NOTE: Although this transcript is a fairly accurate summary of the video, I strongly suggest you watch the video as well to get the complete picture of what I talk about. As well, note sections in red of the transcript below, where I provide additional information,
links, and further information and updates.
Hi folks. Thanks for coming back to MayurTV.com. I’m talking today about how search engines works, and in particular how Google works because I think if you understand how Google works, the pattern is the same for all search engines.
Well, let’s start off with what a search engine actually is. According to Google’s mission statement, they are in the business of bringing the world’s information together in one place. One of their core missions is to make information accessible and accurate at all times when you are searching Google. Like for example if you are looking for lobsters in Newfoundland, you actually find the best source of lobsters in Newfoundland. And that’s Google’s job – to make the best links available on that first page.
So when you think about what their mission is, and what your mission is as a business owner running a web site, you have got to make your web site easily accessible and readable to Google. Now there are a lot of different strategies for how to do that.
One of the ways that Google ranks web pages is something called Pagerank. Pagerank is this number from 1 to 5 that Google created to make it simple for web site owners and consumers to understand the overall quality of a site – it’s content, and how popular it is.
You can actually check your own Pagerank. One way is to visit www.websitegrader.com where you enter your web site URL, and the site will reply back with some meta data about your site, including your Pagerank.
EDIT: There are actually dozens (if not hundreds) of factors that Google uses to determine Pagerank. Many of these are secret and play a role in their search algorithm. I only mention a couple in this video for the sake of keeping it simple, however, the two factors I do talk about are core parts of the Pagerank number. If you want to learn more about Pagerank, visit an article on Pagerank at Wikipedia or hear what Google says about Pagerank.
Google determines the Pagerank number based on a couple of factors. The first factor is how readable your site is. If you use something called Flash, you must understand that Google cannot read Flash web sites (mostly), and this will greatly reduce the chance of getting a decent ranking for your web site. If you don’t know what Flash is, read the article about Flash at Wikipedia, or visit Macromedia for the official scoop.
Flash is not indexable by Google. No matter how much money you spend on Google Adwords, or other paid advertising, you are not going to get your ranking up. Pagerank is a really key determinant of your web site ranking when people search for keywords that are related to your business.
EDIT: Google actually DOES index flash web sites as mentioned on their official blog, but I haven’t seen any indication it’s being done properly. Flash web sites use a different structure than web sites and the tech isn’t mature enough. I haven’t seen search engine optimized exact duplicates of flash web sites come out of Flash files. For now, just assume that Flash means your web site won’t get indexed well.
So the first part of your ranking is how readable your web site is. The other very very important part of your ranking is how many inbound links there are to your web site. Now inbound links are links from other sites on the web linking TO your web site. So for example if an online directory links to your web site, that’s counted as one inbound link. The more links there are linking to your web site, the more it influences your Pagerank to a higher number (a Pagerank of 5 being the highest rank you can get).
However, not all inbound links are deemed the same. If your web site was linked to from a very popular blog, that link is counted as having more wieght. So it’s not just the quantity of inbound links but also the quality of inbound links.
Of course, as you can imagine there are a lot of search engine optimization companies that will try to cheat the system. In the early days of search (circa mid 1990’s), there were companies using Yahoo, Altavista, and the like to boost their ranking for certain keywords.
Google, of course, is getting better all the time at fighting spammers and less reputable companies. They want to make search accurate and accessible to everyone. The last thing Google wants is for a spammer or search engine company to have an unfair advantage or to find a hole in their search algorithm. They are not in the business of letting cheaters artificially boost their ranking and have put up all sorts of roadblocks to make sure that doesn’t happen.
Google does what they can to ensure that people that don’t have quality sites don’t get a higher ranking. Google checks a lot of things:
- Checking the quality and quantity of inbound links among other things:
- Checking how often you update your web site
- Checking the quality of your web site
- Checking certain technical aspects like where it is hosted, what country are you targeting
There is all sorts of information that Google looks at. You could literally drown in all the details of what Google checks, and what all search engines check.
EDIT: Read more about Design, Technical and Quality guidlines direct from Google.
So in summary, as a site owner when you want to get higher ranking, you want to get a lot of inbound links, and you want to get good quality inbound links, and you want to make sure your site readable by Google.
Now, when you first launch a web site and register a domain name, one of the things that Google looks at is how many years your domain is registered for. Just recently, spammers figured out that they could register a domain name for only one year, create a bunch of inbound links from that temporary site to their own, and that was actually building traffic. Of course, Google caught on to this and so if you plan to keep a site for a long time, it’s best if you register the domain name for more than one year and keep it registered for at least 2 years in advance.
Another thing to consider when working on your inbound link campaign is the time over which your inbound links are created. If you build many inbound links over a short period of time, Google many penalize you. For example, if you launch a web site and then build 100 inbound links over a 30 day period, and then you don’t build any more inbound links, Google will take that into account and may not give you as high a Pagerank as you might deserve.
There is all sorts of information that Google looks at when ranking you.
- Make sure your web site is updated often
- Make sure the back office running your site is a good one (in our industry we call it the CMS, or content management system),
- Build relevant content
- Use keywords in your copy relevant to the content and make sure all pages have the right keywords and good descriptions
There is no shortcut really. If you think that just launching a web site and having it out there is going to drive traffic to your site, it’s not going to work like that. It’s something you have to work on. You need to build content, and build inbound links over time. Your Pagerank will go up and you will get first page listings for the keywords you are targeting.
Let me share a story with you. A few months ago a customer contacted us. They were searching Google for “Wordpress Theme customization Vancouver” which we rank very high for. We are ranked first, second, and third for various combinations of those keywords. It’s not that hard to do really. You just have to take care of some of the technical things. We worked hard on making some inbound links. As a result of that first page ranking this customer did contact us and we did in fact win work as a result. That’s one real world example of how doing things right can build traffic and thus customers for you.
In the Search Engine Optimization industry there are 2 techniques on building traffic. There is a technique called the white hat technique, and a technique called the black hat technique.
Black hat is like spamming or under the table. It’s not good quality traffic. Quite often you will see these emails promising first page listings on Google for $99. Anyone who guarantees a 1st page listing on Google is lieing. Nobody can promise to offer you that because nobody truly knows how Google’s search algorithm works. In fact, there are probably only a handful of people in the world that have a complete understanding of Google’s search algorithm and can sell you the secret of improving your ranking and giving you a first page ranking. Those companies offering quick hit solutions may get you a lot of traffic initially, but it’s not sustained and it’s only for a short period. You have to continue spending the money to get the traffic and that not’s a good way of going about it.
The white hat strategy is the strategy I talk about here, which is launch a site, do things right, build content, use the right technology, and just be patient. You can expect something like a 3-6 month time frame before you actually start to see traffic develop. If you continue to just pursue and persevere on building the content, and building something relevant for your target audience, your ranking will go up.
Lastly, there is one other thing I should mention relating to traffic building strategies. There is something called “Viral marketing” or more specifically viral videos. With the web and with video capabilities possible online, you can create videos that touch on an aspect of your business or just something people take notice of. I talked previously about a video called Weezer Snuggie in a previous article here. The article talks about how a particular garage band out of nowhere leverage an already existing viral product called the Snuggie and created a hilarious farce on it. They integrated their own product into the Snuggie product marketing and got traffic as a result because the blogosphere and Youtube fans thought it was funny and creative and linked to it. There is an example of how building a viral video can build traffic.
Well, I hope you enjoyed this video and this article. Leave a comment, it would be great to hear from you. Until next time, have a great day!
