SEO stands for search engine optimization. A search engine is a tool that scours the internet for data and then shows this information back to the user that requested the information. When a user goes to a search engine, and enters a keyword, information is gathered from the data from algorithms. This information is then relayed back to the user, with the most reputable and relative websites being on the top of their results. A few examples of search engines are Google, Yahoo, and Bing. These websites can be considered as the librarians of the internet. When a user requests for a certain keyword or website these search engines output the most relevant answer to the user.
These search engines use algorithms to find and organize data. This is essentially how a search engine works. An algorithm is basically a process that is to be followed in calculations and other problem-solving operations, by a computer. In layman’s terms it is a set of instructions that a computer must execute to get a desired output. In the case of search engine algorithms are used to find the most relative, useful, and accurate data points available on the internet. A search engine algorithm indexes every website for the data it holds and stores nuggets of information about these websites. When a user then searches for a certain keyword, the algorithm goes through the nuggets of data it has collected and determines which results are the best suited.
Now if you own a website and you wish to have it appear higher on a list of results for a specific keyword say SEO Toronto, you must be able to recognize and adapt to what algorithms of these search engines are looking for. Aspects that most algorithms are tuned to look for are:
- Words: All the words in a webpage are important for relevant feedback. These are indexed and often used to bring up most relevant data to a user.
- Titles: The title of your webpage is one of the most important keys to ensure a search engines algorithm selects your page for a required output.
- Links: If a lot of other websites have links that lead to your webpage, it automatically makes your webpage more noticeable to the search engines algorithms.
- Reputation: The validity and quality of a website and the number of trustworthy links that lead to it increase the position of the webpage in a search result.
The entire point of an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is to make the webpage you own more visible. Especially when searches related to your website/field is made in a search engine. The more reputable your webpage is the higher a search engine will list it on their results page. There are many services that know how to optimize these algorithms to ensure highest possible visibility. There are two ways of SEO: Black hat & White hat. Black hat methods are generally unfair manipulation that is used to quickly yield results. Whereas, white hat methods are genuine and respectable methods of gaining more traffic.
