Every day, people around the world search the Internet for answers. Almost 3.5 billion search queries have to be dealt with. If you don’t want to go under with your website on the Internet, you can’t avoid search engine optimization . We explain to you what is meant by SEO and what is important when it comes to implementation.
What is SEO
Simply put, SEO means getting found on Google. If you put a website online and want to run it professionally, SEO automatically becomes an issue. The SEO definition of course also includes other search engines. However, at 94.5 percent, Google has by far the highest market share.
According to acronymmonster, search engine optimization includes all measures that lead to websites, photos or videos ranking higher in the search results. The position in the search results is called the ranking.
If you want to improve SEO, you have to pay attention to the correspondence between the search query made by the user and the display of the search results. The SEO strategy works when the user arrives at a task solution on the website.
Why is SEO important?
With SEO optimization at Google, you invest in the future. The hardware is constantly changing and the preferred platforms are changing too. But search queries are made all the time. If you improve your SEO ranking today, you will still be found tomorrow.
If you want to attract customers with your website, you cannot do without SEO. For many companies the search engines are the most important instrument for customer acquisition. Search engine users are motivated buyers because they were led to the SEO website by a specific search term.
If the SEO optimization is carried out sustainably, the position of the search term will solidify and it will be easy for users to get exactly to your website.
What is the goal of SEO?
SEO advances Google. Custom-fit results can be provided at the request of users. Large and financially strong companies have long since lost position 1 of the search queries. The competition is increasing and with the right SEO optimization it is theoretically possible for every website operator to lead the search engine ranking.
So SEO does not just mean landing on position 1. Search engine optimization means achieving good positions with relevant search terms and relevant pages. Not only the Google SEO Check is decisive. SEO on Amazon or SEO on YouTube are also relevant. This means that the product or hotel search can also be optimized with SEO.
A tailor-made SEO text is required to motivate the user to click on the website.
What is a search engine?
If a search engine is mentioned, Google is usually the subject automatically . The already mentioned high market share gives Google a unique position in Europe.
In general terms, search engines are applications that search through data structures specifically for content and data types. The user defines the criteria taken into account by the search engine in advance.
Simply put, you enter a certain search term and Google will bring you relevant results pages. Online search engines also allow a specialized search for videos or images. Scientific search engines are available for a detailed search.
In addition to the market leader Google, you can use many other search engines. The search service Bing was launched by Microsoft and ranks behind Google as the most widely used search engine in Germany.
Yahoo operates a proprietary search engine. Alternative search engines such as WolframAlpha and DuckDuckGo are also an option .
How do search engines work?
Search engines scour the browser for certain content. You enter a specific keyword beforehand. The results are displayed in a search engine’s own algorithm. The lists provide the relevant results in descending order. This list of results is known in technical terms as the Search Engine Result Page, or SERP for short.
Actually, the search engines do not comb through the entire Internet, but are only on the move on the World Wide Web. Areas such as Usenet, FTP or e-mail are not affected.
The search leads to success within seconds. This is only possible if the search engine creates a so-called index. This index creates a categorization of the World Wide Web and thus simplifies the search. This index is already in the cache of the search engine operator. Searching the net is therefore not a real-time search, but actually an access to stored content. Ideally, however, there are only a few hours between the last update.
So-called crawlers are required to create a search engine index. Google calls these tools Googlebots. These programs are independently on the Internet and scan the websites. The content is captured and stored in memory. If the user enters a keyword, this is compared with the search engine index and the result list is created according to the relevance of the saved entries for the entered search term.
Why is a good ranking important to the search engines?
Just appearing anywhere in search results is not enough, unfortunately. Anyone looking for answers on the Internet wants to get to their destination as quickly as possible. More than 99 percent of users therefore rely on the results that are displayed to them on the first page. More than half focus solely on the search result in position 1.
The goal is to achieve the best possible ranking and, if possible, even to take the top position. The individual pages of the result list are usually only browsed when searching for complex content.
The position of a website on the list of results is determined by the Google algorithm. This uses around 200 different ranking factors.