{"id":2848,"date":"2016-07-19T15:20:51","date_gmt":"2016-07-19T22:20:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.knowledgecity.com\/?p=2848"},"modified":"2023-09-25T07:38:31","modified_gmt":"2023-09-25T14:38:31","slug":"3-seo-practices-rank-business-top","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.knowledgecity.com\/blog\/3-seo-practices-rank-business-top\/","title":{"rendered":"3 SEO Practices to Rank Your Business at the Top"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The known internet contains well over <a href=\"http:\/\/www.worldwidewebsize.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">4.75 billion<\/a> web pages. That\u2019s almost a page for every person on the planet. With competition this stiff, drawing traffic to your website relies on your search engine optimization or SEO. \u00a0With all this competition, you have likely been told you will need to use search engine optimization (SEO) practices to get traffic to your company\u2019s website. It\u2019s true, page optimization is great for your business &#8211; but do you know why? Learning some helpful SEO practices how search engines\u201d think\u201d helps you understand why these practices may land your business\u2019 website on that coveted top spot in the rankings.<\/p>\n<h1><strong>How Search Engines Think<\/strong><\/h1>\n<p>Larry Page, the co-founder and CEO of Google, once said \u201cThe perfect search engine would understand exactly what you mean and give you back exactly what you want\u201d. This says a lot about the aim of search engines.<\/p>\n<p>Search engines have one main purpose: to bring useful, up-to-date, relevant search results to their users as quickly as possible. To achieve this purpose, search engines have 3 main functions- crawling, indexing, and retrieving. Understanding how these functions work will help you understand how you can better cater to them.<\/p>\n<h3><strong>1. Crawling<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>Simply put, crawling is the act of scanning your website into a database. Automated bots called <em>spiders <\/em>rapidly read your page; getting a complete list of what it contains. Search engines crawl the title of the page, the page\u2019s keywords, images, and important text. Then the pages it links to with hyperlinks are crawled, and the process is repeated. The spider then stores the new links into a database of sites to be crawled over again. The process is never ending, and designed to make sure a search engines database is as up-to-date as possible.<\/p>\n<h3><strong>2. Indexing <\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>Now that all the data on your page is collected, what do they do with it? Here is where much of those SEO practices come into play. Data is indexed based on every significant factor available, such as keywords and links to and from your page. The index also marks aspects such as when the page was posted and if there are pictures or videos on the page.<\/p>\n<p>Say you run a stuffed animal shop; Bill\u2019s Teddy Bears. Keywords such as, &#8220;teddy bears&#8221; and &#8220;stuffed animals&#8221; likely become indexed by search engines. Similarly, search engines index any images found on your site as well. If your shop has 300 pictures of a red stuffed giraffe, it is a great option to show a user looking for images of a red stuffed giraffe.\u00a0 Links to and from your page are also factored in.<\/p>\n<p>This is also where the importance of guest blogging comes in. If the national stuffed animal association links to your site, you gain relevance based on their reputation.<\/p>\n<p>All of this helps the algorithms pick up relevant data for their users in the next section \u2013 retrieving.<\/p>\n<h3><strong>3. Retrieving<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>Search engines use hundreds of variables to decide how to display their web results. Things like the <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.knowledgecity.com\/content-seo-writing-audience\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">quality of the content<\/a>, the links the content contains, the title and URL of the page, and how fresh the page is; all factors into giving users the most relevant results. Search engines also look for synonyms to your keywords, always attempting to figure out <em>what you mean<\/em> and delivering it to you. They do this <strong>billions of times<\/strong> each day.<\/p>\n<p>This is why it is good to build each page around a keyword or phrase.<\/p>\n<h2>Keywords and Phrases<\/h2>\n<p>In our example, let&#8217;s say a user searches \u201cfix a stuffed animal\u201d; they will likely not see results for companies which only sell new stuffed animals. They would see articles on how to fix them and who to call if they need help fixing them. If you want to rank your page, you will want to include the keywords in all aspects of the page. The title will say something like \u201cHow to Fix a Stuffed Animal\u201d.\u00a0 The URL would be BillsTeddyBears.com\/fix-a-stuffed-animal<strong>. <\/strong>The headline of the article would be \u201cThe Easiest Way to Fix your Stuffed Animal\u201d. The page itself will contain <em>useful<\/em> information about fixing stuffed animals. \u00a0It will also have synonyms of the keyword; it may say \u201crepair your teddy bear\u201d or \u201cmend a plush toy\u201d. These are the very basic factors search engines look for when deciding how valuable your page is to their users.<\/p>\n<p>Knowing some basic SEO practices can give you the upper hand in understanding how to cater to them. It&#8217;s important, however, that you don&#8217;t cater to search engines <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.knowledgecity.com\/content-seo-writing-for-your-audience\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">at the expense of your readership<\/a>. At the very least, it can help to see why SEO practices are absolutely<strong> necessary<\/strong> for your business to succeed online.<\/p>\n<h2>Learn More<\/h2>\n<p>Take your <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.knowledgecity.com\/category\/computers\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">computer skills<\/a> to the next level with\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.knowledgecity.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">KnowledgeCity<\/a>. We have over 10,000 video tutorials in Business, Computer Software and Safety Compliance. Keep your business a step ahead by completing our <a href=\"http:\/\/www.knowledgecity.com\/course.html#!\/CMP1117\/Google-+-for-Business\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Google+ For Business<\/a>\u00a0and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.knowledgecity.com\/en\/library\/BUS1138\/leveraging-technology\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Leveraging Technology<\/a> courses. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.knowledgecity.com\/en\/request-a-demo\/\">Request a Demo<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The known internet contains well over 4.75 billion web pages. That\u2019s almost a page for every person on the planet. With competition this stiff, drawing traffic&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":2851,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[4001,34],"tags":[51,166,97],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v17.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>3 SEO Practices to Rank Your Business at the Top - KnowledgeCity<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Learning the basics of how search engines &quot;think&quot; truly is the first step in helping your website succeed. Learn more about a few basic SEO practices.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.knowledgecity.com\/blog\/3-seo-practices-rank-business-top\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"3 SEO Practices to Rank Your Business at the Top - KnowledgeCity\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Learning the basics of how search engines &quot;think&quot; truly is the first step in helping your website succeed. 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