This article outlines what is known about search engines and the general concepts of how they operate.

Explaining how search engines work exactly is impossible.  Why? Because the search engine companies have spent millions of dollars developing their "algorithm".  What's an algorithm you ask? Princeton University provides this definition: a precise rule (or set of rules) specifying how to solve some problem.  For search engines, their algorithm is the exact process on how they access, evaluate, store and report their results.  It is an extremely complex set of rules and they have so much vested in providing "the best" search results, that no one, except their engineers, will ever know exactly how it works.

What Do We Know About How Search Engines Work?

There are some things that "everyone" in the SEO business knows about search engines.  And no matter what anyone tries to tell you, or promise you to the contrary, the following things are absolutely rock solid and known to be the components parts of how search engines operate:

1. Search engines "crawl" (they follow links from one website to the next, much the way a user would) using programs called "spiders" or "robots".  These spiders are like bloodhounds - sniffing from page to page, site to site, analysing and recording the textual contents of each page it visits.
2. Each page is evaluated and analysed as to its "content" - the words that are on that page.
3. All of the pages within a site that are linked to are then ranked for that site - so search engines make a judgment as to which of your pages are most important within your site. If you have a page on a website that NOTHING links to, a spider cant get to it, because it has no link to use to crawl to that page.
4. Spiders will move from site to site, analysing all the pages but also - what pages linked to each page AND what pages from other sites linked to each page.  This all goes into the calculations as to popularity and relevance.
5. Each site that links to one of your pages is considered to be a "vote" - If Site A links to Site B, then search engines consider Site A to be 'voting' (linking) for Site B.  The bigger and more popular Site A is, the more benefit Site B receives.  To compound this, there is even more benefit if Site A contains similar content to Site B (say, both sites are about plumbers) - because that means that not only does Site A vote for Site B, but Site A is also relevant to Site B.
6. The spiders operate non-stop - always crawling the web.  Search engines also obtain data as to how often your site updates and factors in new calculations when new sites link to you or old sites stop linking to you.  It is not a "one off" thing - it is a continual process.
7. The headings and paragraphs you use, the way you link to your own pages (navigation) and the way other sites link to you all factor into the algorithm and how search engines will rank you for searches done on their sites.
8. Search engines hate "spam", which is essentially nonsense or invisible content written to do nothing but promote search engine rankings.  There are many tactics to this and many lines to draw, but the basic idea is "lots of text on lots of pages with lots of headings that links to other pages to essentially cast fake votes".
9. Search engines have penalty systems in place, so if they think you are just stuffing keywords onto a page or doing anything deceptive, they will reduce or eliminate your rankings with their engine.  It is generally best to play it safe with this rule, because if a search engine cans you, you may not ever get back in their good books.

Next Steps - Learning the Rules of SEO

Our next page deals with the concepts and ideas behind implementing search engine optimisation for your website to improve your organic results (as opposed to "Paid" or "Sponsored" results, as no one looks at them anymore!)  We're going to outline all the basic principles to do this properly and you'll be surprised at some of the concepts - it is all just common sense.  All of these concepts we put forward will relate to the above list, because the rules are designed to work with how search engines work - that's the whole point.

So take a deep breath and relax.  Forget "internet" and "techie" stuff - this is all about english and how to reference your pages.  Yes! All about the english language! Why? Because all search engines do is interpret the language, then link their results to what a user searches for. Its ALL about the language, how you write what you write and how you link what you link.