I'm currently working on re-authoring and re-building the Beginner's Guide to Search Engine Optimization, section by section. You can read more about this project here.
How & Why "Great" Sites Rise to the Top of the Search Results
The search engines are in a constant quest to better their results by providing the "best" possible results. While "best" is subjective, the engines have a very good idea of the kinds of pages and sites that satisfy their searchers. Generally, these sites have several traits in common:
- Easy to use, navigate, and understand
- Provide direct, actionable information relevant to the query
- Professionally designed and accessible to modern browsers
- Deliver high quality, legitimate, credible content
Search engines can't "read" text, "view images, or "watch" video the same way a human being can, and thus they rely on meta information (I don't mean meta tags) about sites and pages in order to rank content. The engines discovered early on that the link structure of the web could serve as a proxy for votes and popularity - higher quality sites and information earned more links than their less useful, lower quality peers. Today, link analysis algorithms have advanced considerably, but these principles hold true.
As an example, watch how a great new site might achieve popularity on the web:
All of that positive attention and excitement around the content offered by the new site translates into a machine parseable (and algorithmically valuable) collection of links. The timing, source, anchor text, and number of links to the new site are all factored into its potential performance (i.e., ranking) for relevant queries at the engines.
Now imagine that site wasn't so great - let's say it's just an ordinary site without anything unique or impressive.
Low value websites don't have the power to attract interest and attention, and even given heavy marketing efforts, they tend to vanish into obscurity very quickly. No one wants to invest time and energy into a site that doesn't get visited, and the search engines are unlikely to ever rank the content on the site unless they find high quality, valuable links to indicate signs of value for their search audience.
The Impact of Usability and User Experience on the Search Engine Rankings
There are a limited number of variables that search engines can take into account directly, including keyword placement, links, and site structure. However, through linking patterns, the engines make a considerable number of assumptions about a given site. Usability and user experience are "second order" influences on search engine ranking success. They provide an indirect, but measurable benefit to a site's external popularity, which the engines can then interpret as a signal of higher quality. This is also called the "no one likes to link to a crummy site" phenomenon:
Crafting a thoughtful, empathetic user experience can ensure that your site is perceived positively by those who visit, encouraging sharing, bookmarking, return visits and links - signals that trickle down to the search engines and contribute to high rankings.
Crafting Content for Search Engine Success
Developing "great content" may be the most oft-repeated suggestion in the SEO world. Yet, despite its clichéd status, appealing, useful content is critical to search engine optimization. Every search performed at the engines comes with an intent - to find, learn, solve, buy, fix, treat, or understand. Search engines place web pages in their results in order to satisfy that intent in the best possible way, and crafting the most fulfilling, thorough content that addresses a searcher's needs provides an excellent chance to earn top rankings.
Search intent comes in a variety of flavors:
Navigational Queries
Navigational searches are performed with the intent of surfing directly to a specific website. In some cases, the user may not know the exact URL, and the search engine serves as the "White Pages," passing along the (hopefully) correct location.
Informational Queries
Informational searches involve a huge range of queries from finding out the local weather to getting a map & directions to finding the name of Tony Starks' military buddy from the Iron Man movie or checking on just how long that trip to Mars really takes. The common thread here is that the searches are primarily non-commercial and non-transaction-oriented in nature; the information itself is the goal, and no interaction beyond clicking and reading is required.
Commercial Investigation Queries
A commercial investigation search straddles the line between pure research and commercial intent. For example, sourcing potential partners for distribution of your new t-shirts in Albuquerque, determining what companies make laptop bags for sale in the United Kingdom, or researching the best brand of digital cameras for an upcoming purchase all qualify. They're not directly transactional, and may never result in an exchange of goods, services, or monies, but they're not purely informational either.
Transactional Queries
Transactional searches don't necessarily involve a credit card or wire transfer. Signing up for a free trial account at Cook's Illustrated, creating a Gmail account, paying a parking ticket, or finding the best local Mexican cuisine (in Seattle it's Carta de Oaxaca) are all transactional queries.
