Introduction to SEO:
SEO is the abbreviated form of search engine optimization which is a method of improving upon the amount and level of traffic to a particular site in an organic, natural and algorithmic way, with the help of search engines. Search Engine Optimization helps people in choosing the best site to pursue when searching on any particular topic or information as the site which is the most popular appears at the top and those less popular follow the first. SEO works by contemplating the working of search engines and what searchers search for usually. It helps the search engines by optimizing sites , which usually involves editing the web sites content and HTML to make it more keyword relevant (so as to make it’s searching easier) and destroy the barriers which interfere in the indexing activities of search engines.
How do search engines work?
There are many types of search engines and each had its unique type of functioning. The first type of search engine is: crawler – based search engine. It works by crawling through the sites like a spider and providing the searchers with a list of sites as search results, the searcher can then choose from among this list of sites. It has automatic list creating ability, depending on the web site content, outlook, page titles, key word optimization and most importantly popularity (ranking).It lists the web sites according to their ranking, the most popular being at the top. In case of any changes if the web pages, the listing and ranking of the web sites is affected for the better or worse because the changes are noticed and registered by the crawler based search engine. Google is an example of this type of search engine.
Crawler-based search engines consist mainly of three parts; the first part being the spider or crawler which crawls through the sites to find those sites that the searcher is looking for. Now all the sites and information that the spider finds is passed to the second part of this search engine which is known as the index. The index arranges the sites according to its ranking. The third part of the crawler based search engine is the software which is responsible for making this search engine work. Although all the crawler based search engines work on the same principal but it’s not necessary that they will show the same results, this is because of some internal makeup differences.
The second type of search engine is the human – powered dictionaries. These search engines prepare their lists on the basis of the reviews that a site receives from reviewers. In this case any change in the website pages, outlook or content has no effect on the listings or the ranking of the site. This however is not an excuse to compromise with a web sites quality as that is what determines the kind of response and reviews which a site receives and change in the web content and outlook can affect the reviews and therefore its ranking .These days most of the search engines work on the combined principal of crawler based search engines as well as human – powered dictionaries for better listing and search results.
The major search engines
The most in demand search engines ruling the internet these days are: Google, Yahoo, MSN /Links, Ask and Bing .Among these Google works on the principal of crawler based search engines and is preferred by 70 % of the internet users as a search engine.
