What is a search engine in SEO? Basic knowledge that Web staff should know

Among various web marketing methods, SEO is an important measure to continuously lead to your own site. Therefore, many web marketers are busy with SEO measures on a daily basis, but they can not get the effect that they think they do not understand the mechanism for achieving results.

To improve SEO results, it is important to understand how search engines work . How do you utilize the mechanism of your company’s web marketing?”

In this article, we will explain the basics of the search engine mechanism and how to use it that every web marketer should know, as well as the differences between SEM and SEO, listing advertisements, and other confusing terms related to search engines in an easy-to-understand manner. I will explain.

Table of Contents

What is a search engine?

A search engine is a system that searches for information on the Internet, such as Google and Yahoo!.

For example, when a user searches for “beauty salon” using a search engine, many web pages of beauty salons and pages introducing recommended beauty salons are displayed.

Search results are not displayed at random, but web pages judged by search engines to be “valuable for users” are displayed at the top .

Companies are improving their web pages every day so that their web pages are displayed at the top. This is called SEO (search engine optimization).

If you don’t quite understand what SEO is, please read this article first to deepen your understanding of search engines. SEO starts with understanding how search engines work.

Changes in search engines

It is said that there are about 8 billion pages on the Internet. Search engines are also changing to display exactly what users want from the vast amount of content. What is indispensable for modern search engines is the mechanism of the search engine called “robot type”.

A decade ago, the mainstream was a “directory-type search engine” that collected information manually and sorted it manually. We were able to collect high-quality web pages because we collected and categorized web page information manually, but there was a disadvantage that the number of web pages that could be registered was limited.

Due to the increase in the number of pages on the Internet, it became difficult to deal with “directory-type search engines”, and “robot-type search engines” appeared instead.

A robot-type search engine is a mechanism in which a robot automatically collects page information from websites on the WWW (World Wide Web) and creates a database. Currently, major search engines such as Google, Yahoo! JAPAN, and Bing have adopted this “robot type search engine”.

The rise of robotic search engines has caused an important shift for corporate web marketers. This is because the robot-type search engine analyzes the content while referring to the updated date and time of the content .

In other words, the more content a web page has with the newest update date, the higher the page will be rated . The importance of content marketing is increasing, as content update date and quality are important criteria for ranking high in search engines.

New, high-quality content is essential for your web page to rank high on search engines.

The most popular search engine in Japan is Google, which has an overwhelming market share. Yahoo! has the second largest number of users, but as you can see in the chart below, there is a considerable gap between Google and Yahoo!. Therefore, it can be said that “SEO measures = Google measures” . Web marketers around the world are paying close attention to Google’s search algorithm updates.

Now that you understand the basics of how search engines work, let’s take a look at some search engine terms every web marketer should know.

What is SEM?

SEM (Search Engine Marketing) is an abbreviation for “search engine marketing”, and refers to marketing methods that are developed using search engines, such as measures to increase the number of visitors to websites via search engines. .

What is SEO?

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is an abbreviation of “search engine optimization”, and it means to increase the evaluation of the web page in the search engine and to be displayed at the top.

Difference between SEO and SEM

SEO and SEM are terms that are often confused, but while SEM refers to general marketing methods that utilize search engines, SEO refers to measures to display your company’s web page at the top of search engines. In other words, SEO is one of the methods of SEM.

What is listing advertisement?

Listing advertising means paying money to have your ad displayed on the screen of a search engine. Look at the following image.

For example, if you search for “beauty salon” on Google, the web page of a service that allows you to make a reservation for a beauty salon on the Internet appeared at the top. If you look closely, you’ll see that it says “advertising”. This is what is called listing advertising.

In order to get more people to see their page, companies pay search engines such as Google to post advertisements. That is the main source of income for companies that operate search engines. That’s why users can use the search engine for free, even though it’s a very useful tool.

According to data published by Google, advertisers earn $4 for every $1 invested in Google ads. This alone is enough to make you consider advertising on Google.

Difference between listing ads and SEO

So what is the difference between listing ads and SEO? Another term I want you to remember to understand is “organic search”.

