Have you ever wondered how search engines like Google and Bing know which pages to display when you search for information? Why do some websites appear at the top while others are buried deep four or five pages down in the results? The process behind it all is based on three fundamental concepts: Crawling, Indexing and Ranking.
In this blog, we will break down what these terms mean and how they work together to produce search results are relevant to you.
What Is Web Crawling?
Crawling is how search engines discover new content on the internet. Search engines use bots, usually referred to as spiders or crawlers, to “crawl” through webpages by following sitemaps or links from one page to another. The goal of crawling is to find and collect information on pages, ensuring no valuable content is left undiscovered.
Every time you post a blog or new product, that page will need to be crawled in order to be noticed by search engines and shown in the search results.
What Is Indexing?
Once crawlers have discovered a webpage, they don’t immediately show it in search results, first they need to index it. Indexing is the process of storing and organising the information collected by the crawlers into one big database called an index, which is sort of the equivalent of a giant digital catalogue or library.
After crawling a page, search engines analyse its content, including the text, images, videos and any meta tags, like the titles and descriptions. The page is then categorised based on a number of different factors and its content is stored in the index for future retrieval.
If a page is not indexed, it will not show up in search results, even if it is perfectly optimised.
What Is Google Ranking?
Once a page has been crawled and indexed, it will need to be ranked. Ranking determines the position of a webpage in the search engine results pages (SERPs). Search engines use complex algorithms to decide where pages should rank for specific queries. These algorithms take into account hundreds of factors, including relevance, content quality, backlinks, user experience and trustworthiness when deciding how pages should rank.
Pages that are deemed most relevant, high-quality and useful to the searcher’s query are ranked higher, while other pages are ranked lower. Rankings can also vary based on a user’s location, search history and other personalised factors.
Understanding how these three processes work is essential if you are looking to improve your website’s visibility on search engines and attract more visitors.
At Designer Websites, our SEO experts can help you stay up-to-date with SEO best practises and ensure that your site is discoverable, accessible, indexed correctly and optimised for high rankings in search engine results pages.
Get in touch today to find out how we can assist you.
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