SEO Practitioners..do you know how Search Engines work?

Yes, you carry out SEO. Great job!

But have you asked yourself if you really understand how your goldmine works?

• What is the aim of the search engines?
• What drives them?
• What is their aim in doing all these?
• How do they profit?
• Why do users prefer a particular search engine to the other?
• Etc

By understanding, even a little of what they (the search engines) are doing, you may play better by their rules..

..and hope fully get better results!

Like the saying goes, “Know your enemy and know yourself, and you will succeed.”

It’s about time you know a little more about your enemy.

So firstly, what exactly do search engines want?

Easy. Think from a searcher point of view.

You want fast results. You want accurate results. You want RELEVANT results.

You don’t want to be typing “how to cook sphagetti” and have results telling you to buy the latest face product.

You don’t want to type “miserable failure” and have your picture shown.

(Which by the way, the link to the picture above shows you how powerful anchor text and backlinks are. )

And it is the search engine’s job to ensure you get the most relevant, accurate result in the fastest time for your search query.

So what do you learn?

Always exhibit to the search engines and the world that your content is RELEVANT and ACCURATE to whatever search term you are aiming for!

Relevant is simply ensuring you optimise your site appropriately so search engine crawlers will categorise your site correctly. And to NOT spam random nonsense on your site.

Yes, even Google adwords should be relevant.

And so are the links to whatever pages or articles or media on your site.

Accuracy is as good as pinpoint the exact keyword phrases you want to target for and use them (appropriately, and best in header tags) on your site.

Got it? Good.

Secondly, for the search engines to do their job right, they track how their searchers perform their search queries.

And it’s good for you to know too.

There are many kinds of searches…but let’s focus on the finding information kind of search yeah?

The typical search query goes about like this:

• User A searches for a broad keyword (making money online)
• User A clicks scans the results and clicks on the first few and most relevant sites (such sites show authority and social proof along with good copywriting page titles and description)
• User A found a few more indepth information to his original searchand clicks on another site from his main page OR/AND..
• User A searches on the search engine for a more refined keyword (making money online using blogs)
• The above steps go on for awhile until User A finds what s/he wants.

I’m not making the above up..all the above is results of tracking from search engines of users (yes, they DO track what you search for..)

So what do you learn from the above?

…

Go on, think about it for a sec.

…

…

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Got it?

Yes, it is that long tail keywords are worth targetting!

Why? Because the user will continue to refine his search until it gets so specific to achieve the “best” and most “relevant” and “accurate” results!

And by this time, you WANT to appear for the exact term s/he is looking for.

Because you will more than likely have what s/he wants…and s/he will be more than happy to read what you have to say (and you can ask for an exchange..).

Hence, do not give up on targetting several long tail keywords for your site.

So what are your comments on this issue? Am I wrong? Am I stating the oh-so-obvious? Comment below!