Organic search (natural search / Organic Search) refers to “things other than listing advertisements” in search engine results display. Google search results are a combination of listing ads and organic search results.

SEO measures aim for high-ranking display in organic search, and no matter how hard you try to take SEO measures, your web page will not be displayed in the listing ad space unless you pay the search engine for advertising.

There are many companies that use listing ads to promote their website, and even if the display rank in organic search is high, it will be pushed out by competitors’ ads and displayed at the bottom of the search results page. It will end up.

Effective SEM (search engine marketing) can be implemented by making good use of listing advertisements while striving to increase the display ranking of organic search with SEO measures.

Current search engines evaluate “the depth of the contents of the countermeasure keywords” and “the quality of the site from the user’s point of view”. Therefore, the criteria for search engines is whether or not they understand what users are looking for in terms of keywords and provide them.

For example, let’s say you want to find out about the “Rugby World Cup”. General fans are expected to enter general keywords such as “rugby”, “world cup”, and “semi-finals”. On the other hand, if you’re a fan of yesteryear, you might search for keywords like “RWC” or “Ellis Cup.”

Anticipating such differences in user search behavior, words that are frequently entered together with keywords are called “related keywords.” In contrast, we provide high-quality information.”

From the text content, page titles, description tags, anchor text of backlinks, and other page elements, the search engine performs “judgment of relevance to the target keyword” and returns the ranked results to the user.

In the past, if you put the countermeasure keyword itself called “meta keyword” into the HTML source, it was displayed at the top of the search results. It makes no sense for SEO.

Search engines are evolving day by day, and measures and SEO measures that are effective today may not be effective tomorrow. Google updated its core algorithm in May 2020, but some people may have been busy dealing with it. The person in charge must always follow the trend of the search engine.

What is a related keyword (related word)?

Related keywords are keywords that are considered to be highly relevant to the keyword you are currently searching for. Google is displayed at the bottom of the search results screen, and Yahoo is displayed at the top and bottom, respectively.

I gave an example of “Rugby World Cup” earlier, but if “Cool Japan” is used as a target keyword, related keywords such as “Cool Japan anime” and “Cool Japan Osaka” will be detected.

There are differences in the content of related keywords detected by search engines.

So let’s take a look at the related keywords when searching on Google and Yahoo.

Related keywords are words that are often searched by users at the same time as actual countermeasure keywords, but why are related keywords different depending on the search engine?

The reason why related keywords differ depending on the search engine is because the mechanism that serves as the basis for display is different for each. In the case of Google, the program “crawler” for collecting site page information displays keywords that often appear together with search keywords on the page as related keywords.

On the other hand, in the case of Yahoo, among the searched keywords “just before the search”, those that were frequently used within a certain span are displayed as candidates. For example, if you search for the keyword “Cool Japan” when an event related to Cool Japan is being held in Tokyo, “Cool Japan Tokyo event” will be displayed as a related keyword.

In this way, related keywords are determined and displayed based on Google’s “accumulated past search results” and Yahoo’s “seasonal keyword results”, so related keywords are different, and other search engines are also different. Masu. Related keyword measures in SEO must be done for each target search engine.

SEO is an abbreviation of “Search Engine Optimization”, which literally means “search engine optimization”. In order to attract users, SEO measures, which can be said to be a must, are divided into two, “internal measures” and “external measures”, and the measures are different for each. By implementing both of these measures, it is possible to efficiently improve the display ranking of search results.

Let’s take a look at both internal and external measures.

Internal measures in SEO

Internal measures are measures taken inside the homepage, and by including keywords with high attention such as countermeasure keywords and related keywords in the page title and text within the site, to be displayed at the top of the search results Thing.

It can be said that it is a measure to have the crawler of the search engine judge that “the site is of good quality for the keywords that users want”.

Internal measures include:

[Internal link]

You should internal link to relevant content and structure it to fit the overall theme of your website. For example, if you use search console to investigate what keywords are driving inflows, and if you find inflows from keywords that do not meet your search needs, place the theme of the keywords that do not meet your needs on a separate page and connect them with internal links. Masu.

More internal links are not always better. While paying attention to the quality of the content so that the quality of the page that is the criteria for crawlers is guaranteed, it is necessary to create multiple separate pages related to the page you want to rank higher and create internal links from there. Masu.

