Robots and Spiders and Words: oh my!

You’ve used search engines a million times – and for most of those times the search engine itself will rarely have factored in your thoughts.

Most people use one search engine which quickly becomes their favourite and they never look anywhere else. Others dip in and out of search engines that offer them something specific in relation to what they’re looking for.

But whether it’s Google, Yahoo, MSN or one of the countless others, everyone is using their search engine for one key purpose: to navigate the billions of pages on the Internet to quickly and simply find what they want.

Optimisation: first among equals?

But how do the search engines do that? And once they’ve done it, how do they put what they find in some sort of order?

Open up a separate Internet Browser page now and type into your default search engine the first word that comes into your head.

Whatever has been returned on your results page has been found by ‘robots’ and ‘spiders’, virtual researchers who carry out an electronic creep search of all the pages on the Internet thousands of times each day.

Whatever you just typed in has generated results because those robots and spiders found that same word on a number of sites from across the globe. Probably many thousands, perhaps millions of sites have been returned. Just how many will be shown in the bar towards the top of your page.

And since the spiders have given you more results than you could feasibly read in a lifetime the search engine orders what has been found in such a way that the most relevant sites are displayed first, and those that seem to have more tenuous links to your search, last.

When considering what is relevant the search engines have a variety of tools to employ.

• They consider how often the word you searched for appears on the site.
• They consider the way in which that word is used. Too subtly and it will drop down the rankings; too frequently and the search engine will assume it is being conned (‘spammed’).
• They will look at how recently the site was updated – is the content fresh?
• They will check that it doesn’t plagiarise other sites elsewhere.

When it has carried out these and many other checks the search engine will have established an order in which its results will rank.

So: where does your business rank?

Who’s searching who?

Whilst you’ve been carrying out our little search engine experiment someone somewhere has also been searching the Net for a product or service you sell.

Did they find you?

Q. Where did you rank when the robots and spiders came calling?

Q. When was the last time you trawled through more than the first couple of pages of results?

If your business isn’t in the vanguard of results then you need search engine optimisation.

SEO, done correctly, will give you that fresh, unique text that focuses on your keywords to just the right extent. It will propel your website upwards, and take your business with it.

It’s not about fooling websites. There’s nothing shifty or underhand going on here. Optimisation is simply about recognising precisely what search engines are looking for and ensuring your sites presents it to them.

If your website needs to be found then XP WebServices can offer you a tailor made, personalised search engine optimisation package that will see your rankings improve.

Work with us and we guarantee to make your business far more visible.
We guarantee to increase your site’s visitor numbers.
We guarantee to improve your search engine rankings.

XP WebServices. It’s time to optimise.

See it live.

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