What Search Engines Look For

Online content creators struggle every day with getting people to see their work. They put hundreds of hours into their articles, videos, etc., but then only have a few views. It isn't their work that's the issue. More often than not, people who post online don't know what search engines want. If this sounds like you, read on to learn more about how to make sure your hard work gets the audience it deserves.

Search Engine Basics

To start, here are a few things to know about search engines. The words or phrases you enter into the search bar are the query. Google and other engines scan millions of websites to figure out which pages answer the query in the best way. Sites that fit the bill take the top of the results page.

These are estimates, as anyone who has ever looked for anything online can tell you. A search for something like "pizza" could render many results because it has many meanings. Does the person searching for "pizza" want recipes? Local locations? The history of pizza?

While this may seem daunting, you don't have to worry about what a query could mean, as search engines do that for you. What you want to focus on is making content that tells a search engine what it does.

SEO

Content can communicate to search engines in many ways. Article titles, tags, meta titles, and descriptions all tell google and similar providers what your content is, without having a person read it. The practice of editing and creating content to generate traffic through organic searches is Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

You can use SEO to move your content up the search results ranking. The best way to do so is to create great stuff. This idea may seem like an easy decision, but there's more to it than what online critics may think.

Google takes your work's quality into account when they rank results, then assigns a numerical value to it. This value is "domain authority." It isn't a hard and fast data point, as the requirements for internet authority change often. Use it as a comparative value and not as the sole standard.

How Much is too Much

Like any editing process, there is such a thing as too much SEO. Practices like keyword stuffing, where the page's content fills a page with phrases that will catch the search algorithm's attention, don't work. Google is too smart for this and often puts these types of websites at the bottom of the results page.

Conclusion

If you're overwhelmed by the whole process of SEO, you're not alone. You can look here for advice and information about companies that will do the work for you. You make the content, and the algorithm experts make search engine magic. If you prefer to try it yourself, high-quality content will win out over anything else. Your work deserves an audience, so you should use the internet to your advantage.