How search works
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My attempt at explaining SEO to the non-SEOs. This was created for friends and family, and I hope to build from this in the future. See Notes tab for more info
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How search works
- 1. How Search Works By Grace Adato
- 2. Table of Contents What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)? What are SEO Terms? What is a Search Engine Result Page (SERP)? Why do SEO? How do Search Engines Work? What is Spam?
- 3. What is Search Engine Optimization? Search engine optimization (SEO) is essentially many different tactics used that are centered around helping websites appear at the top of a search engine. Most SEO work is done through the use of keywords and phrases that are relevant to your brand, on all platforms across the web such as: Website(s) you own. Social profiles (Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc.)
- 4. What are SEO terms to know? Keywords, queries, phrases. Search Volume Organic results Search Engine Results Page Pay Per Click (PPC) Click-Through-Rate (CTR)
- 5. Keywords, queries, phrases Words you “google” or use in a search engine to find what you’re looking for. # of results Google has in their library that use those keywords. Bigger the number the more competitive.
- 6. Search Volume The estimated number of searches a keyword or keyword phrase gets in 1 month, as defined by Google’s Keyword Planner Tool.
- 7. Organic Results Also called natural, unpaid results on SERP. Pages without “ad” are organic including images.
- 8. Pay Per Click (PPC) Paid Ads that appear at top or bottom of SERP, will be denoted with “Ad”. Businesses bid like an auction to appear in 1st, 2nd, 3rd or 4th spot or whatever # of spots are available.
- 9. Clicks, Traffic & Click Through Rate (CTR) Clicks: The number of times a user clicks on your result from the SERP results in traffic. Clicks are only seen when Analytics tracking code is installed on a website you own, or with analytics dashboards provided by social platforms. CTR is the percentage of people who visit a website.
- 10. Organic CTR & Traffic A page higher in SERP, has better chance of getting a click. However, ranking does not guarantee traffic. Pages in the #1 organic position usually get 30% of clicks. The drops drastically for position 2, 3 andpercentage so on. Source: https://www.advancedwebranking.com/ctrstudy/
- 11. What is a Search Engine Results Page (SERP)? • As many as 4 Paid Ads (PPC) at the top of a search result page. • Product Listing Ads. • Local results. • News. • Images. • Featured Snippets. • Knowledge Graph. Google determines what to show on the page based on popularity and intent of the query used.
- 12. SERP - Highly Commercial Queries A high commercial query means Google perceives the user wants to buy based on the keyword phrase (query) they used. Examples: Hotels in [city] Car insurance The layout for a highly commercial query will include 4 paid ads and local results if the query also may need local results. You only see paid ads without having to scroll; then local results
- 13. SERP - Product Listing Ads (PLA) PLAs appear at top of page or to the right
- 14. SERP - News and Images News Images
- 15. Featured Snippet Example A featured snippet appears when a website has accurately and completely answered the query.
- 16. Knowledge Graph Example A knowledge graph displays more information, popular facts, about people, places and things
- 17. SERP Layout - Summary One other factor not mentioned is personalization. Whether or not you are signed in to your Google account, your location and your search history also affect what you see. The results that show up is not accidental. There are certain rules and best practices that Internet Marketing professionals use to help their pages get in the SERP. You must know how to “tell” search engines what is on your page. However, for the simplicity of this presentation, we will not be diving in to those details.
- 18. Why Do SEO? Web pages that appear at top of SERPs for keyword phrases increase brand awareness, qualified traffic and revenue.
- 19. 94% of all clicks are estimated to be organic results, from a 2012 study. In 2016, the SERP changed for highly commercial queries.
- 20. 90% of clicks are estimated to be for page 1 of search results pages, from a 2012 study.
- 21. 70% of queries are estimated to be 3 words or more, from a 2011 study.
- 22. 1 word phrases Get more searches but fewer clicks
- 23. How Do Search Engines Work? The web consists of 6 trillion pages and consistently growing Part 1 Crawling and Indexing
- 24. How Do Search Engines Work? Part 1 Crawling and Indexing Google finds pages by crawling, which means they follow pages through links. Then they sort the pages by their content and other factors. This is called their “index” which is like a library.
