How Does SEO work?

Search Engines like Google, Yahoo!, etc. index pages on the Web by using what are commonly known as "spiders.” The “spiders” use links on web pages as a sort of freeway, traveling from site to site by following links. When the search engine finds a new web page, it will "crawl" the code on the page and transport it back to its datacenter. The “spider” may visit "indexed websites" everyday in order to keep the index fresh.

For example, Google's database maintains billions of pages. They use a proprietary formula (or algorithm) to "score" the relevancy of websites for each search query. The highest ranking or "most relevant" websites for a specific query are listed first in the search results.

Some other factors that seem to be major contributing factors in the algorithm of Google and other major search engines include:

• Keyword-rich, visible, on-page content in the form of paragraphs of complete sentences (not keyword after keyword separated by commas. This should be informative, descriptive text using words pertaining to your business.)
• Keywords in the title tag
• Keywords in the description tag
• The number of web pages out on the Web that are linking to your site
• The quality of the web pages out on the Web that are linking to your site
• The number of links on a page
• The keyword density of any particular section of text

Google awards "points" for how often keywords are mentioned, how prominent they are on the page and the location on the page. It is important not to overdo repetitive keywords… Google filters these sites out as "keyword spamming".

It is important to design your site with clean code. For the most part, the more text you have on your site, the better you will rank. This is because Google believes you are providing good information to you visitors. In essence, you are becoming an authority on a topic.