By Dave Davies
For some unfortunate souls SEO is simply the learning of tricksand techniques that, according to their understanding, shouldpropel their site into the top rankings on the major searchengines. This understanding of the way SEO works can beeffective for a time however it contains one basic flaw: therules change. Search engines are in a constant state ofevolution in order to keep up with the SEO's in much the sameway that Norton, McAfee, AVG or any of the other anti-virussoftware companies are constantly trying to keep up with thevirus writers.
Basing your entire websites future on one simple set of rules(read: tricks) about how the search engines will rank your sitecontains an additional flaw, there are more factors beingconsidered than any SEO is aware of and can confirm. That’sright, I will freely admit that there are factors at work that Imay not be aware of and even those that I am aware of I cannotwith 100 percent accuracy give you the exact weight they aregiven in the overall algorithm. Even if I could, the algorithmwould change a few weeks later and what’s more, hold your hatsfor this one: there is more than one search engine.
So if we cannot base our optimization on a set of hard-and-fastrules what can we do? The key my friends, is not to understandthe tricks but rather what they accomplish. Reflecting back onmy high school math teach Mr. Barry Nicholl I recall a sillystory that had a great impact. One weekend he had the entireclass watch Dumbo The Flying Elephant (there was actually goingto be a question about it on our test). Why? The lesson we wereto get from it is that formulas (like tricks) are the feather inthe story. They are unnecessary and yet we hold on to them inthe false belief that it is the feather that works and not thelogic. Indeed, the tricks and techniques are not what works butrather the logic they follow and that is their shortcoming. AndSo What Is Necessary?
To rank a website highly and keep it ranking over time one mustoptimize it with one primary understanding, that a search engineis a living thing. Obviously this is not to say that searchengines have brains, I will leave those tales to Orson ScottCard and other science fiction writers, however their verynature results in a lifelike being with far more storagecapacity.
If we consider for a moment how a search engine functions; itgoes out into the world, follows the road signs and paths to getwhere it’s going, and collects all of the information in itspath. From this point, the information is sent back to a groupof servers where algorithms are applied in order to determinethe importance of specific documents. How are these algorithmsgenerated? They are created by human beings who have a greatdeal of experience in understanding the fundamentals of theInternet and the documents it contains and who also have thecapacity to learn from their mistakes, and update the algorithmsaccordingly. Essentially we have an entity that collects data,stores it, and then sorts through it to determine what’simportant which it’s happy to share with others and what’sunimportant which it keeps tucked away. So Let’s Break It Down
To gain a true understanding of what a search engine is, it’ssimple enough to compare it to the human anatomy as, though notbreathing, it contains many of the same core functions requiredfor life. And these are:
The Lungs & Other Vital Organs – The lungs of a search engineand indeed the vast majority of vital organs are containedwithin the datacenters in which they are housed. Be it in theform of power, Internet connectivity, etc. As with the humanbody, we do not generally consider these important in definingwho we are, however we’re certainly grateful to have them andneed them all to function properly.
The Arms & Legs – Think of the links from the engine itself asthe arms and legs. These are the vehicles by which we get wherewe need to go and retrieve what needs to be accessed. While wedon’t commonly think of these as functions when we’reconsidering SEO these are the purpose of the entire thing. Muchas the human body is designed primarily to keep you mobile andable to access other things, so too is the entire search enginedesigned primarily to access the outside world.
The Eyes – The eyes of the search engine are the spiders (AKArobots or crawlers). These are the 1s and 0s that the searchengines send out over the Internet to retrieve documents. In thecase of all the major search engines the spiders crawl from onepage to another following the links, as you would look downvarious paths along your way. Fortunately for the spiders theyare traveling mainly over fiber optic connections and so theirability to travel at light speed enables them to visit all thepaths they come across whereas we as mere humans have to be abit more selective.
The Brain – The brain of a search engine, like the human brain,is the most complex of its functions and components. The brainmust have instinct, must know, and must learn in order tofunction properly. A search engine (and by search engine we meanthe natural listings of the major engines) must also includethese critical three components in order to survive.
