Search Engines and Algorithms

In this article, we are going to look at search engine algorithms, how diverse they are, what they have in common, why it’s important to know their differences, and how to make this information work for you in SEO. There is something for everyone, from the novice to the expert. Over the course of this series, we will look at optimizing your site for specific search engines, as well. The top six major players we will look at in this series are AOL Search, Google, and AskJeeves in the first article; Yahoo! and AltaVista in part 2; MSN in part 3; and in the last article, part 4, we’ll look at MetaSearch Engines.

Just about everyone knows what a search engine is.  Whenever you have a question, want to look up the address of your favorite restaurants or need to make a qualified online purchase, chances are, you visit a search engine on the Internet.

If you’ve ever used two different search engines to conduct the same search query, then you will have noticed that the results weren’t the same.  So why will the same query on different search engines produce different results? Part of the answer is because not all search engine indexes are going to be exactly the same, as it depends on what the spiders find or what information humans have submitted to the database. But more importantly, not every search engine uses the same algorithm to search through their databases.  An algorithm is what the search engines use to determine the relevance of the information in the database to what the user is searching for.

What is a Search Engine Algorithm?

A search algorithm is defined as a math formula that takes a problem as input and returns a solution to the problem, usually after evaluating a number of possible solutions.  A search engine algorithm uses keywords as the input problem, and returns relevant search results as the solution, matching these keywords to the results stored in its database.  These keywords are determined by search engine spiders that analyze web page content and keyword relevancy based on a math formula that will vary from one search engine to the next.

Types of Information that Factor into Algorithms

Some services collect information on the queries individual users submit to search services, the pages they look at subsequently, and the time spent on each page. This information is used to return results pages that most users visit after initiating the query. For this technique to succeed, large amounts of data need to be collected for each query. Unfortunately, the potential set of queries to which this technique applies is small, and this method is open to spamming.

Another approach involves analyzing the links between pages on the web on the assumption that pages on the topic link to each other, and authoritative pages tend to point to other authoritative pages.  By analyzing how pages link to each other, an engine can both determine what a page is about, and whether that page is considered relevant.  Similarly, some search engine algorithms figure internal link navigation into the picture.  Search engine spiders follow internal links to weigh how each page relates to another, and considers the ease of navigation.  If a spider runs into a dead-end page with no way out, this can be weighed into the algorithms as a penalty.

Original search engine databases were made up of all human classified data.  This is a fairly archaic approach, but there are still many directories that make up search engine databases, like the Open Directory (also known as DMOZ), that are entirely classified by people.  Some search engine data are still managed by humans, but after the algorithmic spiders have collected the information.

One of the elements that a search engine algorithm scans for is the frequency and location of keywords on a web page. Those with higher frequency are typically considered more relevant.  This is referred to as keyword density.  It’s also figured into some search engine algorithms where the keywords are located on a page.

Like keywords and usage information, meta tag information has been abused.  Many search engines do not factor in meta tags any longer, due to web spam.  But some still do, and most look at Title and Descriptions.  There are many other factors that search engine algorithms figure into the calculation of relevant results.  Some utilize information like how long the website has been on the Internet, and still others may weigh structural issues, errors encountered, and more.

Why are Search Engines so different?

Search engine algorithms are highly secret, competitive things.  No one knows exactly what each search engine weighs and what importance it attaches to each factor in the formula, which leads to a lot of assumption, speculation, and guesswork.  Each search engine employs its own filters to remove spam, and even have their own differing guidelines in determining what web spam is!

Search engines generally implement two or three major updates every year.  One simply has to follow the patent filings to know this.  Even if you are not interested in the patent itself, they may give you a heads up to possible changes that will be following in a search engine algorithm.

Another reason that search engines are so diverse is the widespread use of technology filters to sort out web spam.  Some search engines change their algorithms to include certain filters, while others don’t change the basic algorithms, yet implement filters on top of the basic calculations.  According to the dictionary, filters are essentially “higher-order functions that take a predicate and a list and returns those elements of the list for which the predicate is true.”  A simpler way to think of search engine filters are like you would think of a water purifier:  the water passes through a device made of porous material that removes unwanted impurities.  A search engine filter also seeks to remove unwanted “impurities” from its results.


How to achieve good SEO among all the mainstream search engines

It may seem like a daunting task to please all of the many search engines out there, as there are thousands. Still, there are several pieces of advice I would give in order to streamline your SEO efforts among all of the major search engines.

Do your keyword research.  This means learning how many times your keywords are being searched for every day, what competition you have, and how these relate to your content on each page.

Select 3 – 5 phrases to optimize each page, instead of a whole slew of keywords.  The more keywords you try to use, the more diluted your keyword density becomes.  Use keywords for each page, not geared toward the entire site.  (Keyword density ranges for all of the above websites run from .07% for Google to 1.7% for Yahoo.)

Write unique, compelling titles for each page.  Titles are still important to all five top search engines.

Focus on writing unique content that adds value to users and incorporates valuable keywords.  Write for ideas, not keywords.  When you are finished with your ideas, your keywords should result from the content, and not the content from the keywords.

Ensure site architecture and design do not prohibit thorough search engine crawling.  Clear navigation, readable code, no broken links, and validated markup will allow you to not only make it easier for the search engine spiders to crawl your website, but this will also mean better page stickiness to your visitors.

