Search Optimisation - the methodology behind Power SEO

There are well over 1 billion regular internet users worldwide, making use of more than 65,000,000 web sites, which contain literally billions of individual web pages. It is the world's search engines, such as Google, Yahoo and MSN/Live, which are responsible for cataloguing this massive resource.

The huge amount of web content provides the search engines with a complex challenge: to systematically index their huge databases in such a way as to provide relevant results to web users.

They achieve this in two stages -

• Crawling the web - Search engines use web crawlers (also known as spiders or robots) to record the content of the web. A web crawler is an automatic script or program which visits and makes a copy of all the pages that it visits, storing the data in the search engine's database for later retrieval. It crawls through the web by automatically jumping from hyperlink to hyperlink in web pages, and by following site maps to web sites' content. Web sites which have sound structures, internal linking strategies and site maps in place will be picked up by these web crawlers.
  
  
• Indexing the web - Search engines must then index their huge databases into a relevant order, making it possible for web users to find the resources on the Web they are looking for. This involves the application of an algorithm to their database of web pages, to determine the order in which results are returned to a search engine user when they enter a search query. A search engine algorithm is the equation or programming rule determining the order in which search engine results are presented.

Understanding and decoding search engine algorithms is at the heart of search engine optimisation - search engine optimisation is the process of optimising a web site's pages in order to (as closely as possible), match the requirements of a search engine's algorithm. The more closely a web site matches what the search engine is looking for via its algorithm, the higher the web site will appear in the search engine's results pages.

However, search engines use a great number of factors in determining their algorithm so as to exclude "spamdexing", which is the process of manipulating search engine results to provide a web site with a higher search engine position than its actual content would warrant.

The key to quality search engine results lies in the term "relevancy". Nobody wants to be directed to irrelevant web sites by search engines, and so search engines go to enormous lengths to conceal how they arrive at their algorithms and to stop them being fraudulently manipulated.

The use of search engines has evolved quickly since the emergence of the world wide web as a commercial medium in the early 1990's. Two events from 1993 have formed the foundation of our use of the web today -

1. The invention of the Mosaic web browser, a piece of software allowing web users to view graphics and texts in context. Today the 2 dominant web browsers are Internet Explorer and Mozilla's Firefox.
   
   
2. The development of the first commercial search engines - Lycos in 1993 and Webcrawler in 1994 (which is now a meta-search engine). Yahoo and Altavista quickly followed in 1995 and became the early industry leaders. It is interesting to note that of the four just mentioned, only Yahoo is still a major player. This is due to the rise of Google and MSN, forming a triumvirate of three search engines, through which 90% of all searches are processed.

Google's market dominance

You can see in the charts at right how the world of search engines has narrowed down to a few providers.

In fact, in the 1999 chart, of the 17 search results providers listed, only 5 are still considered significant players in 2008 - Google, Yahoo, MSN/Live, AltaVista, and AskJeeves (now known simply as Ask).

Of the remainder, Go, Looksmart, Snap, Goto, Directhit and Northern Light are all either defunct or are no longer regarded as primarily search engines.

Much of this change has come about due to the spectacular rise to market dominance of Google, whose impact is, if anything, understated in the 2007 chart at right, as it also provides primary search results for significant search engines such as AOL, Lycos, Iwon, Netscape and Hotbot.

Google is recognised everywhere as the most popular search engine in the world - in fact the word "Google" has became interchangeable with "search" in popular parlance.

Google had just 1.1% of the search engine market in 1999, and yet now powers the majority of searches performed on the Internet, world-wide.

Google's remarkable growth in popularity, and other search engines' willingness to partner with them, has come about primarily because of Google's reputation for accuracy and relevancy in their search results. This was achieved by devising an algorithm (the formula which the search engine employs to extract results from it's huge databases) universally recognised as producing the most relevant set of results to searchers' queries.

Search Engine Algorithms

Search engine algorithms will include many factors, some internal to a web site's functionality, and others external, such as the assessment of inbound links to a web site.

An excellent example of an algorithm at work can be found by typing the word "music" into Google.com's query box.

Google will return more than 3,000,000,000 (3 billion!) results. Google's algorithm is processed when the query is entered, and the search engine then returns, in ranked order of relevancy, its results to the web user.

Complexity of Algorithms

To demonstrate the complexity of this algorithm, we'll look a little more closely at just one of the aspects of a web site that Google includes - PageRank.

PageRank is Google's numeric value that represents how "important" Google regards a page to be, and is one of the factors in Google's overall algorithm.

Consider the formula governing Google's pagerank system -

PR(A) = (1-d) + d(PR(t1)/C(t1) + ... + PR(tn)/C(tn))

Google calculates that when one page links to another page, it is effectively casting a "vote" for the other page. However, the importance of the page that is casting the vote determines the value of the vote itself. Google calculates a page's importance from the votes cast for it. How important each vote is, is taken into account when a page's PageRank is calculated.
Though its importance has declined in recent years, PageRank is still one of many elements that determine a page's ranking in Google's search results.

A fuller explanation of the above formula can be found here.

When we consider that pagerank is only one aspect of Google's algorithm for search engine results, we can see that it is a complex business, as is the process of analysing and optimising a web site so as to increase its traffic and search engine positions.

Here are some other Google algorithm factors...

