Great, because I never have, and I never will, even though I first wrote a research paper on this subject in 1997! Algorithms change and become more responsive to your input on a daily basis. That’s why every time you search, the engine you use should get a more accurate overview of what you actually need to find. Keep looking for great car hire and the engine will very quickly know where you are located, what price range you are in, and how often you need to hire a car.
Do you really know all you need to know about how search engines find your web pages?
Why do you even have to understand the ins and outs of crawlers, bots, and spiders? (Technically they are the same thing, people just use different names). One massive reason that small business person should get their heads around the subject is this. Without this basic knowledge, you will fall foul of some unscrupulous marketer or analytics expert who will waste your hard-earned money on internet marketing strategies that will not work.
Do you still just stuff your copy with keyword after keyword and hope for the best? That strategy is guaranteed to get you penalized and move you rapidly down any ranking system ever devised. The teams at Google, Bing, and YouTube know every trick in the book, they invented them, (after Sir Tim Berners-Lee and his team). The only way to move up the rankings properly is to pay a lot of money or do what the savvy business person does and provide relevant content. If you are the best roofing contractor in your area make sure you tell everyone you are. Build trust with things like proper links, great content, and real customer reviews and feedback. Backlinks follow and the search engines start to index you in all the correct places.
How to Rank Highly once you know how Search Engines really work
It is a very simple method to learn even though it appears a very complex technical subject to learn and re-learn when Google decides to move the goalposts. By the way, the guys at Google move the goalposts constantly without necessarily telling many people.
The three things you have to address immediately if you want search engines to find you are;
- The Architecture of Your Site
- The Links to Your Site
- The Content on Your Site
Now, what are snippets and what do the search engines need from them?
Snippets
Snippets are critical pieces of information presented to the user of your website. Put simply, the snippet is broken down into a few key elements or components.
- The link to the website
- A description of the page
- The location and filename of the document
No one will click through to your website unless you have fulfilled the criteria for “snippet success”. How many times do you click away from a competitor if the description you read doesn’t really tell you what is on that website? We are all busy people so:
- Make it very Clear
- Make it Compelling
- Make it Concise
The three “C’s” will always bring you the initial success of more traffic.
Photo credit: Google
