Definition
Search Engine Optimization is the process of affecting the visibility of a website or a web page in a search engine’s search results. This is done by optimizing the web pages in order to get higher search engine rankings.
Architecture
- Crawling VS Indexing
Crawling is when Google visits the unique links to track your web page, which is done by the Google crawler. These Google crawlers use the ‘site maps’ in the web pages (in the footer) to follow other valid links in the linked page and crawl deep into your site. However, not all links are crawl-able such as when the link coding is in the JavaScript format and when it is an orphaned link (no page is linked to it).
Indexing is when the crawling process has been done and the results are being put on Google’s index. However, not all crawled links are being indexed. This depends on the Meta tag used for the pages. Duplicating content from an indexed page may not be indexed.
As an example, <meta name=”robots” content=”noindex” />. No index means that the page will not be added in the Web Search. It is recommended to only let the crucial part of your web page to be indexed and leave out unnecessary pages such as Archive and Categories. As an example, WordPress posts such as this are indexable.
Crawling and indexing both provide users with a ranking of websites that are most relevant to their searches.
- Keywords in URLs
It is recommended for the web pages to have shorter and proper file names such as keywords in the URLS. This is to help indicate to those clicking on the URL on social media, will be getting what they expect. Options such as keeping the page title and the article headline in the URL, fewer folders are generally better as it helps in the clarity of the URL.
Since URLs are being copy and pasted regularly, the URL itself will serve as an anchor text (a clickable text in a hyperlink) which is a powerful input for rankings.
- Site Speed
Faster internet speed has now made us impatient users, especially when on our mobile devices. Sites that require minimal loading time gets a small ranking advantage over other slower sites.
Generally, lower file size will result in a faster loading time. Optimization of codes can also help in increasing the page speed, by removing comments and unused codes. Google recommends a YUI Compressor for both CSS and JavaScript.
However, speed it not a guaranteed success to be on the top of search results. Speed is a minor factor that impacts 0.01 of the queries according to Google.
- Mobile Friendly
A non-mobile friendly or responsive site will rank lower in Google’s mobile search results but it does not affect the searched conducted on a desktop or a laptop computer. Responsive sites uses CSS3 Media Queries to serve the same content but on a more flexible design to adapt to the user’s screen size.
Sample codes:
@media screen and (max-width: 420px) {
.class {
[styles for this class here]
}
}
<link href=”mobile.css” type=”text/css” media=”screen and (max-device-width: 480px)” rel=”stylesheet”/>
Conclusion
In conclusion, all these factors play an important part in helping to increase the page ranking in the search results. However, these ranking factors are not a recipe but just a set guidelines and practices that can lead to the success with both search engines and searchers.
References
http://www.seo-hongkong.com/blog/crawling-vs-indexing-whats-the-difference-741.html
http://searchengineland.com/guide/seo/site-architecture-search-engine-ranking
https://moz.com/blog/15-seo-best-practices-for-structuring-urls
CS2024/COM224 