Search Engine basics

Search Engine basics

Total digital marketing spend in 2015 is 170 billion $

half of the spend is on "search"

others are social media, email marketing and mobile.

Action

Search same word on different search pages and see if there are any differences.

How search engines work

1.     Crawling - Crawlers, spiders, bots

2.     Indexing -  Check links and update index, check versions of the pages.

3.     Ranking-  how many links to other pages, how fresh is the content

Action:

Search for a few terms that interest you, or for the products and services that you sell. What types of results do you see on the search engine results pages? Do you notice things on top-ranked sites that might explain why they appear in such prominent positions? Make a wish list of content you might add to your website, so you’ll have more opportunities to be in the index, and ranked well on search results pages.

How search engines see the web?

-       Try to speak language of your customer when you write content.

In order to get picked up,

Images should have intended name.

Use Right keywords

Use appropriate page titles

Action:

View source code of your web page.

Check page titles, meta descriptions and images.

Any improvements required?

Organic search explained

Organic search implies, search findings shown based on website rankings that does not involve any payment. It solely depends on relevance of the heading, content related to keyword searched, number of links to other relevant sites etc.

Search engine optimization: maximizing search results for your website by showcasing relevant content for target customers.

Action:

Try searching for some words and see what appears in organic search.

Paid search:

Paid search results are displayed due to search engine marketing.

Search results here are displayed relevant to keyword only. However, marketers can bid for the position right below the search bar. Advantage of paid search is, we are still looking at ads relevant to keywords and number of links. However, paid marketers listing is highlighted above organic results.

SEM: search engine marketing

Ads work on bids.

Relevance for keywords is important

Industry, keyword match are important

Action:

• Identify differences between organic and paid searches

Google search console

Helps improve the overall website performance

• Crawl reports
• Index reports