What
are search engines? Why do search engines do what they do?
What is in it for them?
It is extremely important to understand a thing or two about
search engines before we even begin to talk about submitting
our pages to them. Search engines are website based services
designed to assist human visitors in finding information,
e.g. answers and solutions (Hmmm… they are in the business
of information? Does that sound familiar?). Most search engines
are database driven and use special little programs called
robots or spiders which rifle through any and all information
on the web as quickly as possible, “report” it
back to the engine which stores the information in its database
to reference later. These robots and spiders are constantly
on the search for new and/or updated information so that the
database can also update and reorganize if needed. The database
is always working hard to give the search engine guests the
most relevant information that it can based on the guest’s
search terms. The sorting and organization of this information
and presenting it in a hierarchical order based on search
criteria (relevance) is called “indexing”. The
information placed at the beginning of these results are referred
to as “prominent”. Remember, we have determined
that the ultimate goal as aspiring eBusiness owners is not
immediate sale, but rather the completely satisfied customer.
A beautiful example of this is demonstrated for us by one
of our closest allies most powerful resources and tools as
an eBusiness owner, the search engines themselves.
A search engine’s primary (and arguably only) goal
and responsibility is to lead its valued customer (the guest
of the engine) to the quality content on the web that they
are looking for. It does this by providing the most relevant
search results that it can. (The word relevant is a word that
is extremely important when it comes to understanding search
engines. Relevance is a crucial concept that MUST be grasped
if search engine positioning is to be mastered! I will discuss
relevance more at length shortly.) Basically, when engine’s
guest finds the information that they are looking for, the
search engine has done its job well and chances are very good
that the guest will return for future searches. This is exactly
what the search engines want.
It is very important to understand something that I mentioned
just a moment ago. The search engine’s primary responsibility
is to its customer, the individuals that are looking for something
on their engine. Not to webmasters. Unfortunately, search
engines have absolutely no responsibility to include your
pages or your information on their index. Basically, they
owe you, the e-business owner ABSOLUTELY NOTHING AT ALL. It
is a privilege to be on their index … not a right. It
would be wise for you to never forget this.
If your content is of high quality and offers something good
to its viewer, then your pages will most likely be included
in the search engine’s index. If your pages contain
very poor content, chances are good that your pages will not
be included prominently, for very long, or at all. This is
actually a good thing for all of us. If there were nothing
but garbage and noise on the search engines, no one would
ever even use them. Having quality content should be a requirement
of any web page found in search engines. Finding great pages
is what makes guests keep coming back for more, and this is
what we want as eBusiness owners. Being required to have quality
content only benefits us all!
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