Build high-quality, relevant, inbound links.  Since all search engines rely upon inbound links to rank the relevancy of a site, it is good to concentrate on this area.  Don’t inflate your backlinks with artificial links.  Build organic, natural links, and keep the sites you link to relevant.  Avoid link directories on your website.  In the case of all search engines, the more links, the better.

Be familiar with how the top search engines work. When you do your homework and understand the workings of the search engines, it will help you determine what search engines look for in a website that it considers relevant, and what practices to stay away from.

Stay with it. SEO is not a one-time project. Continual growth in content, links, and pages is required for long-term success.  The key to keeping your site relevant to search engines is fresh and unique content.  This applies to keywords, links and content.

Don’t sweat the small stuff.  Changes in search engine algorithms should not affect too much you if you follow the basic principles of SEO.  While tweaking may be necessary, there is certainly no cause for alarm.

So why is understanding the search engines so important?  As my son would say, “Mom, you gotta know your enemy.”  Well, not necessarily the enemy in this case, but what he says has a grain of truth in it when it comes to search engines.  You have to be familiar with the search engines if you ever hope to optimize for them.  The more you familiarize yourself with the way they work and treat websites in relevancy of search results, the better your chances will be for ranking in those search engines.

If you optimize only for Google or Yahoo, however, you’ll be missing out on two-thirds of all of the search engine traffic, and only optimizing for MSN means you’ll lose about 85% of potential search traffic.  Optimizing for several search engines is going to be more easily done if you understand the basic concepts of each search engine.

Does this mean that any time a search engine changes you have to go running to change your website?  No.  In fact, one of the most reasonable pieces of advice I can give you when a search engine algorithm changes is not to panic.  However, when a major update is implemented, being familiar with the search engines is your best possible defense; that way, the new filters don’t force upon you a huge learning curve.

So while trying to figure out the exact formulas for each search engine’s algorithm will be a never-ending, insurmountable source of frustration for any SEO, focusing instead on ways to make all of them happy at once seems like a better use of your time, if not just as frustrating.  But if you follow the basic concepts of SEO, then you’ll not only be found in the search engine results but be a more relaxed individual in the process.

Differences in the Mainstream Search Engines

Knowing your “enemy” will go a long way in helping you understand why your website may be performing the way it is in a particular search engine.  Search engine algorithms change constantly, some daily.  There is no way to know exactly when or how to predict changes in a search engine, but there are trends to follow.  There are some major factors that, even though they all weigh in their relevancy scores, each are weighted differently.

The breakdown of the market share of search queries that these six search engines currently control is listed below.  These figures were taken from Forbes.com for August Google: 37.3%, up from 36.5% in July

• Yahoo: 29.7% down from 30.3% in July
• MSN: 15.8% up from 15.5% in July
• AOL: 9.6% down from 9.9% in July
• AskJeeves: 3%
• AltaVista: 1.6%2005.

AOL Search

AOL claims to be the first major search engine featuring “clustering” technology. Search results will be automatically clustered into relevant topics and displayed alongside the list of general results, using technology licensed by Vivisimo.  However, now, 80% of searches done on AOL currently use Google’s databases.  For all intents and purposes, optimizing for AOL Search is currently very similar to optimizing for Google.  Of the top ten results for “pets” in both AOL Search and Google, there is no distinction of differing results, and for the search term “pet feeding supplies,” there is only one variance.  Similar results were achieved for other randomly chosen keywords and phrases.  AOL Search queries make up approximately 16% of searches on the web.

Google

Google uses what is commonly known as the Hilltop Algorithm, or the “Austin Update.”  Hilltop emphasizes the voting power of what it considers “authority sites.” These are websites or pages that Google assesses to be of strong importance on a particular keyword topic.

For the purpose of quality search results and especially to make search engines resistant against automatically generated web pages based upon the analysis of content specific ranking criteria (doorway pages), the concept of link popularity was developed.  Link Popularity weighs very heavily into Google’s PageRank algorithm.

According to WikiPedia.org, “PageRank is a family of algorithms for assigning numerical weightings to hyperlinked documents (or web pages) indexed by a search engine.”

There are over 100 factors that are calculated into Google’s PageRank algorithm.  What exact weight is given to each factor is unknown, but we do know that backlinks are probably one of the highest weighed factors when determining relevancy.  Some other factors might be keyword density, date of domain registration or age of the website, clean design, error-free pages, text navigation, the absence of spam, and more.  We aren’t sure if these things are factored into the algorithm, or are just used in filters employed by Google.

Google is probably the most mysterious of all of the top search engines and is currently the most popular search engine.  Google is estimated to have about 35% of the searches made.  While currently only ranking at #3, we could easily expect this to change in the near future.


AskJeeves

AskJeeves is a directory built entirely by human editors, with results presented as a set of related questions for which “answers,” or links, exist.  Enter your question in plain English into the text box, then click on the “Ask” button and Jeeves does the rest.  Now, the search engine’s being rebranded, and its mascot, the butler, is soon to be history.

