This step is an introduction into search engines and the relationships between them. This information is valuable in helping SEOs understand how site rankings in one search engine / directory can influence rankings in other engines.
Throughout this course, (and commonly used on the Internet as well) the term "SE" is used as an abbreviation for "search engine(s)".
Search engines are the most popular method for target customers to find you. As such, SEs are the most vital avenue for letting customers find you.
Currently, search engines around the world together receive around 400,000,000 searches per day. The searches are done with the help of keywords: as a rule, people type a short phrase consisting of two to five keywords to find what they are looking for. It may be information, products, or services.
(For more information on the share of world searches received by major search engines per day, see http://www.freeseosemtraining.com/blog/search-engine-market-share-july-2007.htm).
In response to this query, a search engine will pick from its huge database of Web pages those results it considers relevant for the Web surfer's terms, and display the list of these results to the surfer. The list may be very long and include several million results (remember that nowadays the number of pages on the Web reaches 2.1 trillion, i.e. 2,100,000,000,000); so the results are displayed in order of their relevancy and broken into many pages (most commonly 10 results per page). Most Web surfers rarely go further than the third page of results, unless they are considerably interested in a wide range of materials (e.g. for a scientific research). One reason for this is that they commonly find what they look for on those first pages without the needing to dive in any deeper.
That's why a position among the first 30 results (or "top-30 listing") is a coveted goal.
There used to be a great variety of search engines, but now after major reshuffles and partnerships there are just several giant search monopolies that are most popular among Web surfers and which need to be targeted by optimizers.
There are – and the search engines are aware of this – more popular searches and less popular searches. For instance, a search on the word "myrmecology" is conducted on the Web much more rarely than a search for "Web hosting". Search engines make money by offering special high positions (most often called "sponsored results") for popular terms, ensuring that a site will appear to Web surfers when they search for this term, and that it will have the best visibility. The more popular the term, the more you will have to pay for such a listing.
In this step, we provide insight into how search engines work, how they relate to each other and how it can be of use for you and your Web business.
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