- 25. How Do Search Engines Work? Part 2 Algorithms They write programs and formulas called algorithms to deliver the best results possible in the SERP. As you search algorithms get clues on what you mean or intend to find with your query. Based on those clues they look in their index.
- 26. How Do Search Engines Work? Part 2 Algorithms Then they rank the results using over 200 factors, and the algorithms constantly change to deliver the most relevant results. Then the result take a variety of layouts, like the examples shown in previous slides. Happens in ⅛ of a second.
- 27. How Do Search Engines Work? Part 3 Fighting Spam Google is constantly fighting spam to keep results relevant. Majority is removed automatically, others are evaluated manually; then Google takes action to remove.
- 28. What is Spam? Offensive, deceptive, irrelevant, manipulative Keyword stuffing or hidden content. User-generated spam usually appears on guestbooks, forums or user profiles. Thin content with little or no value. Unnatural links - deceptive links built to manipulate SERPs.
- 29. Conclusion For businesses, SEO is used to help their site(s) provide useful information to their customers & and attract potential customers. SEO will continue to change and get harder, more pages to compete with and that includes spam, etc. As Google’s algorithms get better, your website and marketing will have to as well. Google’s #1 goal is to provide the best most relevant results to the searcher, and so should a business. If you wouldn’t manipulate your customers to their face; then don’t do it on your site.
Editor's Notes
- I am Grace Adato, an SEO Consultant for SearchDex an SEO Technology company in Dallas Texas. I got started in the industry at Bruce Clay in Simi Valley California in 2011. After that I did some freelancing for various B2C clients and technical audits for other Internet Marketing companies. This presentation was created for friends and family who still don’t understand what I do for a living. Hope this helps guys!
- For this presentation I wanted to cover what SEO is, terms to know, why SEO is important, what a search engine page looks like, how search engines work and what spam is
- This is not a technical, commonly referred to definition of SEO. Again this is my way of easily explaining SEO to friends and family. SEO entails much more than keywords as the experts know, but for the layman – it is about using words to tell search engines and customers what your site is about.
- Before I start rattling off terms and acronyms that may be familiar to most, will be harder to understand in an unfamiliar context . Because of that, I wanted to define them in order to use them more easily when explaining other concepts.
- Instead of saying “searching, “you say “google it”. You “google” a word or a set of words, also known as keywords, keyword phrases or queries. The number of results below search bar is one indicator of how competitive a keyword phrase is.
- All keywords are not created equal, they all have different levels of popularity. Search Volume, another indicator of competitiveness and popularity of a keyword, is an estimated number of times a keyword is searched in a month. If you’re wondering why you’re not showing up when you make your desired search, this is one consideration.
- Organic results can take a variety of forms, besides a webpage itself, it can also be images.
- On the other hand, paid ads will be denoted with an orange Ad square. They appear at the very top or bottom of a results page. Businesses will pay to be featured in a 1st, 2nd, 3rd of 4th ad spot. The number of spots available depends on the query and competitiveness. For example, “air conditioning repair los angeles” has very little search volume per month, but businesses pay $50 and up per click to get traffic.
- When we understand every keyword has a different level of popularity (i.e. search volume); then we can understand how often web pages get clicks (traffic). Clicks are pretty straight-forward, whereas click through rate and what that has to do with search engines is harder to explain to a non-SEO person.
- The importance of understanding click through rate is that just because your web page ranks at the top for a query – does not mean you will get 100% of the traffic whenever you appear there. CTR can only truly be calculated with analytics data, but it does help set expectations for how often your pages are actually being seen.
- The Search Engine Results Page, otherwise known as SERP, is the layout of the page after you do a search. You may notice many difference already. Sometimes you see ads, sometimes they are in different areas, sometimes you get local results or images, and now you’re seeing more answers and information for your query without ever having to click on a page. Google is getting smarter at figuring out what a searcher is looking for.
