How Search Engines Determine Your Website Position in the Search Engine Results Pages
A term, keyword, index term, topic term, or subject phrase, in search engine discovery, is a word that capture the meaning of an individual document’s subject matter. In data retrieval, keyword terms create a controlled vocabulary for the purpose of use in electronic bibliographic retrieval. Keyword terms often appear as labels on web pages to aid in the retrieval of web site index terms. These terms can also appear in hyperlinks and menus as subject terms. The Internet search engines index web sites based upon keywords entered by the user in the Search field.
Meta descriptions, which is the second most important component of a Web page, also uses keywords to index its content. Meta descriptions are generally a sentence starting with the keyword and ending with the keyword description word. Meta description tags can appear as part of the title tag, meta tag of an image or other HTML element, or as one of the URLs ( Uniform Resource Identifiers) used to direct users to a particular page.
The third method, keyword extraction, occurs when the internet user enters a search term or phrase into the search box and the search returns a listing of matching web pages. This occurs when the intent of the searcher is to locate web pages that contain the specified keywords. In this instance, the words in the meta description are not necessarily the keywords used to search for the web pages, but are instead used to trigger a predetermined algorithm that matches the words in the Meta tag to search results returned by a search engine. The algorithm used by most search engines is based upon the number of times each keyword appears throughout a Web page.
Keyword analysis is another process performed by search engines. Keyword analysis is a process used to discover what words are commonly used by Internet users and then ranks websites according to the popularity of those words. Popularity is determined by observing how many times a keyword appears throughout the content of an article or other Web page. Other methods of determining a site’s position in search engines include the use of search volume, which is derived from search engine traffic and estimated average monthly searches by users based on a variety of criteria, and other methods such as Google PageRank, which is based upon the quality and number of links provided by links to a Web page.
A variety of techniques can be used to help identify a high ranking Web site. One technique called “Googleting” involves discovering what other sites are linking to a specific site and using those links to achieve a higher ranking. Another technique called “pay-per-click” advertising uses ads displayed on search engine results pages to pay the host if a certain keyword is clicked. Search engines also use a variety of factors to determine the placement of a site in search engine results. These factors include but are not limited to keyword popularity, site layout, competitiveness and existing content.
One way to learn more about how your keywords are ranked by search engines is to conduct keyword research. Keyword research can be accomplished by hand or by using a keyword tool, such as Google’s Keyword Research Tool. A keyword tool analyzes every keyword that appears in a Web page and tells you how many other sites have used that word in their advertising campaigns. There are also tools available on the Internet that allow keyword researchers to find individual keywords that have low competition with high search volume. Many software programs will allow you to investigate a variety of keywords with a few clicks of the mouse.
