Natural Search
The section of search engines where the results are purely based on an algorithm to help improve relevancy for the searcher.
How does Natural Search work?
- Search engines send spider bots to crawl the web
- Spiders bring back image, video and content data in the form of HTML code
- Search engine servers log content in to relevant sections of content and theme
- A search is received, the system displays a list of all the content the system has in order of relevancy
Natural search listings are based on three broad areas:
- Accessibility
- Relevancy
- Credibility
What is accessibility?
Search engines send something called Spider bots out in to the world wide web to gather information on websites and bring it back in the form of HTML code which the search engines then stores in huge data banks.
So, accessibility is how easy it is for the spider to read the content on a website. The easier it is, the more content will be read therefore more will be ranked in the search engines.
Once the information is in the data banks, the search engines then rank this data (the sites and their content) based on their relevancy and credibility.
What is relevancy?
Search engines will look at the content on your entire site and the individual pages to understand the theme of your site. If there is one overall theme that is easy to understand and follow then your site relevancy will be high (which is good).
However, if there are lots of different themes all talking about different topics, then your relevancy will be lower as the search engines will not know which topic, industry, vertical your site fits in to.
What is credibility?
To understand how important your site is, search engines look at how many websites link to your website. The higher the number then the search engines will assume your site is very important and therefore determine it to be very important. How many sites are linking to your site helps to determine how important your site is.
Once the the areas of accessibility, relevancy and credibility are taken in to account, the web page is then given a Page Rank.
Page rank
Page rank is a numeric value that represents how important a page is on the internet which is derived from ARC of a site. The value is a number out of ten, ten being the best and zero being worst.
The higher your page rank is, the better your positioning will be in the search engine results pages. For example, if a page with a very high rank links to you it will pass on lots of credibility to your page which will help your page to rank higer.
Can a Page Rank be improved?
Yes, knowing the basics of natural search listings helps to develop a Search Engine Optimisation strategy which will help improve your page rank –> higher position in the search engine results page –> increased traffic levels