Search Engine News- Session 1

Hello Everybody
Today we are going to be cover the first section provided by Search Engine News, or SEN for short. This first section focuses on The Fundamentals of SEO.

When it comes to search engines (English), there are two major players; Google and Bing. Google however dominates in mobile searches by having 91.5% of mobile search market share. The way Google works is that it uses bots that are designed to crawl the web to discover new and updated pages then save that content to their index. The way bots work is they crawl the web by following links found on pages the already know about. "Seed sets" are where bots start their crawl and these are sites that have clear identifiable authority (.gov, .edu, .org). Search engines focus not on the number of links, but more on who made the links. Authority- high authority sites are often a short distance away from seed sets. Trust- a combination of website quality, popularity, and links from authoritative sites. Hubs- link to authoritative web pages and can either be big or small.

There are many different things that search results can be based on such as, reported location, IP location, GPS location, search history, social networks, device, language, and previous searches. Universal search results are created by any given search query and generates results from many different sources. The content source and mix varies on the query, time and location. Some queries result in Instant Answer Result, which is when Google answers a question itself without providing a link to the site that gave the answer. These answers are usually based on encyclopedias, where as some queries get a Knowledge Graph. A Knowledge Graph is similar but instead has more consulted more diverse sources for the answers. There are a lot of different search results such as Partial Local Results (mix or organic and Google Places), Full Local, News and Realtime Results, Shopping Results, Social Results, and Product & Brand Result.

When finding your most valuable keywords keep these key points in mind; don't assume how people will search for your product or service, high traffic doesn't often mean high profit or high conversions, and only one type of keyword consistently converts to sales, the last ones used before purchase. Long tail keyword phrases are keyword phrases that are typically 3 words or more that are very specific to what you are selling. These types of keyword phrases are more likely to convert to sales than more generic keyword phrases. The good new is that long tail keyword phrases normally have less competition and are easier to rank for. When choosing your keywords take into account slang, jargon and dialect.

Until next time,
Caitlin Campbell