- The reason you may be seeing more ads and more local results is because of high commercial queries. This means a searcher is usually ready to buy is they use a certain keyword phrase, and because of that competition will be stiff. If research tells us what kinds of keywords are used when a potential customer wants to buy – then businesses who have the money will be competing against each other to appear in those 4 available spots. This reduces the space available above the fold (the page above the line needed to scroll) for organic pages.
- PLAs are pretty straightforward, and they are usually denoted with gray “Sponsored” lettering at the top or right hand side of the page.
- News and Image results are also called “blended results”, the layout is blended with different types of results: images, video, news, ads, and snippets
- A featured snippet is a nicely presented box usually at the top of the page that answers your query without even having to click on to the page.
- The big box you see on the right side is called the Knowledge Graph, it will show you summarized information as a way to enhance the SERP, and provide information more easily
- In summary, the SERP layout takes many forms and it is not accidental. There are many factors that affect the layout so not everyone will see the exact same result. You may hear this many times, Google only cares about delivering the best results to the searcher – they don’t care about how well your pages or multimedia ranks. The IP address of your computer tells Google where you might be located, your previous search history tells Google what you’re interested in and helps determine your intent.
- By now in 2016, what appears at the top of a search result is usually due to SEO. SEO takes a lot of work but most businesses large and small know that SEO increases brand awareness, brings qualifies traffic – if done correctly, and increases revenue by being at the top. If you don’t – your competitors will.
- Many different studies exist about organic vs ppc clicks, this is just one example from eConsultancy in 2012. Although this seems like paid ads is hardly ever clicked, but they are more likely to produce much more qualified traffic than organic.
- The same study suggests that 90% of clicks go to pages on page 1 because it is almost impossible to determine the CTR of pages past position 10. Position 10 estimated to get 1% of clicks.
- The number of words used in a query tell us the typical behavior of searchers. We are all searchers, we use specific words and we use more than 1 word to find what we’re looking for. This means you should be using those phrases your customers use.
- On the other hand, one word phrases have much more searches but fewer clicks because they are not specific enough as the previous slide tells us.
- Now the question may be, how exactly do search engines work? How do they take every page on the web; then list them in order of 1 to infinity? First part is knowing how many web pages exist – 6 trillion and counting.
- Google is able to find all these pages through “crawling” by following links. Then they track and organize all these pages in their index, which is like a library.
- Second part is algorithms, calculations that determine which pages are the best at answering the user’s query. Google looks for clues about what the searcher means and will use those clues to find pages in their index.
- After they get a list of pages using more than 200 factors, factors no one knows are 100% certain except Google, they will determine the layout of the SERP.
- Finally, Google must filter those results due to spam. Some spam removal is done automatically while Google has to manually review other pages marked for spam. Google continues to evolve their spam filters from their own intelligence as well as reports sent in from other site owners.
- And finally – what exactly is spam in terms of SEO? We all understand spam email, text messages and regular mail. It’s unsolicited, and irrelevant. Sometimes it’s offensive like porn. And it’s always deceptive crap trying to get your money, or steal your information. The same kind of thing happens on websites. A site may write a bunch of keyword phrases and string them together in unreadable sentences that looks unnatural. Sometimes they will hide content in the code so search engines read it but a user can’t see it. Sometimes it’s a forum that doesn’t monitor comments that include links to porn or pill sites. Sometimes it’s a page with very little content and provides no value to a user who sees it. Sometimes it’s unnatural links to a site that were created intended to manipulate search results.
- Businesses use SEO to help their site provide useful information to their customers. This means they must understand how their customers search and what information is valuable to them. As search behavior changes, so does search engines which makes SEO harder. There will always be more competition and more pages added to the web and that includes spam. However, with that is also more opportunity for your site to improve its marketing such as videos and featured snippets. Finally, remember that Google’s #1 goal is to provide the best and most relevant results to the searcher, and if you want to compete you will have to follow that guideline too by creating quality content and avoiding spam It may seem harmless, but if you wouldn’t intentionally manipulate your customers face to face – why would you risk doing that on your site?