For many people, Google is the one website that brings together the best of the internet. But very few people actually understand how Google works and why there are so many companies devoted to optimizing content for this massive search engine. However, the answers are rather simple and shed a lot of light on a facet of life that most people would never think about exploring on their own time.
Google looks at all of the websites that are active around the world and assigns them a ranking based on a number of different factors. Based on this ranking, they are then displayed to the public when a search term, known as a keyword, is entered into the search engine. Based on the interactions of people with these websites, the rankings update to ensure that the best content is available to everyone who is using the website.
Most people are only going to click on the first few results within a search result before they give up and either look for another term or give up their search all together. This is why Google looks to provide the general public with websites that are a hard authority on the subjects that they are searching. When they do this, people click through to the websites and then spend time on them as well. This benefits Google via these same people returning and doing similar searches over time.
This has led to a large industry known as search engine optimization that helps people reach higher ranks by making sure that their websites are authorities in the area that they cover. This then brings in ad revenue to the companies, boosts their sales, helps them become a known name in the niche, and ensures that they stay relevant. However, the process of achieving the higher ranks is always changing as Google wants to make sure that they provide the best possible experience to all of their customers. In addition, there are new sites popping up that have access to good SEO tools on a regular basis, making it important to always keep re-optimizing one’s website.
The process to optimize a website for ranking on Google focuses on the coding, the presentation, the content, and the interaction of users with the site. Ensuring that all of these are of good quality sends the correct sites to Google and any other search engine when their programs crawl the sites to determine which site should be in the top position. Once in the top position, keeping these elements updated ensures that the website will maintain a high rank, and ensures that the owner won’t be chased out of the niche by newer companies.
It can be a little confusing to understand how Google works, given that they change the formulas used to rank sites on a regular basis. However, this change in formulas can often be anticipated and they always weigh original content that is presented in a user friendly manner and that engages people much higher than other websites.
