How Search Engines Work

Here’s the business model: Search engines are in the business of selling targeted advertising. To accomplish that task, search engines must present to searchers the most relevant results of a search. The more relevant the results are, the more targeted the advertising can be, and the happier the advertisers are. Happy advertisers spend more money and tell other advertisers about their great results. From the search engine’s point of view, the more relevant the search results, the more money they make.

To help make searches more relevant, the search engines analyze the structure of web pages to better understand various factors. They give these various factors different levels of importance or “weight” in a complex formula. Each search engine has a different formula. To prevent others from “playing the system,” the search engines keep the formulas secret. They also constantly tweak the formula to improve it. In spite of the secrecy and tweaking, many factors in the formula have been deduced over the years.

That's where search engine optimization comes in. Ethical SEO is the process of fine tuning a Web site to better fit the requirements of the search engines.

Various techniques include optimizing the content, optimizing the code, and acquiring inbound links, among others. Many techniques center around “keywords,” those words or phrases the searcher might use in an effort to search for your products or services. Because keywords and key phrases are at the foundation of SEO, a great deal of effort is put into keyword research to ensure the right keywords are chosen.