1. Google 'spiders' or analyses the content of most of the the pages in each site submitted to it.
2. Google gives the web site extra 'weight' or value if it has listings in other major search engines or directories such as the Open Directory or Yahoo (though this is now decreasing in importance as a factor in their algorithm).
3. Google analyses the site as a whole. Let's say Google has 50 pages from your site listed in it's database. If all those pages contain content relevant to closely related topics, that strengthens your site's position for all those topics.
4. Google also counts and analyses the sites linking to yours (see pagerank above). This is one of the critical factors in producing Google's accurate results, and in getting top positions in their search database. It's not enough just to have a lot of sites linking to yours. It used to be, until Google went one step further and decided to gauge the quality and content of the linking sites.

Link building is an often poorly understood concept in search engine optimisation.

A misconception exists that the higher the number of inbound links to a site, the higher the site's ranking. However, the method by which a search engine algorithm interprets inbound links is, as in the example of pagerank, much more sophisticated. Google, in particular, will analyse not just the number of links that point to your site, but their relevance and quality.

An Example -

Site A makes database software for computers. It has hundreds of sites linking to it, only a few of which contain content directly related to database software.
Site B also makes database software for computers, but has highly rated software sites such as Microsoft, Dell, Sun Microsystems and IBM linking to it.

Site B will achieve higher prominence in Google, as the more relevant sites linking to Site B are, in effect, endorsing the quality and relevancy of Site B. After all, those sites are full of content about databases, computing and software.
Put simply, Google ranks your site based partly on the quality and relevancy of sites which link to yours.

Our Power SEO campaigns are geared specifically towards high rankings in Google.

Optimising for Yahoo and MSN/Live

As the number of major search results providers has been refined down to a handful of search engines, the key to internet marketing has become focused on Google, Yahoo and MSN / Live Search. Having already discussed Google's dominance and optimisation factors, we now look at the other 2 major players - Yahoo, and MSN/Live.

Yahoo

Yahoo were the first commercial giants of the search engine world. Their web directory was the original benchmark for quality results from searches, because of a human factor - Yahoo established their reputation due to the fact that their directory listings were added by humans, not web-crawling software.

But as the web exploded in size, there was no way they could economically keep up with the incredible increase in the number of web sites - there were just 130 in 1993, while in January 2008 there were more than 65,000,000(!) active web sites on the Net.
Consequently Yahoo were forced to forge partnerships with companies such as Inktomi to supplement the results from their directory listings. In fact, in 2002 Yahoo went as far as to partner with Google, with Google providing Yahoo's secondary listings.

Yahoo soon recognised that in order to stand alone and compete with Google, they were going to have to develop and implement their own web crawler. Accordingly they purchased AltaVista (a major search engine with existing crawler based technology), and in 2004 broke with Google, re-launching their search engine using their new crawler-based technology. Today when you search Yahoo, the results come from their crawler-compiled database, mixed with their directory listings.

MSN/Live

Like Yahoo, MSN suffered a large slice of market share at the hands of Google, sliding from 31% of web searches down to a current state of under 10%.

In late 2003 MSN announced the development of their own crawler-based search engine. Previously MSN had relied on results from Looksmart, Inktomi and sponsored listings. This change to their own crawler-based technology represented a major step, and indicated that MSN intended to compete directly with Google and Yahoo for the top end of the search engine market.
After 16 months of intensive development, MSN re-launched their site with their new search technology in January of 2005 in beta mode, and in September 2006 re-launched their search capabilities under the banner "Live Search", and since then have been promoting their search capabilities heavily.

Our Power SEO campaigns are geared specifically towards high rankings in Yahoo and MSN/Live.

Searches performed on Google, Yahoo and MSN make a combined total of 91% of all searches performed on the web.

The key to optimising a web site for high rankings on these search engines lies in understanding the things they have in common -

• They all use crawler technology
• They all use xml site maps to crawl web sites
• They all use algorithms which focus on quality content
• Their algorithms have similar interpretations for aspects of optimisation such as keyword density
• Their algorithms have similar interpretations for metatags and other source code content
• They all offer sophisticated webmaster controls for managing web site content in their databases
• They all analyse web sites for the number, quality and relevancy of inbound links

S.E.O. Technologies has been in the business of search engine optimisation since 1998, developing highly successful web promotion campaigns for our clients, constantly fine-tuning and refining our methodologies and strategies. In fact, that's what S.E.O. stands for - search engine optimisation. We understand how MSN/Live, Google and Yahoo work. We optimise web sites to fit their algorithms, and we develop linking strategies to maximise the value of our clients' sites.

Our Power SEO campaigns are highly developed hybrid search engine optimisation and linking strategies which produce high rankings on Google, Yahoo and MSN/Live.

Our Power SEO package has been developed in three variations - Our Starter campaign, for small businesses with the requirement for only one or two keyphrases to be promoted, our Budget campaign (one of the best value for money SEO campaigns on the market), and a Premium campaign for companies with a need for intensive, multiple keyphrase promotion.

We back up our claims as an expert SEO service - with detailed seo plans, case studies, testimonials, white papers and more -

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Detailed search engine optimisation plan - Find out exactly how we will go about promoting your web site. SEO Case Studies and Testimonials - No anonymous references - See why our clients are happy with our services, in their own words. SEO Services Comparison - Compare our SEO campaigns side-by-side and see which one best fits your requirements. SEO White Paper - We have a detailed methodology behind what we do - here it is, clearly explained.. SEO Glossary - Confused by S.E.O. jargon? Here's what it all means.