This search engine is powered by Teoma.  A few observations by fellow CEOs have noted: Teoma holds orphans in its index longer than any other search engine.  So if you utilize redirects, whether temporary, 302, redirects, or permanent 301s, there is a high chance that your old URLs will stay in the index for a long time.  The search engine’s re-index schedule in the past used to be between three and six months, with occasionally a couple crawls in one month, but the level of re-index has always been fairly sporadic and mainly shallow, and it seems that sponsored listings receive far more attention than any site listed organically in their index.  There is no way to submit your website to Teoma’s or AskJeeve’s index unless you pay for sponsored listings, or just wait for the robot, Ask, to crawl your site.  This can take a long time.

So for a pay-per-click platform, AskJeeves seems to be a good place to advertise.  AskJeeves displays sponsored listings from Google’s AdWords program.  If you have pretty good qualified traffic from your AdWords or you have an Amazon.com store, then you’ll have better luck with AskJeeves.  The key word here is “qualified.”  There seems to be a higher amount of click fraud, by nature, with AskJeeves.  I believe the primary reason for this is the way that AskJeeves SERPs are shown.  In Google, you have sponsored listings that are distinctly away from the organic listings: either highlighted in blue at the top or down the right side.  With AskJeeves, your organic results look just like pay-for-placement listings.



In the next article, we will look at AltaVista and Yahoo’s search engines in depth, be showing you what they specifically look for in a web page to deem it relevant to its search results.  Stay tuned!

Google Search Engine Architecture

Introduction

Search Engine refers to a huge database of internet resources such as web pages, newsgroups, programs, images etc. It helps to locate information on World Wide Web.

User can search for any information by passing query in form of keywords or phrase. It then searches for relevant information in its database and return to the user.

Search Engine Components

Generally there are three basic components of a search engine as listed below:

1. Web Crawler
2. Database
3. Search Interfaces

Web crawler

It is also known as spider or bots. It is a software component that traverses the web to gather information.

Database

All the information on the web is stored in database. It consists of huge web resources.

Search Interfaces

This component is an interface between user and the database. It helps the user to search through the database.

Search Engine Working

Web crawler, database and the search interface are the major component of a search engine that actually makes search engine to work. Search engines make use of Boolean expression AND, OR, NOT to restrict and widen the results of a search. Following are the steps that are performed by the search engine:

• The search engine looks for the keyword in the index for predefined database instead of going directly to the web to search for the keyword.
• It then uses software to search for the information in the database. This software component is known as web crawler.
• Once web crawler finds the pages, the search engine then shows the relevant web pages as a result. These retrieved web pages generally include title of page, size of text portion, first several sentences etc.

These search criteria may vary from one search engine to the other. The retrieved information is ranked according to various factors such as frequency of keywords, relevancy of information, links etc.

• User can click on any of the search results to open it.

Architecture

The search engine architecture comprises of the three basic layers listed below:

• Content collection and refinement.
• Search core
• User and application interfaces

Search Engine Processing

Indexing Process

Indexing process comprises of the following three tasks:

• Text acquisition

• Text transformation

• Index creation

TEXT ACQUISITION

It identifies and stores documents for indexing.

TEXT TRANSFORMATION

It transforms document into index terms or features.

INDEX CREATION

It takes index terms created by text transformations and create data structures to support fast searching.

Examples

Following are the several search engines available today:

Google Search Operators

What are Google search operators?

Google search operators are special characters and commands (sometimes called “advanced operators”) that extend the capabilities of regular text searches. Search operators can be useful for everything from content research to technical SEO audits.

How do I use search operators?

You can enter search operators directly into the Google search box, just as you would a text search:

Except in special cases (such as the “in” operator), Google will return standard organic results.

Google search operators cheat sheet

You can find all of the major organic search operators below, broken up into three categories: “Basic”, “Advanced”, and “Unreliable”. Basic search operators are operators that modify standard text searches.

I. Basic Search Operators

" " :"nikola tesla"

Put any phrase in quotes to force Google to use exact-match. On single words, prevents synonyms.

OR: tesla OR edison

Google search defaults to logical AND between terms. Specify "OR" for a logical OR (ALL-CAPS).

|: tesla | edison

The pipe (|) operator is identical to "OR". Useful if your Caps-lock is broken :)

( ): (tesla OR edison) alternating current

Use parentheses to group operators and control the order in which they execute.

-: tesla -motors

Put minus (-) in front of any term (including operators) to exclude that term from the results.

*: tesla "rock * roll"

An asterisk (*) acts as a wild-card and will match on any word.

#..# tesla announcement 2015..2017

Use (..) with numbers on either side to match on any integer in that range of numbers.

$: tesla deposit $1000

Search prices with the dollar sign ($). You can combine ($) and (.) for exact prices, like $19.99.

€: €9,99 lunch deals

Search prices with the Euro sign (€). Most other currency signs don't seem to be honored by Google.

in: 250 kph in mph

Use "in" to convert between two equivalent units. This returns a special, Knowledge Card style result.

Advanced search operators are special commands that modify searches and may require additional parameters (such as a domain name). Advanced operators are typically used to narrow searches and drill deeper into results.

