Automated Split Testing

Search Engine Optimisation; what it is and how it works

March 12th, 2011

Search Engine Optimisation has emerged as a real Internet buzzword over the last few years, in some web forums and chatrooms it’s all designers talk about, and it’s also hugely misunderstood outside of the web design community (and sometimes inside it too!). It helps to start off by understanding exactly what search engines are and how they work…

The Way of the Google

Search Engines started to arrive on the web as more and more people were going online and finding directories a slow and frustrating way to find websites; they wanted something that did the job for them and search engines were born. Today, the most popular search engines include Google, Yahoo or MSN.

All of these engines are still basically directories; huge libraries of websites that the engine effectively makes recommendations from. To be able to do this, the programmers of search engines come up with something called an algorithm; a formula for a computer to use when it looks at any website and decide how good it is.

As you can imagine, computers can’t really appreciate graphic design or the quality of prose, they can only do things like count words, or look at how many other sites link to a site to decide what they’re about and how good they are.

Very quickly, web designers and marketers realised that if you could figure out the algorithm on any given search engine, your website could come top of every relevant search enquiry from surfers massively boosting the amount of people coming to their site!

The Way of the Optimiser

Search Engine Optimisation was born; the practice of looking at a current website, and adjusting it to appeal to computer algorithms like Google. Of course, this raised complications; computer algorithms like neat lists of things simply presented, people like something completely different, how can you make a site the appeals to both?

Early attempts were untidy; designers tried tricks like hiding long lists of “keywords” all over a page by making them the same colour as the background; people wouldn’t see these boring lists, but Google would. Of course, Google quickly changed their algorithm to effectively punish sites that used the trick by busting them down the ratings, so designers evolved a new trick and so it kept evolving…

Today, search engine optimisation has become highly skilled, utilising specialist copywriters, link builders and optimisation experts to tweak websites imperceptibly to humans and within the parameters allowed by search engines, and Google’s infamously excellent algorithm is one of the most closely guarded secrets in the world!

For someone considering a business website, SEO is a critical piece of the puzzle, I hear so often from people who spend a fortune on web design little understanding how people will ever find their website. Hiring specialists can be very expensive but doing your research, understanding the basics like link building or finding a web design package with SEO built in are the easy ways for smaller businesses to try the water and get in on the action.