How Search Engine Works

In this chapter, we discuss how search engine works, the way people utilize them, and the ever-evolving process of search engines on delivering a greater experience to users.

To be a successful SEO professional, the first step you need to take is to gain a deeper understanding of the mechanism behind search engines and its ranking algorithms.

Contents are generated every single minute. People post on their social sites, blogs on useful/interesting topics, host a website, etc.

So what will happen if someone hosts their brand-new site online or uploads a web page?

It will get crawled.

Search Engines have thousands of active bots that regularly crawl this giant internet world to discover and explore web pages.

Once the page gets crawled, the next process that takes place is indexing.

Indexing is the process of understanding and storing the content in an organized way. It helps search engines to pick the most relevant and useful results if a user makes a query.

Let’s dive deeper,

Crawling ????️

The process of crawling involves discovering and exploring web pages that exist on the internet. Active Search Engine Crawlers will carry out this process. These crawlers are computer programs that systematically crawl to stay up-to-date and deliver relevant content to its users. They are also better known as Bots, Spiders, and Automatic Indexers.

These crawlers will read everything (Content, Heading, Headlines, Meta tags, Descriptions, PDF files, image, and video) they find on a particular page.

Furthermore, these crawlers will follow the links (HTTP) they find on a specific page and use it to discover other new web pages. This way, the bots crawl all the web pages and place them in the repository of known pages.

Best Practices

To get crawled faster, follow these practices.

Create your Website sitemap.
Block pages that you don’t want search engines to crawl with robots.txt.
Make sure that your homepage is linked to all pages, and it is good enough to navigate.
Create original & useful content.

Indexing ????️

Indexing involves storing all the content with its location in a vast set of databases. It understands, stores, and catalogues the web pages to fetch data easily. It takes up to eleven days to index a page. If your page is indexed, then it is much likely to show up on the search engine result pages.

Best Practices

To get indexed faster, follow these practices.

Make your page titles short, unique and meaningful.
The heading should convey the message straightforwardly
Use keywords in page titles, headings, and other sections
Optimize images & videos with alt text and other appropriate attributes

Ranking ????

Best Practices

To get better rankings, follow these practices.

Create Google My Business profile
Make your site load faster
Optimize for mobile devices
Update quality content regularly
Use AMP to turn your site user-first & deliver a frictionless user experience

Search engines, in general, have their own set of ranking algorithms. Many of these ranking factors are well-known, yet few of them are not unveiled.

Here’s the list of most important ranking factors you should work on,

Domain Age, URL Page, and Authority
Easy to Crawl
Website Speed
Mobile-friendly
Keywords & related phrases in page titles, headings & sessions
Make your page titles short, unique and meaningful.
The heading should convey the message straightforwardly
Use keywords in page titles, headings, and other sections
Engaging & Original content
Optimize images & videos with alt text and other appropriate attributes
CTR & Higher Session Duration
User Experience
Internal Link Building
External Link Building

Pro Tips: Content and Backlinks are the essential factors that help you rank your site. Create fresh, unique, relevant, and keyword-rich content. Equally, getting as much as quality backlinks from relevant and active domains can improve your site’s authority and ranking.

You’ve now got a thorough understanding of the process behind search engines. It’s time to look at how people use it, which helps you to optimize your site for both search engine-friendly and user-friendly.

Remember, gaining a top position on the SERP result is not an end goal. If your user didn’t find it useful, then it will affect your ranking. Therefore, consider making a user-first approach as the topmost priority.

SERP Updates

Competition is intensifying. Every single day, new sites are getting hosted on the internet. Once the newly created site or changes are indexed, it might impact the organic results too.

Being on the top position requires one to monitor their ranking position and making quick changes to outrank competitions.

Search Engines, with its updates, are making the gaming surface harder. Search engines are changing their algorithms to understand queries and deliver the most relevant content. Minor updates will don’t have much impact. However, a major algorithm change can have a drastic change in your ranking. Keep tracking the SERP updates regularly.

SERP Features

Search Engines are evolving and focusing on delivering the right answers to users’ queries. Google is adding featured snippets to its search results, which help users to get complete information about their search. These rich snippets are influencing Google Search Users. As they’re visually compelling and covers all and most relevant information, users are more likely to click on those results than other organic results.

The List of Google’s Rich Snippets,

Zero Position
Featured Snippets
Answer Boxes
Local Pack Results
Knowledge Graph
People Also Ask
Video Featured Snippet
Ratings Snippet
Sitelinks
Recipes
Events
Q&A
Top Stories

Making your website ranked on any of these featured snippets will drive higher and quality traffic to your site.

Pretty much clear about how search engine works? Now its time to learn about keyword research.

How Search Engine Works – Crawling, Indexing, Ranking & SERPs.