II. Advanced Search Operators

intitle: intitle:"tesla vs edison"

Search only in the page's title for a word or phrase. Use exact-match (quotes) for phrases.

allintitle: allintitle: tesla vs edison

Search the page title for every individual term following "allintitle:". Same as multiple intitle:'s.

inurl: tesla announcements inurl:2016

Look for a word or phrase (in quotes) in the document URL. Can combine with other terms.

allinurl: allinurl: amazon field-keywords nikon

Search the URL for every individual term following "allinurl:". Same as multiple inurl:'s.

intext: intext:"orbi vs eero vs google wifi"

Search for a word or phrase (in quotes), but only in the body/document text.

allintext: allintext: orbi eero google wifi

Search the body text for every individual term following "allintext:". Same as multiple intexts:'s.

filetype: "tesla announcements" filetype:pdf

Match only a specific file type. Some examples include PDF, DOC, XLS, PPT, and TXT.

related: related:nytimes.com

Return sites that are related to a target domain. Only works for larger domains.

AROUND(X) tesla AROUND(3) edison

Returns results where the two terms/phrases are within (X) words of each other.

How Do Search Engines Work?

Every search engine has three main functions: crawling (to discover content), indexing (to track and store content), and retrieval (to fetch relevant content when users query the search engine).

Crawling

Crawling is where it all begins: the acquisition of data about a website.

This involves scanning sites and collecting details about each page: titles, images, keywords, other linked pages, etc. Different crawlers may also look for different details, like page layouts, where advertisements are placed, whether links are crammed in, etc.

But how is a website crawled? An automated bot (called a “spider”) visits page after page as quickly as possible, using page links to find where to go next. Even in the earliest days, Google’s spiders could read several hundred pages per second. Nowadays, it’s in the thousands.

When a web crawler visits a page, it collects every link on the page and adds them to its list of next pages to visit. It goes to the next page in its list, collects the links on that page, and repeats. Web crawlers also revisit past pages once in a while to see if any changes happened.

This means any site that’s linked from an indexed site will eventually be crawled. Some sites are crawled more frequently, and some are crawled to greater depths, but sometimes a crawler may give up if a site’s page hierarchy is too complex.

One way to understand how a web crawler works is to build one yourself. We’ve written a tutorial on creating a basic web crawler in PHP, so check that out if you have any programming experience.

Note that pages can be marked as “noindex,” which is like asking search engines to skip its indexing. Non-indexed parts of the internet are known as the “deep web”, and some sites, like those hosted on the TOR network, can’t be indexed by search engines. (What are TOR and onion routing?)

Indexing

Indexing is when the data from a crawl is processed and placed in a database.

Imagine making a list of all the books you own, their publishers, their authors, their genres, their page counts, etc. Crawling is when you comb through each book while indexing is when you log them to your list.

Now imagine it’s not just a room full of books, but every library in the world. That’s a small-scale version of what Google does, who stores all of this data in vast data centers with thousands of petabytes worth of drives.

Retrieval and Ranking

Retrieval is when the search engine processes your search query and returns the most relevant pages that match your query.

Most search engines differentiate themselves through their retrieval methods: they use different criteria to pick and choose which pages fit best with what you want to find. That’s why search results vary from Google and Bing.

Ranking algorithms check your search query against billions of pages to determine each one’s relevance. Companies guard their ranking algorithms as patented industry secrets due to their complexity. A better algorithm translates to a better search experience.

They also don’t want web creators to game the system and unfairly climb to the tops of search results. If the internal methodology of a search engine ever got out, all kinds of people would surely exploit that knowledge to the detriment of searchers like you and me.

Search engine exploitation is possible, of course, but isn’t so easy anymore.

Originally, search engines ranked sites by how often keywords appeared on a page, which led to “keyword stuffing” — filling pages with keyword-heavy nonsense.

Then came the concept of link importance: search engines valued sites with lots of incoming links because they interpreted site popularity as relevance. But this led to link spamming all over the web. Nowadays, search engines weight links depending on the “authority” of the linking site. Search engines put more value on links from a government agency than links from a link directory.

Today, ranking algorithms are shrouded in more mystery than ever before, and “search engine optimization” isn’t so important. Good search engine rankings now come from high-quality content and great user experiences.

SEO is Science and Art

For many people who aren’t involved in search engine optimization (SEO) on a regular basis, it’s easy (or so they think). You simply create a website, write some content, and then get links from as many sources as you can.

Perhaps that works. Sometimes.

More often than not, the craft of SEO is truly a unique practice. It’s is often misunderstood and can be painfully difficult to staff for. Here’s why.

SEO is Science

By definition, “Science” is:

• a branch of knowledge or study dealing with a body of facts or truths systematically arranged and showing the operation of general laws: the mathematical sciences.
• systematic knowledge of the physical or material world gained through observation and experimentation.
• any of the branches of natural or physical science.
• systematized knowledge in general.
• knowledge, as of facts or principles; knowledge gained by systematic study.

Anyone who has performed professional SEO services for any length of time will tell you that at any given time we have definitely practiced each of the above. In some cases, changes in our industry are so rapid that we crowdsource the science experiments among peers (via WebmasterWorld forums or Search Engine Watch forums).

Unfortunately, Google doesn’t provide step-by-step instruction for optimization of every single website. Every website is unique. Every optimization process/project is unique.

Every website represents new and interesting optimization challenges. All require at least some experimentation. Most SEOs follow strict methods of testing/monitoring/measuring so that we know what works and what doesn’t.

