Why Can’t the Search Engines Figure Out My Site Without SEO?
Everybody seems to have this doubt while only a few get the right answer. It’s easy to imagine a world without needing proper SEO to successfully rank on Google, Bing, Yahoo, or any other search engine. But the reality is different.
The first places on the search engine results page are for these that care about SEO. Algorithms are getting more demanding and smart with time, so we cannot expect less.
For businesses with the burning desire of successfully ranking in search engines, it’s paramount to understand the role of SEO services. Paying for SEM and PPC isn’t the same thing as organically-generated results on top of the list.
At My IT Guy, we want all our customers to understand why the search engines cannot simply include their websites in the main results without proper SEO. Here is a proper answer.
How Do People Interact with Search Engines?
First and foremost, search engines’ algorithms are created to understand human behavior. People search by using keywords related to their interests. And because most of these searches aren’t precise or detailed, search engines need to figure out the rest of the information.
Based on the users’ location, cookies, and other relevant factors, a custom SERP (search engine result page) can be tailored. This means that the person making the search will find quite precise results, even when submitting poor information.
Over time, people’s interaction with different keywords alters the search engine’s behavior related to those terms. So, at the end of the day, everything is defined by the public’s actions.
How Do Search Engines Interact with Your Website?
Now we know that search engines’ algorithms use and relate a large list of elements before generating a SERP, it becomes relevant to know where they get such information. The short answer is, of course, your website.
Search engines use highly-advanced software known as crawlers, which inspect the entire Internet analyzing websites and gathering valuable information about them. They get to your website and read everything from top to bottom, trying to realize what your pages contain, what your content is about, and how good their technical performance is.
They also look for external link references to your websites, the backlinks published in other sites on the Internet. This external analysis is related to what we know as Off-Page SEO.
Once the search engines’ crawlers collect enough information about your websites, they process the data to slowly merge it with the actual results. The final product here will ultimately depend on SEO efforts.
How Do People Interact and Respond to Your Website?
At the end, SEO has plenty to do with the experience. How people interact and respond to your website will be considered by search engines’ crawlers as they prioritize the UX and other similar elements.
That’s why most SEO’s good practices focus on delivering a widely positive experience to the visitor. Professionals teams like the one at My It Guy achieve this through:
- Clear, Concise Content: Yes, SEO and content marketing work hand in hand. Creating content is an activity that needs direction and such can be found through SEO research and keyword strategy.
- Responsive Web Design: Most of the today’s browsing is being done through smartphones. Responsive web design is what allows visitors to enjoy a satisfactory experience on any device. If you ignore this, your website is doomed.
- Clean Technical Aspect: If your websites’ code is a mess, search engines will know. It’s always great to have a team optimizing this complex side of the published pages.
SEO is the most powerful resource at hand to gain massive exposure and in becoming a segment leader. While investing for SEM and Adwords Campaigns is also a wise thing to do, the long-term results come through organic results, not the paid ones. SEO is sustainable and effective but understanding the basics about the process is paramount.