Have you ever really wondered how search engines work - really?

When you’ve been doing something for a long time, sometimes it is easy to forget that your personal knowledge is not necessarily common knowledge. As strange as it may seem I am still surprised when folks tell me they don’t really understand how websites get to the top of search engines. Each time I get the question, “how do search engines work?” I am still awestruck. Not because they don’t know, and never to defame the character or intellect of a client or friend, but I am just surprised. It seems like old information, like how does the light in the refrigerator turn on when you open the door.

So I thought I would de-mystify the basics of how search engines work, and in a little less tech way than the usual professional SEO person would. And if that’s OK with you – it’s something like this.
Take yourself back to 2nd grade, back when you began taking reading comprehension tests. I know it may hurt to think back that far, but would you try for me? On the standardized tests (at least in Florida) you would be given a story to read, maybe only a few sentences, and you had to answer an important multiple choice question: What is the main idea of this paragraph or story?

Believe it or not, search engines work in kind of the same way, with some other visual cues added in. A search engine visits a web PAGE (not web site) and applies a formula (a.k.a. algorithm) to determine the main idea and sub ideas of a web page and grades (scores) the page based on the main idea (theme) and lists it in their catalog (index). But this is where it get’s a little more fun . . . in the case of Google and some other search engines – they also consider what other folks say the web page is about, too, and calculate that into the page’s grades. Then imagine a collective grading system, where your “main idea” of the paragraph story is also compared to the “main idea” of that others chose on their test – and whichever “main ideas” are chosen the most, that’s how the web page is cataloged.

Sounds simple right, well, in some ways it is. So lets talk about those visual cues mentioned earlier. Each cue has some scoring factor assigned to it, contributing its value to the overall score. Let’s go back to the elementary school example of reading comprehension – except now, you get to write your own paragraphs.
You are now the storyteller, and your only goal is to help the reader understand the story as clearly as possible. Before you write a 3 – 4 paragraph story, you probably would already have a theme. Sticking with 2nd grade writing – let’s say that the short story is about a little boy named Tommy who gets a Red Bike as a birthday present. I have put the visual search engine cues in bold here to help define them in SEO terms.

If you wanted others to read the story (content) you would include a Title (also called title in search engine terms), so they know what the story is about. You may even add a headline or subtitle (header tags) to add dramatic effect. When you get to an exciting part of the story, you may use BOLD (strong tags) letters. And in the course of the story you would probably repeat things like, new bicycle, red bicycle, and the fact that it’s Tommy’s birthday (keywords and keyword density). So after you write your story, you then have to tell folks where to find it. Maybe you would even get your friends to tell their friends where to find it (back links), so that folks wanting to read a story about a red bicycle can find your story more easily.

So a search engine reads your Title, and the content of the page to calculate the keyword density, and theme. It also looks for bolding and header tags to see what the writer thinks is important, and then checks around to see if other folks agree to the web page findings by reviewing the keywords being used to link back to the site.

If you’ve written your story well, the search engine now understands that it’s about red bicycles for birthday presents, and if you’re friend’s links include a mixture of words around the same theme, the search engine will catalog your web page on that topic.

The tricky part is how to make that cataloged story (web page) appear in the first page of the search engine when someone types in red bicycle for birthday or red bicycle for Tommy. Its tricky because there is competition for your keywords. Hard to imagine, but it’s true, other people want their websites to have higher placement (rank) in the search engines for the same keywords as you. So Google and the other search engines apply their formula (algorithm) to assign the theme and assign your grade (rank) in comparison to the competition. And your website is listed (ranked) accordingly. Sort of like when your teacher posted grades on the board and ranked the list by highest score in descending order. The 100’s at the top, followed by the 90’s, then the 80’s etc.

So really that’s it – well the heart of it. According to the different online SEO experts, the search engines may use as many as 100 different factors in calculating the search engine rankings, but remembering your audience is the key factor. If you write your stories (web content) with the primary focus on making it easier to understand, and allow yourself to think into the mind and heart of the human who’s searching for you, you will begin to get better results and more humans visiting you from the search engines.