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Dennis Hankins
“Imagine you were the librarian for every book in the world” is how this film on search engines started
off. It is how search engines view themselves, and I suppose it is a true representation. If I ever have a
question about anything I go to my phone or computer and ask, expecting the search engine to send me
on the right trail with many choices to explore. One of the first things that hit me was when the speaker
said that every search engine collects “information about every page on the web so they can help people
find what they’re looking for.” I was thinking “How is that possible!” at the time, but for my search last
night I was glad they did. I had searched for my own Weebly website when I first started it and it was
nowhere close to the front of the search engine I used. Last night I searched for it using the same words
and it was first. Google at work, right! Next in the video was the reason why search engines need to do
this; “every search engine has . . . an algorithm for turning all that information into useful search results.”
This algorithm, known as a recipe, is important to anyone with a website, as it was for me last night. In
constructing a website we would like to know what would give our website a higher ranking so knowing
the “ingredients” in that recipe are indispensable. Using that recipe in a website is known as Search Engine
Optimization (SEO).
The rest of the video goes into detail the ingredients of SEO. The first thing a search engine looks for
when a query comes in, to narrow a search, is the title of the page. They are searching in the code because
page titles often summarize the page. Search engines also look at links between websites which can be
good or bad. Usually if a site has a link from another it means the site with the link is recommending the
other site. On the other hand if a website has too many recommendations the search engine might deem
the site is trying to fool them with bogus links. Search engines also care about the reputation of the
websites. Websites with “with a consistent record of fresh, engaging content and growing number of
quality links may be considered rising stars and do well in search rankings.”
If one digs into the website the video is on, a person can find a wealth of knowledge to insure their
website is using SEO to the best of their benefit beginning with the links to Chapters 1-9. But the first
thing a reader’s sight is brought to after opening the website is “The Periodic Table of SEO Success
Factors.” It is a play on the chemical periodic table we all hated in high school. The table is split into three
groups:
Off-the-page SEO—those the publisher can’t control. The search engines learned this
long ago; they couldn’t control what the publisher tried to get them to believe.
All three factors are important, but “having several favorable ones increases the odds” of
The best way to close this essay is with the last bit of advice the video gives. To enhance a websites
position through SEO is “making sure your website has great content that’s supported by the ingredients
that search engines need for their recipes.” Great advice for the budding webmaster.