subject: How Search Engines Make Your Page Real: Part 1 [print this page] How Search Engines Make Your Page Real: Part 1
The first thing to be aware of is that all search engines are programmed to find unique and original content on the web. In a sea of billions of web pages how can your page be real if it is never seen? A search engine grounds the web by selecting pages with relevant text content and bringing those pages to the top and making them real. For a small business owner this has an enormous impact on their web marketing strategy.
Why?
Take a moment and realize that this opens the door for your business web site to market itself as a unique and original source on the web. Your web site does not have to be just one of thousands of other small business web sites marketing the same products in the same way. Your business web site can be as unique as you are, allowing your site to stand apart from the crowd, which is not the same thing as standing out from the crowd.
How does Google find your page
Search engines send out little robots to crawl web pages and report back to the search engine. Google calls its robots "Googlebot", which is a singular term although there are thousands and thousands roaming the web.
These robots read the text on your page and the HTML header. They ignore images because pictures don't present information in text content. For the most part they ignore javascript and other web languages, and after a few hundred lines on the page they start to tire out and may skip the rest of your web page.
Oh no!
Your web page has tons of scripting for flash animations, for slideshows, for building the structure of your page and the text information has been pushed to the bottom of the page. That can't be good if the robot gets tuckered out before reaching the good stuff.
But let's suppose that the robot read your text, and let's hope it found that text near the top of your page, what happens next?
The robots have their own priorities
The search engine robots have priorities and the top priority is to read the title of your page. This is the title in the HTML header that your web designer filled in. If it says "Welcome to my home page" then your site is dead in the water because such a title has no relevance at all.
Where do you see this page title?
Look at the very top of your browser window and on the thin blue bar you will see your page's title.
Next the robot looks for the heading you gave to the top of your web page. You did provide a bold heading didn't you?
Following the heading, the robot looks at the paragraph text that you provided. Did you provide 250 words on your home page, or did you opt out for a lot of eye candy?
Finally, the robot heads for home
The robot reports back to the search engine with all the relevant information about your web site and its pages. If your site didn't provide much in the way of relevance then your business web site will not be seen as very important to the search engine.
The search engine now indexes your web site and that could be very high or very low in priority. Initially it is up to you how well your web site places, and believe it or not, you have now been given the very basics of what your web pages have to do to place well. And it is because 95% of your competitors do not even do this much that they are finished before they start.
To learn more good stuff about search engines you can look for the next article in sequence titled "Understanding search engine marketing part 2", or follow the link below to a web page with more information on search engines.