The Instinct – The instinct of a search engines is defined init’s core functions, that is the crawling of sites and eitherthe inability to read specific types of data, or the programmedresponse to ignore files meeting a specific criteria. Even theprogrammed responses become automated by the engines and thusfall under the category of instinct much the same as thewesternized human instinct to jump from a large spider islearned. An infant would probably watch the spider or even eatit meaning this is not an automatic human reaction.
The instinct of a search engines is important to understandhowever once one understands what can and cannot be read and howthe spiders will crawl a site this will become instinct for youtoo and can then safely be stored in the “autopilot” part ofyour brain.
The Knowing – Search engines know by crawling. What they knowgoes far beyond what is commonly perceived by most users,webmasters and SEOs. While the vast storehouse we call theInternet provides billions upon billions of pages of data forthe search engines to know they also pick up more than that.Search engines know a number of different methods for storingdata, presenting data, prioritizing data and of course, way oftricking the engines themselves.
While the search engine spiders are crawling the web they aregrabbing the stores of data that exist and sending it back tothe datacenters, where that information is processed throughexisting algorithms and spam filters where it will attain aranking based on the engine’s current understanding of the waythe Internet and the documents contained within it work.
Similar to the way we process an article from a newspaper basedon our current understanding of the world, the search enginesprocess and rank documents based on what they understand to betrue in the way documents are organized on the Internet.
The Learning – Once it is understood that search engines rankdocuments based on a specific understanding of the way theInternet functions, it then follows that in order to insure thatnew document types and technologies are able to be read and thatthe algorithm be changed as new understandings of thefunctionality of the Internet are uncovered a search engine musthave the ability to “learn”.
Aside from a search engine needing the ability to properlyspider documents stored in newer technologies, search enginesmust also have the ability to detect and accurately penalizespam and as well as accurately rank websites based on newunderstandings of the way documents are organized and linksarranged. Examples of areas where search engines must learn inan ongoing basis include but are most certainly not limited to:
* Understanding the relevancy of the content between siteswhere a link is found * Attaining the ability to view thecontent on documents contained within new technologies such asdatabase types, Flash, etc. * Understanding the various methodsused to hide text, links, etc. in order to penalize sitesengaging in these tactics * Learning from current results andany shortcoming in them, what tweaks to current algorithms orwhat additional considerations must be taken into account toimprove the relevancy of the results in the future.
The learning of a search engine generally comes from theuber-geeks hired by and the users of the search engines. Once afactor is taken into account and programmed into the algorithmit them moves into the “knowing” category until the next roundof updates. How This Helps in SEO
This is the point at which you may be asking yourself, “This isall well-and-good but exactly how does this help ME?” Anunderstanding of how search engines function, how they learn,and how they live is one of the most important understandingsyou can have in optimizing a website. This understanding willinsure that you don’t simply apply random tricks in hopes thatyou’ve listened to the right person in the forums that day butrather that you consider what is the search engine trying to doand does this tactic fit with the long term goals of the engine.
For a while keyword density spamming was all the rage among theless ethical SEOs as was building networks of websites to linktogether in order to boost link popularity. Neither of thesetactics work today and why? They do not fit with the long-termgoals of the search engine. Search engines, like humans, want tosurvive. If the results they provide are poor then the enginewill die a slow but steady death and so they evolve.
When considering any tactic you must consider, does this fitwith the long-term goals of the engine? Does this tactic ingeneral serve to provide better results for the largest numberof searches? If the answer is yes then the tactic is sound.
For example, the overall relevancy of your website (i.e. doesthe majority of your content focus on a single subject) hasbecome more important over the past year or so. Does this helpthe searcher? The searcher will find more content on the subjectthey have searched on larger sites with larger amounts ofrelated content and thus this shift does help the searcheroverall. A tactic that includes the addition of more content toyour site is thus a solid one as it helps build the overallrelevancy of your website and gives the visitor more and updatedinformation at their disposal once they get there.
Another example would be in link building. Reciprocal links arebecoming less relevant and reciprocal-links between unrelatedsites are virtually irrelevant. If you are engaging inreciprocal link building insure that the sites you link to arerelated to your site’s content. As a search engine I would wantto know that a site in my results also provided links to otherrelated sites thus increasing the chance that the searcher wasgoing to find the information that they are looking for one wayor another without having to switch to a different searchengine
Article Source: www.ArticlesBase.com