We have a few guidelines along the way:

• Our “branch of knowledge” is well formed in what Google provides in their Webmaster Guidelines and SEO Starter Guide.
• Our unique experience. Just like you might “learn” marketing by getting your bachelor’s degree in marketing, you really aren’t very good at it until you’ve worked in your field and gained real-world experience. There are so many things that you can read in the blogosphere regarding SEO that are complete crap. But, if you didn’t know any better, you’d buy off on it because “it sounds reasonable, so it must be true!” So, be careful to claim something is 100 percent “true” unless you have enough “scientific” evidence to back up the claim. Otherwise, it’s called “hypothesis”:

1. A supposition or proposed explanation made on the basis of limited evidence as a starting point for further investigation.
2. A proposition made as a basis for reasoning, without any assumption of its truth.

SEO is Also Art

By definition, art is:

"the conscious use of skill and creative imagination especially in the production of aesthetic objects"

I’ve worked with and befriended many incredibly bright SEOs in my years in this business. It is those who manage to blend the scientific skills with the creative thoughts on how to experiment/improve programs are the gems.

Getting creative with SEO is thinking of how a marketing program can encompass social, graphic design, link building, content generation, and PR to drive toward a common goal.

Getting creative with SEO is also about reworking a website’s design/code so that usability and accessibility improve, while maintaining brand guidelines and keeping with “look and feel” requirements, yet improving SEO.

Every day, we must get creative in determining how to best target keywords by determining which method of content generation gives us the best chance at gaining a presence in the search engines and – most importantly – engaging our audience.

Should we write a blog post? Should this be best handled in a press release? How about a video? Infographic? New “corporate” page on the site? There are a multitude of ways that we might determine to target a keyword via content.

Importance of Search Engine in SEO?

An important aspect of SEO is making your website easy for both users and search engine robots to understand. Although search engines have become increasingly sophisticated, they still can't see and understand a web page the same way a human can. SEO helps the engines figure out what each page is about, and how it may be useful for users.

A Common Argument Against SEO

We frequently hear statements like this:

"No smart engineer would ever build a search engine that requires websites to follow certain rules or principles in order to be ranked or indexed. Anyone with half a brain would want a system that can crawl through any architecture, parse any amount of complex or imperfect code, and still find a way to return the most relevant results, not the ones that have been 'optimized' by unlicensed search marketing experts."

But Wait ...

Imagine you posted online a picture of your family dog. A human might describe it as "a black, medium-sized dog, looks like a Lab, playing fetch in the park." On the other hand, the best search engine in the world would struggle to understand the photo at anywhere near that level of sophistication. How do you make a search engine understand a photograph? Fortunately, SEO allows webmasters to provide clues that the engines can use to understand the content. In fact, adding proper structure to your content is essential to SEO.

Understanding both the abilities and limitations of search engines allows you to properly build, format, and annotate your web content in a way that search engines can digest. Without SEO, a website can be invisible to search engines.

The Limits of Search Engine Technology

Automated search bots crawl the web, follow links, and index content in massive databases. They accomplish this with dazzling artificial intelligence, but modern search technology is not all-powerful. There are numerous technical limitations that cause significant problems in both inclusion and rankings. We've listed the most common below:

Problems Crawling and Indexing:

Online forms: Search engines aren't good at completing online forms (such as a login), and thus any content contained behind them may remain hidden.

Duplicate pages: Websites using a CMS (Content Management System) often create duplicate versions of the same page; this is a major problem for search engines looking for completely original content.

Blocked in the code: Errors in a website's crawling directives (robots.txt) may lead to blocking search engines entirely.

Poor link structures: If a website's link structure isn't understandable to the search engines, they may not reach all of a website's content; or, if it is crawled, the minimally-exposed content may be deemed unimportant by the engine's index.

Non-text Content: Although the engines are getting better at reading the non-HTML text, content in rich media format is still difficult for search engines to parse. This includes text in Flash files, images, photos, video, audio, and plug-in content.

Problems Matching Queries to Content

Uncommon terms: Text that is not written in the common terms that people use to search. For example, writing about "food cooling units" when people actually search for "refrigerators."

Language and internationalization subtleties: For example, "color" vs. "color." When in doubt, check what people are searching for and use exact matches in your content.

Incongruous location targeting: Targeting content in Polish when the majority of the people who would visit your website are from Japan.

Mixed contextual signals: For example, the title of your blog post is "Mexico's Best Coffee" but the post itself is a vacation resort in Canada which happens to serve great coffee. These mixed messages send confusing signals to search engines.

Make sure your content gets seen

Getting the technical details of search engine-friendly web development correct is important, but once the basics are covered, you must also market your content. The engines by themselves have no formulas to gauge the quality of content on the web. Instead, search technology relies on the metrics of relevance and importance, and they measure those metrics by tracking what people do: what they discover, react, comment, and link to. So, you can’t just build a perfect website and write great content; you also have to get that content shared and talked about.

Types of Internet Marketing Method

There are several types of internet web marketing, some which work alone, others which work in conjunction with others. Here is a summary:

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

A type of web marketing which promotes websites by increasing visibility in search engine results pages through search engine optimization as well as through paid advertising, strategic content marketing, and social media networks.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

A refinement of SEM, improving the rankings or visibility of a web page in search engines search results. SEO programs work to move targeted search results higher in rankings when results are presented to users of search engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo!, and others. The higher the ranking when results are displayed, the more likely consumers are to click on the link and go to the targeted website.

