst with Lionbridge. During that process, I learned that technology does not determine our routes or maps on GPS, instead, actual humans do. So, if you’re ever wondering why your destination was so far off, it’s because an actual human determines the GPS route from their home computer.
Anyway, It’s also important to understand that just because you have a website or you’ve submitted your website to the search engines. This does not mean that your site will be automatically visible for people to see. The truth is most websites that are new will start at the very bottom of millions and billions of websites. Until you’ve built up some kind of authority on your site and hopefully, applied the right SEO methods. In addition to this, wrong SEO methods can very well keep your site hidden. And, you do not want that!
Search Engines Have Two Major Functions
The First Major function is they crawl and index billions and billions of documents, files, news, pages, videos, and images, across the entire world wide web. When the search engines crawl the web it’s also referred to as “a spider, bots, or robots”. Today you may see me use the variety of the three terms, just remember they all mean the same. Anyhow, a spider or a bot uses software that’s deployed, once it’s deployed the internet bots will systematically browse the entire world wide web.
The spiders find and organize information on the web by following links and gathering all the billions of information, (plus keywords listed) on the internet. Then it takes this information, organizes it into indexes or references. After the information is indexed, it will then be ranked, for “search engine result pages” which are known as SERPS. Remember there are billions of documents on the internet so, this is why SEO is really imperative if you want to earn free organic traffic.
It’s also important to know that Google does not just rank your website itself. It’ll rank your web pages, videos, images, homepages, or any other page on your website. The Google spiders or bots will retrieve the content of the words, code, links, and other resources that make up your web page.
The second major function of a search engine is providing answers. Anyhow, when a person wants to know something, what usually happens? The answer is simple, they go to Google or any other search engine, and look for the answer. By typing in a question (search query) and the answer is returned (the returned search query results are based on the most relevant information)
I’ll provide some examples of this below:
A Search Query Can Look Like This
How – “How to do something. Like how to sell books on Amazon? The person searching for this wants to know how to sell books on Amazon. Of course, when that person goes to the search bar and types in this search query, they are typing in the words of “how to sell books on Amazon” because that is specifically what they’re looking for.
Where – Where is Wealthy Affiliate located? This is typed into as a search query because the person wants to know where to find the location.
What – What is Jaaxy? I’ve done a previous article on Jaaxy so, what if someone wanted to know what Jaaxy is. My article could very well show up in the search engines. Although, it is almost impossible because my article is not ranked right now. And, that is why it is important to understand SEO.
When – When is fall daylight savings? If someone wanted to know when fall daylight savings were to happen, they would type in the above question. Now I believe you get the understanding so, let’s move on.
PRO TIP: A search query is a request for information like a question, that is made by using the search engine bar.
What Are The Limitations And Abilities Of A Search Engine?
Limitations Of A Search Engine
Search engines are smart but they can’t see a web page, the same way as a human can. It’s like this, they understand more by reading the code, HTML, JavaScript, text, and keywords. Rather than understanding visual viewing like us. In other words, you can see an image but a robot can’t, which also means the search engine cannot see visuals on your website.
For example, if you were to place images on your web page, you can see it and everyone else can see the image but, the search engine can not. The search engine can only see the code, and keywords that the image has.
On the other hand, the search engine can see or understand your web page, because of the HTML file, not because it can literally eyeballing your website.
It is the same for your images, videos, or any other information on your site. It’s not able to see your images due to various reasons and that is because they only read code, HTML, JavaScript, and keywords. If your image does not contain keywords, the search engine can not see them. The spider or bots then returns with an incomplete understanding of your web page. Therefore, your web page can’t be indexed or ranked into the search engine.
How Does The Spider Or Bot Find Your Page?
Think of the internet as a “virtual highway”. Your website will also be your “Virtual Real Estate”. When the bots or spiders are sent out to crawl the virtual highway, they have to find all the stops along the way. In fact, they’ll make billions of stops along the way. In addition to this, the spiders or bots know when to stop. It will actually stop when it comes across a link and this is how your page or post are found by your website links or URL. In addition to this, the links allow the spider to reach the billions of interconnected documents on the world wide web.
Once the search engine finds the spider the code, it’s then deciphered and stored into segments of a massive database. moreover, they are then recalled (spiders) when a search query happens as well.
More importantly, the information that is returned during a search query will be the most relevant or useful information to the searcher’s question. And, the results that are returned are ranked by its popularity of the website serving the information.
Both relevance and popularity can influence SEO results. Search engines automatically assume the more relevant and popular the site is, the more valuable the information will be.
Abilities Of A Search Engine
The abilities of a search engine are providing answers to the end user who is searching for answers. And as you learned earlier crawling and indexing your website is an additional ability of the search engine.
When the major search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo cannot understand, find your website or even add your content to their enormous database you could be missing out on incredible opportunities to drive organic traffic to your site.
Why? I’ll answer that for you, if the spiders can’t find the coding, HTML, Javascript or keywords your website or web pages can seem nonexistent to the bots, which means that your web pages are going to be put to the back of the billions and billions of information within the database.
Of course, traffic can be driven by all social media platforms but, the primary traffic generator is by utilizing the three most popular search engines: Google, Bing, and Yahoo. So, why is that? Because search engines usually have more targeted traffic than social media.
For example: If you typed in your search bar to find information on “Understanding SEO for beginners”, then you have a chance of landing on this article.
Hence, that is targeted traffic but, if you typed in something like “How to cook green eggs and ham?” And ended up at this article it wouldn’t be considered targeted traffic, so this is when the search engines abilities come in. The person typing in “How to cook green eggs and ham” will be redirected to a more relevant article regarding green eggs and ham.
Whatever search query that is typed into the search bar, the search engine will return with relevant information. Then the highest ranking websites related to that query are shown to you on the first page of the search engines. Usually, you’ll see the first 10 most topped ranked sites within the return results on that first page.
Anyhow, having targeted traffic, being ranked on page one of the search engine can lead to potential revenue and major exposure to your website.
That’s why it is important to learn and understand SEO and try avoiding the mistake of making the wrong moves. It can totally make your website disappear. Now, you should have a basic understanding of what SEO is and how the search engines work.
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Until, Next Time…
Welp that is all from me today! Of course, this is not the SEO as a whole but, as a beginner, I feel like this is just as important to understand. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them below. I would be glad to help you out. As always have an awesome day! And, I would love to hear from you.
Oh yeah! One more thing, if you found this article to be helpful or it could help someone out, please do share this article with them.
Kisha