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Search Engine 101
When promoting your web site or online business most webmasters are looking for more targeted visitors. Search engine optimization otherwise known as SEO can help you accomplish that goal.
If you have a website to promote, you would probably like more traffic. Who wouldn’t? Search engines are a fantastic free source of traffic. SEO other wise known as Search Engine Optimization can help get more search engine traffic.
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.
In order for a search engine to be able to provide relevant results it has to find the information for itself. This is done using what are called web robots or spiders. These spiders constantly “crawl” the Internet 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. They index the words on the web sites and in the links keeping track of where they were found.
At optimal levels the spiders are very fast covering about 100 pages per second. The spiders review web pages behind the scenes from left to right top to bottom just like we do. Keywords close to the top of the page are given more weight. So are words in bold, title text, underline, italicized or highlight.
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. It is important to understand some of the basics of how the search engines work in order to optimize your page for the search engines.
If you want to maximize the traffic you receive from search engines it is important to practice good SEO. There’s a tremendous amount of information available on the Internet including articles, eBooks and even free courses teaching SEO techniques.