COMMENT WORKS WITH A SEARCH ENGINE?
All Internet users use search engines to find information on the Internet. Every day, billions of files are uploaded or modified by website managers. Search Engines are online services (like Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc.) which sort all this information and make it available to Internet users according to the “keywords” (requests made in their bar research) that they provide. In this article, the experts from our SEO agency in Montreal tell you more about it.
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THE OPERATION OF A SEARCH ENGINE
A search engine works with the help of robots (also called "spiders" or "crawlers") responsible for browsing all the content on the internet and storing it in huge databases. The content is then analyzed and sorted before being made available to users. It is not possible to browse all the files stored on the internet in one day. Search engines therefore each have their own frequency and their own way of updating their data.
They are based on a complex algorithm that will identify the nature of the documents put online (music, photos, videos, texts, software, etc.), the websites which publish these documents and of course the quality of these sites. The goal of a search engine is to provide as quickly as possible a response that is relevant to the searches of its users. For this, he must not only interpret the terms searched by his users but also instantly display his best results. If its users are not satisfied with the results displayed, it is likely that they will stop using this search engine.
The search engine algorithm is therefore updated very regularly in order to constantly improve the relevance of its results. With the increase in files uploaded every day, quality criteria are getting tougher and website owners (companies, bloggers, associations, etc.) must submit to new requirements in order to ensure a good place in the results. of research. This desire to optimize your website so that it is considered a quality site is called SEO ("Search Engine Optimization"). For more information on SEO, we invite you to read our article “What is SEO?”.
HOW IS THE QUALITY OF A WEBSITE DEFINED?
Search engines use robots to analyze websites and these robots must use specific criteria to assign a quality score (called “Page Rank”) to websites. The main criterion taken into account is the popularity of the website, based mainly on its number of visitors and the number of external links (links published on other sites) pointing to it. As you can see, the more popular a site is and has “backlinks”, the more search engines facilitate its reference.
The popularity criterion based on inbound links was quickly understood by SEO specialists who therefore focused their efforts on finding these famous links, sometimes even going as far as paying other sites for them to post a link to theirs.
This "link building" strategy (creation of artificial links) therefore distorted this quality criterion because the links were no longer added in a natural way. Any website that could afford to pay for these links was therefore considered a "quality" site. Here is a typical message we receive regularly for one of our My Little Big Trip.com websites:
“Hello, I work for an advertising agency for clients mainly in travel and I am in charge of advertising buying. I am looking for articles of 200 to 300 words or more on different destinations to insert a link on a keyword (eg: travel to Spain ...) pointing to the site of one of our clients. Of interest to us is the insertion of a link in the body of this article. If you are interested in the idea, please come back to me. Very good day. Regards"
This SEO technique allowing to manipulate search engines is, therefore, more and more reprimanded by moderators (people in charge of monitoring this kind of practice) who do not hesitate to downgrade a site or even ban it from search results. . The websites which use this kind of process to improve their positioning must therefore be careful because the controls are more and more frequent.
Other criteria are therefore taken into account to assess the quality of websites and their importance is growing more and more. For example, Google is very attentive to the way in which the content or
web pages are organized (explicit titles, parts, sub-parts, images, etc.), the loading time necessary to display the content, internal links, or even the fact. that the sites adapt to all types of screen resolution (this technique is called “responsive web design.” The goal is always the same: to offer well-organized sites that offer a quality user experience.
web pages are organized (explicit titles, parts, sub-parts, images, etc.), the loading time necessary to display the content, internal links, or even the fact. that the sites adapt to all types of screen resolution (this technique is called “responsive web design.” The goal is always the same: to offer well-organized sites that offer a quality user experience.
CONCLUSION
Search engines are actively working to provide the most relevant content possible to their users' searches. The quality of the content being a major issue, they take on the role of “educators” and sometimes even “vigilantes” with website managers. The battle between those who play by the rules and SEO experts who seek to exploit every loophole to improve their positioning has turned into a cat-and-mouse game. The consequences can sometimes be serious for newcomers who seek advice to improve their SEO performance and who are unaware that the hired professional is using risky practices.
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