Search Engine 101

Every web master is looking for more, highly targeted traffic. SEO, or Search Engine Optimization can help with that goal. Tremendous amounts of traffic can come from a few small changes in SEO.

A search engine searches the web for information on relevant topics found on web sites. Internet searches are performed using keywords. The search engines keep an index of keywords and where they found them. For instance, if you search for the keyword vitamin, the search engine will return a list of sites that contain the word vitamin. The search engines sort through infinite amounts of data to help searchers find exactly what they're looking for.

The search engine needs to find the information to be able to provide users with relevant results. This is done using what are called web robots or spiders. The search engine spiders always "crawl" pages looking for new content. Once they find this information it is organized and indexed into a list. In looking for new information the web spiders generally begin on popular sites. Then they follow each link on the site. The words on the website are indexed along with the links on the site to keep track of where they were found.

At optimal levels the spiders are very fast covering about 100 pages per second. Spiders crawl web pages from behind the scenes, from top to bottom, left to right, much like we read the page. The keyword closest to the top is given more relevance. As are keywords in bold, title text, underlined, italicized or highlighted in some way.

In addition to the text you see the spiders also read the meta tags on the site. Meta tags allow the webmaster to select key words and ideas to help index the site.

Once the information is found and indexed it is organized to be used by searchers. The index includes the key word or key word phrase, The URL, and how many times the keyword appeared on the page. The job of the search engine is to return the most relevant results for your search, so key words are weighted based on the density of the keyword on the site.

The specifics of how the search engines work is a highly guarded secret. In order to optimize your page, you must know some of the basics of how the search engines work.

If you want more traffic from search engines, then you must practice good SEO. There are many resources and information available like articles, eBooks and even free SEO courses.