Search engine optimization, or SEO, is probably the utmost skill to master for those who consider building a website. With this skill, the web page will most likely reach the purpose for which it created. For example, one might create a website to get as many visitors as possible.
But what is search engine optimization? Why is it important for website development? Or, what does search engine optimization do for website?
People nowadays rely on the internet to search virtually everything. But they don’t have time to search that deep. When they search something, they will look at the top websites appeared on the first resulted pages. If they couldn’t find what they’re searching, they keep going to the next page. But they wouldn’t bother to go further.
As the name suggest, Search Engine Optimization is a way to make website rank the top on search engine result page (SERP). And, why does it important to rank the top on SERP? The above description tells the reason.
The probability of people clicking and viewing the websites on the top pages is higher than the ones that aren’t. And in term of internet marketing, the more clicks and views mean the more possibility for sales. That is why a web needs search engine optimization.
How Search Engine Works
Search engine is a website people use to do the search. People also call it browser. There are many browsers such as Yahoo, Bing, Mozilla, etc. Even Instagram and Facebook can serve as search engines but only within their applications. However, the most popular one is probably Google.
The search engines, like Google, use a program, called crawler, to discover websites. They work automatically and constantly to explore the web. The websites are then collected, categorized, and stored in Google index.
When users search something, they type the words they have in mind relating to it on the browser. These are the queries. Using complex formula, Google works to order the websites responding to the query, based on some criteria. Then, it displays the websites on its result page from their index.
The complex formula in search engine is called algorithm. Algorithm will factor the users’ experience with the website and determine its relevance and quality. This, in turn, will determine the rank the website will surface in queries. SEO works by taking into account how search engine works.
There is basically no specific way to rank the top on result page. If the websites’ content meets the criteria, Google will display them. But to optimize and appear on the search engine result top page, websites should have factors that can rank them on Google top pages.
In SEO, there should be a combination of on-page, off-page, and technical optimizations. However, as a start, websites should contain keywords that are aligned with the users’ queries.