As a web developer one topic that hear about all the time from other developers and bloggers is search engine optimization (SEO). People today seem crazy about driving traffic to their websites. People ask me often about how to increase website traffic or how to increase website ranking. The first thing I typically ask them is if they are familiar with how search engines index websites. Then who ever I’m speaking with usually pauses for a minute to think, stares at me blankly, and then says no. At which point, I laugh and say don’t worry neither do I.
The truth is no one knows how search engines index websites for sure. The largest and most widely used search engine is Google hands down, and Google has officially reported that they have never and will never release the algorithm that their search engine uses to rank websites. Now, some of you may be considering, “if no one knows how search engines rank websites then why are there so many programs and products available that state they do?” Even though search engines have not made this information public, people have generalized and tested some basic assumptions, but at best they are educated guesses and in some cases they are right on target. A major problem that a lot of experts have with trying to solve Google’s indexing algorithm is that it is constantly changing, so what may work today is not guaranteed to work tomorrow.
Google has reported at past web conferences that the most important weight in determining a site’s rank in its search engine is how many backlinks that a website has. For those of you who are unfamiliar with backlinks, they are simply hyperlinks that are found one site that leads back to your site. Google’s spiders or bots are always scanning the internet and as backlinks are discovered they are indexed.
There are some factors that need to be considered when it comes to backlinks. Firstly, understand that not every backlink has the same value. The value of each backlink is variable as determined by the rank of the site that they are found on, the quality of content where the kinks are found, and how relevant the sites are to the content and keywords (Remember these are just generally accepted assumptions that have not been officially validated by Google). So if you’re a web designer wanting to rank higher in Google searches your best chance is to work hard to generate as many backlinks as possible.
Something to be aware of is that there are products and websites available that check the number of backlinks a site has. It’s important to understand that none of these programs are accurate because these programs are getting their information from the search engines. And the search engines are not showing the whole picture, and only show these backlink checkers a portion of the backlinks that are really on the internet. The reason for this is because if the total number of backlinks were made public a search engine’s indexing algorithm could be backwards engineered to a point; even though it wouldn’t be exact.
In the end, work hard to publish as many backlinks as possible and maybe one day you will see your website or blog listed on google page one!