Display Advertising

Advertising in a static, set space which is composed of images or artwork and words. Similar to ads in newspapers and magazines.

Pay Per Click Advertising

Advertising which is presented on speculation by a web publisher such as a search engine results page or a home page on a browser which only charges the advertiser for the number of times someone clicks on the ad to go to the targeted website, not the number of viewers of the advertisement.

Social Media Marketing

Marketing using social media outlets such as Facebook or other similar sites. This type of marketing includes creating pages on the site directly promoting a company, organization, or product which can be easily accessed from on or outside of the site. Social media marketing can also factor into SEO programs.

E-Mail Marketing

Marketing based on the distribution of a message via e-mail. E-Mail marketing can consist of a text message, a combination of words and images such as in a display ad, or provide access to a video on a website or public video site such as YouTube. E-mail marketing also has the ability to offer a link to a specific website to drive traffic and revenue to that site.

Referral Marketing

One of the most subtle forms of web marketing, referral marketing is based on one individual pleased enough with a website or social media site to refer it to another person, who hopefully creates a chain reaction of referrals from one group of individuals to another. Referral marketing also can be a major component of SEO programs.

Affiliate Marketing

Marketing by a third party which refers customers to a specific website or vendor. “Affiliates” market their own products, such as through a website, but have links to other websites unrelated to their site, but have some interest in common for consumers. Affiliates are rewarded for the number of times someone links from their site to the targeted site.

Inbound Marketing

A method to draw attention and visits to a website by placing information on a website others are seeking. This includes the use of providing valuable information via blogs or articles on a website or general information provided as website content beyond the main purpose of the website. When a search engine user searches for specific content, the web site containing the content is displayed, even though the content is not the main purpose of the web site. By drawing search engine users to the website through secondary information, consumers are exposed to the website and its main offerings without having specifically searched for the website.

Video Marketing

Marketing through the use of videos, such as found on YouTube or similar sites. Videos can be of any length (depending on the limitations of the site hosting the video) and have any content, message, or advocacy for a cause. Videos may be as simple as an individual standing in front of a camera talking, to full, rich production values as would be found in a movie theater. Video marketing marries the strengths of sound and moving the sight to present a powerful message.

Benefits of Internet Marketing

Convenience

Internet marketing enables you to be open for business around the clock without worrying about store opening hours or overtime payments for staff. Offering your products on the Internet is also convenient for customers. They can browse your online store at any time and place orders when it is convenient for them.

Reach

By marketing on the Internet, you can overcome barriers of distance. You can sell goods in any part of the country without setting up local outlets, widening your target market. You can also build an export business without opening a network of distributors in different countries. However, if you want to sell internationally, you should use localization services to ensure that your products are suitable for local markets and comply with local business regulations. Localization services include translation and product modification to reflect local market differences.

Cost

Marketing products on the Internet costs less than marketing them through a physical retail outlet. You do not have the recurring costs of property rental and maintenance. You do not have to purchase stock for display in a store. You can order stock in line with demand, keeping your inventory costs low.

Personalization

Internet marketing enables you to personalize offers to customers by building a profile of their purchasing history and preferences. By tracking the web pages and product information that prospects visit, you can make targeted offers that reflect their interests. The information available from tracking website visits also provides data for planning cross-selling campaigns so that you can increase the value of sales by customer.

Relationships

The Internet provides an important platform for building relationships with customers and increasing customer retention levels. When a customer has purchased a product from your online store, you can begin the relationship by sending a follow-up email to confirm the transaction and thank the customer. Emailing customers regularly with special, personalized offers helps to maintain the relationship. You can also invite customers to submit product reviews on your website, helping to build a sense of community.

Social

Internet marketing enables you to take advantage of the growing importance of social media. An article on the Harvard Business School Executive Education website highlighted the link between social networking and online revenue growth. According to the article, a group of consumers that responded most strongly to the influence of social networks generated increased sales of around 5 percent. You can take advantage of this type of influence by incorporating social networking tools in your Internet marketing campaigns.

What is Internet Marketing?

Defining Internet Marketing

Also called online marketing, it is the process of promoting a brand, products or services over the Internet. Its broad scope includes email marketing, electronic customer relationship management and any promotional activities that are done via wireless media.

It also combines the technical and creative aspects of the World Wide Web such as advertising, designing, development, and sales. Moreover, Internet Marketing also deals with creating and placing ads throughout the various stages of customer engagement cycle.

Online marketing is divided into different types:

Affiliate Marketing

It is a marketing practice wherein a business pays an online retailer, e-commerce site or blog for each visitor or sales that these websites make for their brand.

Display Advertising

This refers to advertisement banners that are displayed on other websites or blogs to boost traffic for their own content. This, in turn, can increase product awareness.

Email Marketing

From the name itself, this is a marketing process that involves reaching out to your customers via email.

Inbound Marketing

This type of Internet marketing involves sharing of free valuable content to your target market to convince them to become your loyal customer. This could be done by setting up a business blog.