Fulfilling these intents is up to you - creativity, high quality writing, use of examples, images, and multimedia all help in crafting content that perfectly fits with a searcher's goals. Your reward is satisfied searchers who find their queries fulfilled and reward that positive experience through activity on your site or links to it.
Sorry for the long delay in finishing this project. With only a few more entries to go, I'm hopeful that I can complete the new version of the guide, including some serious editing, by the first of June. As always, your comments and input are greatly appreciated.
Awesome stuff! This looks like it is going to be one of the clearest, most valuable, most linkworthy SEO documents ever written.
I think a little more could go into the usability aspect of a well designed page like how well it represents the content of a search, on page search-ability with ctrl+F (the search subject isn't locked away in an image or flash), proper areas are highlighted, bulleted, bolded, etc., the page uses clear instructions or information, page length and so on.
The messy page vs clean layout images are smirk worthy, but could do better with more specific examples. That said, great work on the search types. That's very solid.
Good suggestion - a visual example might work really well for that.
Hooray for usability! :) Although I think we're a long way from algorithimically measuring usability, and the effects are sometimes indirect (as you mentioned), it might be interesting to point out the factors that are both user-friendly and search-friendly. For example:
We're finally getting to the point where the effects of solid information architecture and user-centered design are more and more directly impacting SEO (and not just second-order), IMO.
That third image should say "crummy content," not "crumby" (as in full of crumbs) content. :P
Just wanted to chime in and say that the beginner's guide is great stuff. I hadn't seen a new chapter in awhile and got worried it was forgotten. Thanks for updating!
The Beginners Guide has been a valuable resource to me and I am glad to learn you are updating it. I will go back and read the posts related to the update project so far. Thank you for undertaking such a huge task!
The break down of the type of searches is very interesting but my question is does that matter in terms of designing the site. No matter why people arrive at your site you want them to easily find the information that they are looking for. Is there any difference in the design of the site for different types of searches? Are there any design or implementation differences needed to 'tell' search engines that your site has the answers for a particular type of search?
Of course, many sites may have lots of great content, but they don't know how to get Sarah to visit them in the first place, because the highly-optimised affiliate sites with throwaway content and automatically generated backlinks are pushing these sites down the rankings.
Hopefully guides like this will give new webmasters a helping hand up the SERPs...
A very good one, perhaps the visual explation provides much better understanding of the concept.
Let me say first. Thanks for doing all this hard work. As BrettFromTibet sas, "it's going to be the most linkworthy SEO documents ever written". Rand, I have always admire how you out stuff in ABC terms for everyone to understand. However, I must also agree with Pulkit007. Being awesome it's not all. Writing great content is not all. We White-Hat SEO's are fighting against Black-Hat SEO's techniques that continues to drive traffic to our competitors. I have seen incredible things happening in my market. Webmaster that can actually pull to rank in a German search engine with English content. I mean! It's like fighting against Goliath. We wll prevail, that's for sure. In the meantime, I will have to sit down and watch how my competitors beat my rankings with other SEO Techniques.
Exactly what I try to do, "Deliver high quality, legitimate, credible content". If every SEO expert did that, combined with viral advertising as in your example, SEO would mean something. Plus, it would be better for your CTR on SE results. People are more liely to click on a good copy snippet then, "Bayb, Baby clothes, Baby appparel"and so on. As one SEO artist said, "It sounds like a Daodist peome, interesting, but not relevant"
Good work, I can't wait to see the finished project this summer!
Nice article to read. Cant wait for the rest.
Makes me realize I need to work on the layout of my blog..
"How & Why "Great" Sites Rise to the Top of the Search Results"
Well Rand, I am not too sure, how true this is in todays scenario. Being great helps but since the internet is exploding with new numerous websites and content every day, only being great doesn't mean that you will rule the charts. Most of the guys making to the top today are tech savies who are there on virtue of their understanding of Internet marketing concepts and not because of their ability to create a masterpiece. Finding a great site on internet is like finding a needle in a big heap of straw. Many awesome websites and concepts disappear into the dark just because robots didn't find them all that interesting. Search Engines need to evolove..big time!!