Consider what kind of internal links are useful from the user’s point of view, and take countermeasures.

【page title】

It is also important to add appropriate page titles that match the keywords and search needs. It is important to include the keyword itself, but the number of characters and content of the title will affect the click/tap rate depending on the device used by the user, so consider carefully when setting it up.

First, introduce the target keyword in the title. Search rankings may change significantly depending on how you insert keywords, but if you change the page title too often, asking, “What about this way?”, search engines may judge it as excessive SEO. Be careful because there is.

The number of characters should be around 30 characters. These 30 characters assume a PC, and put the countermeasure keyword in the front in consideration of the line break position of smartphones and tablets.

[Add a headline]

Decide on a page title, and once you have created your content, add appropriate headings to make it easier to read. Headings will make it easier for crawlers to find the content they need, so start with the most important headings.

Make sure to keep the headline short and put the countermeasure keyword in the front.

In addition to these, there are various internal countermeasures such as whether the website design is easy to see, whether the countermeasure keywords are not being abused, and whether the data volume of the website is appropriate. Since internal measures are measures within the website, it is easy to obtain the effect of the measures, but there are many measures, and there are cases where the desired effect cannot be obtained. Therefore, it is important to prioritize and implement measures, and to repeatedly measure, verify, and improve the effects.

External measures in SEO

In contrast to internal measures, which are measures within the website, external measures, as the name suggests, are to improve the external factors of the website and take SEO measures. Specifically, increasing the number of “backlinks” corresponds to this.

A backlink is a link from another website to your website. The search engine judges that this site page is evaluated by other sites by linking. At that time, the number of backlinks is also one of the judgment criteria.

When it comes to links from other websites, it seems that there is nothing you can do yourself, but external measures can be taken in the following ways.

[Link from SNS]

Links from SNS are becoming more and more important as an external countermeasure these days. SNS such as Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter are effective platforms for spreading content and linking to targeted websites and pages.

Create and operate an official SNS account for products and services related to the countermeasure keyword, and if it spreads well, the information will spread rapidly, and it will be possible to increase the number of backlinks. However, even in this case, it is important to have good content and content, so let’s be aware.

Of course, the user interface is also important, such as putting the share button in a conspicuous place.

[Create a satellite site]

In addition to the main website, there is also a way to create sub-satellite sites and link them.

Satellite sites are specialized sites that specialize in specific content among the content featured on the main website. High-quality content will receive more support, and it is possible to guide users to the main website from the satellite site.

When linking from satellite sites, target pages that seem more relevant. If there is a high degree of relevance, there is also the method of reciprocal linking.
In the past, there were low-quality satellite sites created for the sole purpose of linking to the main site as an SEO measure, but now such sites are judged to be of poor quality and cause a decrease in search rankings. be careful.

A simple explanation of a search engine is “a system that displays information about it when the user enters a keyword”, but its mechanism and search algorithm are very complicated and there is no end to trying to understand everything.

In this chapter, we will focus on what web marketers should know and explain how search engines work in an easy-to-understand manner.

crawling

Search engines don’t start looking for information on the Internet the moment you enter a keyword. It is a mechanism that collects and classifies information on web pages on the Internet in advance, and searches for data from among them .

The function of crawling web pages one after another and acquiring information is called “crawl”, and Google uses software called web crawler to find open web pages. Crawlers look at web pages and follow links on them, much like a user browses content on the web. It moves from link to link and accumulates data about the web page on Google’s servers.

And Google Search Console is provided by Google so that site owners can specify in detail how to crawl their website. With Google Search Concole, you can be specific about how pages on your website are handled, request recrawls, or disable crawling using a file called “robots.txt”. . Google Search Console is free to use, so please take advantage of it.

index

When the crawler finds a particular web page, it displays the content of the web page as if the user had searched the Internet. We focus on key signals such as keywords and website freshness, and record all of that information in what we call a “search index . “

Google’s search index contains hundreds of billions of web pages. Google’s index is like a book index, with all the words contained in each web page added one by one. In other words, when a website is registered in the index, all the words contained in that website are also registered .