Search Engine Marketing

This is a form of marketing that promotes a business through paid advertisement that appears on search engine result pages. This includes paid placement, contextual advertising, paid inclusion or through search engine optimization.

Search Engine Optimization

Contrary to SEM, SEO uses the unpaid and natural process of promoting content on SERPs. This includes keyword research and placement, link building and social media marketing.

Social Media Marketing

Based on its name, social media marketing is the process of promoting a website through various social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest and more.

Why Internet Marketing is Important?

The Internet has the power to connect millions of people from around the world. Thus, it also has the capabilities to bring your business to millions of your target market worldwide. What makes this process the best inclusion to your promotional effort is the fact that you don’t need to shell out plenty of money.

In addition, the effectiveness of your campaign can be easily measured using web analytics and cost-volume-profit analysis tools. However, it requires you to learn the many facets of Internet marketing so that you’ll know whether your efforts are giving the return on investment that you want for your business.

How SEARCH Engine Works in SEO?

Search engines have two major functions: crawling and building an index, and providing search users with a ranked list of the websites they've determined are the most relevant.

Imagine the World Wide Web as a network of stops in a big city subway system.

Each stop is a unique document (usually a web page, but sometimes a PDF, JPG, or another file). The search engines need a way to “crawl” the entire city and find all the stops along the way, so they use the best path available—links.

The link structure of the web serves to bind all of the pages together.

Links allow the search engines' automated robots, called "crawlers" or "spiders," to reach the many billions of interconnected documents on the web.

Once the engines find these pages, they decipher the code from them and store selected pieces in massive databases, to be recalled later when needed for a search query. To accomplish the monumental task of holding billions of pages that can be accessed in a fraction of a second, the search engine companies have constructed datacenters all over the world.

These monstrous storage facilities hold thousands of machines processing large quantities of information very quickly. When a person performs a search at any of the major engines, they demand results instantaneously; even a one- or two-second delay can cause dissatisfaction, so the engines work hard to provide answers as fast as possible.

Search engines are answer machines. When a person performs an online search, the search engine scours its corpus of billions of documents and does two things: first, it returns only those results that are relevant or useful to the searcher's query; second, it ranks those results according to the popularity of the websites serving the information. It is both relevance and popularity that the process of SEO is meant to influence.

How do search engines determine relevance and popularity?

To a search engine, relevance means more than finding a page with the right words. In the early days of the web, search engines didn’t go much further than this simplistic step, and search results were of limited value. Over the years, smart engineers have devised better ways to match results to searchers’ queries. Today, hundreds of factors influence relevance, and we’ll discuss the most important of these in this guide.

Search engines typically assume that the more popular a site, page, or document, the more valuable the information it contains must be. This assumption has proven fairly successful in terms of user satisfaction with search results.

Popularity and relevance aren’t determined manually. Instead, the engines employ mathematical equations (algorithms) to sort the wheat from the chaff (relevance), and then to rank the wheat in order of quality (popularity).

These algorithms often comprise hundreds of variables. In the search marketing field, we refer to them as “ranking factors.” Moz crafted a resource specifically on this subject: Search Engine Ranking Factors.

SEO Competitive Analysis

One of the most important activities for any SEO process is the initial competitive analysis. This process should correctly identify your SEO targets and provide fundamental input to establish your overall strategy.

Depending on the type, industry, and scope of the SEO process, this analysis can become quite complex, as there are many factors to take into consideration—more now than ever before.

In order to facilitate this process (and make it easy to replicate, control, and document), I've created a step-by-step workflow with the different activities and factors to take into consideration, including identifying SEO competitors, gathering the potential keywords to target, assessing their level of difficulty, and selecting them based on defined criteria:

The four analysis phases

As you can see, the SEO analysis workflow is divided into four phases:

1. Identify your potential SEO competitors:

This initial phase is especially helpful if you're starting with an SEO process for a new client or industry that you don't know anything about, and you need to start from scratch to identify all of the potentially relevant competitors.

It's important to note that these are not necessarily limited to companies or websites that offer the same type of content, services, or products that you do, but can be any website that competes with you in the search results for your target keywords.

2. Validate your SEO competitors:

Once you have the potential competitors that you have gathered from different relevant sources it's time to validate them, by analyzing and filtering which of those are really already ranking, and to which degree, for the same keywords that you're targeting.

Additionally, at this stage, you'll also expand your list of potential target keywords by performing keyword research. This should use sources beyond the ones that you had already identified coming from your competitors and your current organic search data—sources for which your competitors or yourself are still not ranking, that might represent new opportunities.

3. Compare with your SEO competitors:

Now that you have your SEO competitors and potential target keywords, you can gather, list, and compare your site to your competitors, using all of the relevant data to select and prioritize those keywords. This will likely include keyword relevance, current rankings, search volume, ranked pages, as well as domains' link popularity, content optimization, and page results characteristics, among others.

4. Select your target keywords:

It's finally time to analyze the previously gathered data for your own site and your competitors, using the specified criteria to select the best keyword to target for your own situation in the short-, mid-, and long-term during your SEO process: Those with the highest relevance, search volume, and profitability. The best starting point is in rankings where you are competitive from a popularity and content standpoint.

