1.0 Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
Almost everyone uses search engines to Surf the Net these days, but how many of us ever read past the first page or two of the search results unless we're really desperate? The answer is not many. This is where Search Engine Optimisation or SEO comes in. SEO is all about optimising web pages so that a website lists favourably in search results, with the ultimate goal being the first page. Site design can have a dramatic affect on SEO, and so it should be considered at the very start of writing a website rather than later.
Search Engines
The top three international search engines are currently Google, Yahoo and Bing (MSN), with Aks (Jeeves) bringing up the rear somewhere. Each have their own databases and search algorithms and many other search engine results originate from these top three. To understand SEO, it can help to understand a little about how search engines work. Most search engines consist of the following components:
| Component | Function |
|---|---|
| Spider | A program that downloads web pages, focusing on code over visual display |
| Crawler | A program that automatically follows all links on each web page |
| Indexer | A program that analyzes web pages downloaded by the spider and crawler |
| Database (index) | Storage for downloaded and processed pages |
| Results engine | Extracts search results from the database and ranks pages |
| Web server | Server responsible for interaction between users and above search engine components eg. google toolbar |
Several factors influence the position or ranking of a website in search results, and these can generally be grouped into internal and external ranking factors.