How do search engines work?

Search engines are really just a digital library storing copies of web pages. Imagine how much web content is stored from different companies? When you consider how few search results you see on a first search page, how is your web page information going to reach that first page? Well, that's where search engine optimisation comes in.

How does seo work?

When you type your query into a search engine, it looks through all the pages in its index and tries to return the most relevant results. To do this, a computer program called an algorithm is used. Nobody knows exactly how these algorithms work, but we do have some clues from Google.

"To give you the most useful information, Search algorithms look at many factors, including the words of your query, relevance and usability of pages, expertise of sources and your location and settings. The weight applied to each factor varies depending on the nature of your query – for example, the freshness of the content plays a bigger role in answering queries about current news topics than it does about dictionary definitions."

Google has an estimated 90%+ share of the search engine market so if you are interested in SEO, it pays to know how Google's optimisation works. For example, Google give an automatic SEO boost for all sites that have good mobile accessibility.

Simply put, SEO works by showing search engines that your content is the best result for the topic at hand. This is because all search engines have the same goal to show the best, most relevant results to users. How you do this depends on the search engine you’re optimising for.

If you want more organic traffic to your web pages, then you need to understand Google’s algorithm. If you want more video views on YouTube then it's the YouTube algorithm.

SEO WEB DESIGN & CONTENT

The first thing you need to think about is whether SEO matters to your website? If your web presence does not rely on sales or popularity from your website, then you might not need to be that bothered about it, especially to keep costs down.

There are many SEO sceptics out there that question how profitable SEO is, so what if your web page ranks highly if it's not converting to any business? Although, if you are a community organisation, page hits might be important to report to funders.

When developing web content, you might need to weigh-up forfeiting your deisgn goals over your SEO needs, our Zeus Hub studio team will explore all of your objectices and advise on your options within Google New Sites or WIX.

COST OF SEO

SEO is continual, it needs constant monitoring and updating to remain competitive, this is because your competitors will be doing the same and the algorithms change too. On this basis, it is an ongoing investment. If you want SEO to feature highly in your web content then you need to think about your budget, how competitive your industry or field is, and also how much money your competitors have to invest in SEO and paid for adverts. These factors can be a leveller and help to manage your expectations.

At Zeus Hub, we design all web content to meet basic SEO criteria and run a report to check for any issues. We also offer ongoing SEO packages based on how many pages your site has, please see our Bronze, Silver and Gold packages below.