By organizing the information through a mechanism called an index, it is possible to more specifically display the information that the user is looking for.

ranking algorithm

A ranking algorithm is one of the algorithms that determines the ranking of search results. It is said that there are more than 200 elements in the search algorithm that determines the ranking of search results, and it is difficult to understand everything, but one of them, “RankBrain” is a term that you should definitely remember is. That’s because RankBrain is a very important part of Google’s search algorithm .

RankBrain is an AI-based search algorithm that determines the relevance of keywords entered by users to web pages.

Keywords entered by users are not always understandable to computers. For example, if you search with an ambiguous keyword such as “what will happen in the future world”, the user’s search intentions such as “the world will change dramatically”, “from now on it will be a turbulent era”, “the speed of change is…” etc. interprets and displays websites containing information that the user would be looking for.

In this way, RankBrain plays the role of searching for related web pages by searching for the user’s intentions from the keywords entered by the user.

Do you remember the story that Google has a mechanism to display web pages that are judged to be “valuable for users”? A page that is valuable to users is one that contains information that users are looking for. RankBrain is a very important search algorithm to display the information users are looking for .

A website that ranks high when searched for a specific keyword is highly rated by Google. In order for a company’s web staff to capture the ranking algorithm, first browse the websites that are displayed at the top for keywords related to the industry and analyze what kind of content is posted. Let’s start with

Google search algorithm

Let’s take another look at Google’s search algorithm.

An “algorithm” is simply a formula. Web pages are scored and evaluated by Google’s search algorithm for each keyword. As in the previous example, if the user enters the keyword “beauty salon”, the web pages with a high score for the keyword “beauty salon” will be displayed at the top.

Search engines are constantly evolving and updating to provide users with the exact information they need. When Google updates its search engine, the criteria for evaluating web pages change , so “a web page that had been displayed at the top for a long time suddenly disappeared from the first page of Google’s search results.” .

There are five main factors that determine Google rankings:

1. Understanding search intent
   In order to display the information requested by the user as search results, the first step is to understand the user’s search intent. Even if there are multiple definitions for one word, the mechanism is changing to correctly understand the user’s intention.

   A particularly important aspect of this information category is the analysis of whether users want fresh information. In particular, when keywords such as “J-League match results”, “M-1 Grand Prix winner”, and “Toyota financial results announcement” are searched, fresher web pages are displayed at the top .

2. Relevance of Web Pages
   Next, search for Web pages that contain information that matches the keywords (crie) searched by the user. The most basic factor for evaluating the relevance of information is whether the web page contains the same keywords as the search query . If the keyword is in the headline or body text, the information on that page is likely to be relevant. This is why it is said that “it is better to include keywords” on corporate and personal websites and blogs as part of SEO measures.
3. Quality of content
   The quality of the content of the web page is also an important factor for ranking higher. We analyze many different factors, such as the freshness of the content, the number of times a search keyword appears, and the quality of the user experience of the page .

   Also, if other well-known websites related to the search content link to the page, it will be judged as “high quality information”.

   You may think, “Then why not add multiple keywords to your blog and add many external links to well-known sites?” ” and are not valued at all by modern search algorithms that focus on what is valuable to the user. Is the content helpful to users? It is most reliable to make it from the viewpoint of.

4. Usability
   “Usability” is known as a word that means the ease of use of a system from the user’s point of view. Usability in a search engine is evaluated by the following points, and the key is whether or not Google users can display search results without stress .

   ・Whether the web page can be displayed correctly on different browsers・Whether the web page
   can be displayed correctly on devices such as PCs, tablets, and smartphones
   ・Whether users with slow internet speeds can load the page without stress

   is part of the website owner’s control, so it can let you know what Google evaluates before updating its search algorithms. Be sure to check the latest information about the search engine that Google sends.

5. Consider Context
   Google’s search results are based on your current location, past search history, search preferences, etc., and the pages we believe are most useful to you are displayed at the top of the search results . For example, if a user lives in Chicago and searches for “football,” American football and the Chicago Bears will appear at the top of the search results. On the other hand, if a user in London searches for ‘football’, the search results related to football and the Premier League will be displayed at the top.