Tools & data sources

The data sources and tools—besides the traditional ones from search engines, like their keyword or webmaster tools—that can help you to implement the process (some of them mentioned in the workflow) are:

• To identify competitors: Alexa Top Sites, SimilarWeb Websites Ranking & Sites Profile.
• To identify keywords: SEMRush for keyword data, SuggestMrx (you can also use Ubersuggest or SEO chat Suggestion Keyword Finder) to gather Google suggestions for your keywords.
• To identify rankings: Authority labs, Positionly, Advanced Web Ranking, among others.
• To identify popularity: The Moz SEO Toolbar SERP overlay view, OpenSiteExplorer, CognitiveSEO Backlink Explorer and MajesticSEO for link related data and easy to develop popularity analysis.

• To identify page optimization: Moz On-Page Grader, SEOchat's Page Comparison tool, and Web page SEO analysis tool for a quick on-page content optimization analysis.
• To semi-automatize the process: There are tools that have already automatized some of the phases of the process that can help you to advance faster: Moz Keyword Difficulty and SERPs analysis tool, SERPIQ, SEMRush Keyword Difficulty Tool.

Hopefully, with these resources, you'll be able to develop more and better SEO competitive analysis!

How to Use a SWOT Analysis in your SEO Keyword Research

If you've ever taken a business class, you're probably familiar with the SWOT analysis.

What Is a SWOT Analysis?

Simply put, the SWOT Analysis is a decision-making tool used to evaluate a venture in which you input all the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats you can think of into a matrix, which (in theory) makes it easier for you to identify all of the negative and positive factors that could affect the project's outcome, planning and strategy.

Keep in mind that a SWOT analysis is only helpful with goals that are attainable. It's not a replacement for a brainstorming session. A SWOT analysis deals solely in verifiable facts that can lead to a realistic goal.

Here is a sample template for a SWOT Matrix:

SWOT analyses are often helpful solely for the visual impact that they can have.

For example, if the Threat and Weakness quadrants wind up with a number of entries far in excess of the sections for Strength and Opportunity, that could be a strong indicator of challenges that need further discussion before moving forward with your decision.

Conversely, if your matrix is overwhelmed by entries in the Strength and Opportunity fields, you could be looking at a winner.

As you can see from the above diagram, the SWOT also helps you categorize challenges into both External and Internal Origins as well as which data is labeled either Harmful or Helpful to the outcome.

"Strengths and weaknesses are often internal to your organization, while opportunities and threats generally relate to external factors."

So, What the Heck Does That Have To Do with Keyword Research?

Here's the thing: Keywords can also fall into those categories.

I'm going to show you how you can perform a competitive analysis using SEMrush to sort keywords into a SWOT Matrix, from which you can prioritize your SEO plans.

In my limited spare time I volunteer as a lacrosse coach for a local high school program, so I'm always looking for deals on marked-down equipment. I'm on LacrosseMonkey.com a lot. They have great sales on closeout items. I'm going to use them as my example.

Let's start with strengths.

Strengths – What's working now?

The Strengths are the easiest to identify. Which keywords are working best for your domain?

This is easily achievable using the Organic Positions report.

We input the domain and get a list of keyword data.

HOW DOES INTEGRATED MARKETING FIT IN TO THE BIGGER PICTURE?

Integrated marketing, multi-channel marketing, and omnichannel marketing are a testament to the evolution of marketing in a robust and diverse digital landscape. When differentiating the three, it can help to think of them in these terms:

• The focus of multi-channel marketing is reaching the largest number of customers in your target audience.
• The focus of omnichannel marketing is reaching the largest number of customers in your target audience while streamlining your messages to them across all channels.
• The focus of integrated digital marketing is reaching the largest number of customers in your target audience and streamlining your messages to them across all channels in a way that makes the most sense for them—through data measurement and analysis.

A Real Life Example:

So how does it fit into the bigger picture, with a specific industry? When it comes to choosing digital marketing channels and disruptive digital trends in the travel industry, for example, direct response is the main focus, as is programmatic advertising.

Smartphones and wearables unlock location-specific info in real-time, user reviews and recommendations become invaluable, and social media profiles increasingly serve as a connection to airlines and hotel operators—opening doors to a wide array of exclusive perks and benefits.

INTEGRATED DIGITAL MARKETING IN 3 STEPS

Three steps to building an effective, integrated digital marketing campaign include:

1. Identifying which channels convert. By utilizing technology, your team can identify where and how different channels affect one another to better understand which channels are driving performance and business.

2. Getting to know your target audience. By analyzing first- and third-party data regarding customer behavior, you can predictively determine which digital content will perform best and strategize accordingly.

3. Aligning your digital marketing strategies. For your integrated digital marketing strategy to be successful, you must ensure that your digital talent and internal departments are structured to work in unison. Not only will this foster cross-channel collaboration, it will also drive impact across numerous marketing functions.

IMPLEMENTING AN INTEGRATED DIGITAL MARKETING STRATEGY

The campaign management and relationship marketing solutions developed by Selligent help CMOs and marketing directors better understand their target audiences without putting additional strain on their internal marketing resources. Our track record of helping big brands speaks for itself.

Selligent Features:

• Rapid onboarding and implementation
• Sophisticated marketing tools built around the complex customer journeys of today
• Data-driven dynamic personalization
• Scalable automation across all channels
• An intuitive interface designed to meet the unique pain points of marketers