Obtaining a high search engine rank for any small business website is an intricate process. In short, search engines rate your website on a number of factors in order to assign it a rank among your competition in your search engine result pages (SERP’s). Every business wants to rank on page 1 of the organic search engine results, but not many actually know how it happens and our Cary NC & Raleigh SEO company would like to identify a number of elements to be considered. 

Where to Start?
95% of all searches go to three major search engines including Google, Bing and Yahoo and of that 80% use Google directly. So, a small business website can start with submitting its URL to these big players for indexing of all notable web pages. 

How Do Search Engines Read Websites?
Search engines read your website either through the automated spiders or crawlers they run or through search engine directories. Search engine spiders read the links on your site and record your website into their database, based on the content within each web page and then begin to identify keywords within the content, so that the next time a searcher tries to look for a certain keyword, your website appears in search results. The more popular and relevant the links you have on your website and to and from your website, the better the rank your small business website will have and appear higher in the results pages.

How Do Search Engines Rank Websites?
There are different factors search engines employ to determine the category your website belongs within. They also determine keywords that people might use to find your site in organic search results. When search engine spiders crawl a small business website, they check for keyword repetition or keyword density in order to determine the purpose of its existence. Keep in mind that search engines can only read text and not read any text in the form of graphics or image on a web page. However, they do read the ALT text which is the hidden text code for graphics or images or videos, which provides a snapshot of keywords to describe the image or video, so to be indexed appropriately. They also read and index the backend source codes called ‘Meta Tags’. Based on these and other elements like inbound links, internal links, etc… search engines read websites completely, helping in assigning a relevant and appropriate search engine ranking for specific keywords. 

We’d love to hear your thoughts on this topic of how search engines rank small business websites in our comments below. Feel free to contact our Cary NC & Raleigh search engine optimization company any time to discuss your next SEO project needs or questions.

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