So far, I have explained how search engines work. Google is constantly updating its search algorithms from a user-first perspective . Web marketing staff of companies that operate web pages need to understand this idea of ​​Google and improve web pages from a user-first perspective.

Determine search ranking and display results　

Google has always strived to be a user-friendly search engine, and in 2018 alone there were approximately 3,234 improvements. This includes improvements to how search results are displayed. Here, we will explain the search ranking decision process and search result display method that Google has introduced so far.

1. Knowledge Graph
   The Knowledge Graph was introduced in 2012 with a database built on over 1 billion real-world people, places and things and over 50 billion facts and related information about them. For example, when a user searches for “What is the Eiffel Tower,” the answer is immediately displayed, and a link can be clicked to access more information on the web.
2. A featured snippet
   “spenit” is a short summary of a web page that appears as part of a search engine’s search results. A “featured snippet” is an automatically extracted piece of information that the search algorithm determines is relevant to what the user is looking for . All featured snippets include a snippet of information taken from a website, a link to that page, and the page title and URL. This eliminates the need for users to open web pages one by one to check information.
3. Rich List
   When more than one piece of information is found that may best match the user’s question, a list of matching search results is displayed side-by-side at the top of the page. This is called a “rich list,” and users can click on the image they want to explore more about that search result on the web.

Perhaps the most significant SEO move since 2010 was Google’s mobile-focused search algorithm implemented in April 2015. This makes SEO not just about keywords and content, but about responsive design.

Google announced this change in advance in February 2015. At that time, we also published a page called “Mobile Girlfriend Friendliness Test” so that webmasters can check in advance whether their sites are mobile-friendly.

Google’s mobile search changes don’t stop there. In August 2016, we also made an update to sanction advertisements that interfere with the display of content.

Also, the introduction of Google AMP was a big change. Google AMP is a technology that makes websites load faster. Web pages created using this technology can be read almost instantly on smartphones. It has been available since early 2016 and has since served over 1.5 billion AMP pages on over 25 million domains.

Please refer to this article for Google AMP.

A search engine that continues to evolve. According to research institutes around the world, the following changes are expected in the future.

1. Mobile and Beyond With
   51% of digital media consumption on mobile compared to 42% on desktop, mobile usage continues to rise and SEO will continue to be mobile-focused. 

   It’s clear from Google’s endorsement of a mobile-friendly user experience. On top of that, it is expected that SEO for voice search will become important in the future.

   Voice search has a complicated history, but its usage is on the rise, and now 20% of searches on Google and 25% of searches on Bing are done by voice.

   The growing use of voice-activated digital personal assistants, such as Amazon’s Amazon Echo, is also driving this trend. 

   There may not be a hard-and-fast best practice for optimizing for speech recognition due to the lack of analytical information on speech recognition yet, but it is expected to become one of the key pillars of SEO as resources grow. will be

2. Search Localization
   Another related expectation is SEO localization (displaying search results that are most relevant to the user’s location). This is especially noticeable in voice search. For example, local business review sites such as Yelp are already used for voice query search results.

   For local businesses this is a great SEO opportunity. This is because there is a possibility that you can be exposed to the top of the search results not only from your own content but also from these third-party review sites . So make sure the information you provide about your company on review sites is comprehensive, accurate, and optimized.

3. Socialization of search
   The real-time search introduced by Google in 2009 has spread to SNS, and the importance of SNS in SEO strategy continues to increase. In 2011, Google started indexing tweets.

   This suggests that in the future we may come to a time when information is collected by SNS in the same way as search engines. Perhaps Google did this indexing as insurance in anticipation of the possibility that the search engine would not be used in the same way as it is now.

   For example, include the name of TV presenter Charlie Rose. His Facebook and Twitter profiles are displayed on the top page of search results. In addition, the biography displayed in the right sidebar is lined with various social media icons. Usually, when a user searches for a person’s name, one of the first pieces of information they want to know is that person’s social media accounts. If you find an SNS account, you can collect information on the SNS.

As you read through this article, you’ll realize that knowing how search engines work is the first step to SEO.

Remember that search engines are always changing. Especially in the last five years, the changes in search engines have been more intense than ever.