Another term we talk about a lot is an Algorithm. Don’t worry this isn’t some massive string of mathematics you have to learn off by heart to get your website ranking in search engines!
Simply put an algorithm is the set of rules that a search engine uses to grade sites. These might be things like the number of links coming into the site, the age of the site or if there is any duplicate content or broken links.
The Algorithm enables search engines to rank a website against a search query, so that when a different query is entered into the search engine the website will appear in different places in the listings, number one for one term but on page 3 of the SERPs for another.
No one but the search engines themselves know what is within their algorithms. However a good SEO company will understand the basic rules of algorithms from their experience with what works and what doesn’t.
Google issue a set of webmaster guidelines that give us an idea of the sort of things they watch out for. These guidelines give us an indication of the things that Google doesn’t like on websites and include some of the below:
Duplicate content
Paid for Links
Cloaking or hidden text
Doorway Pages (URLs that serve no purpose but to drive traffic to the main site)
Keyword spamming (or overloading)
The search engines, particularly Google, are known for changing these algorithms regularly to keep them as up to date as possible and to ensure that there are no new “sneaky” practices where people can cheat the algorithm to get a ranking they don’t deserve.
I remember starting out in web design, before SEO really existed; it was possible to get a number one ranking for a term that was not even relevant to the content in a matter of days. There were a lot of people who took advantage of this ability and as a result the search engine algorithms were tightened up and more guidelines were put in place. This makes it harder to get rankings but ensures when you get there your site isn’t outranked by irrelevant sites.
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