Methods Search Engines May Use to Determine Relevance of Results
Webmasters and marketing professionals can gain much insight from attaining an understanding of the factors search engines may use to determine whether your site can be deemed relevant when displayed in their results. What criteria might they be using to make this determination?
Correlating Queries with Related Searches
When an internet user types in a query, the search engine algorithm may use attempt to deliver relevant results by comparing those terms against terms that are the same or similar in other users’ previous searches. This equates the search process to a sort of popularity contest.
For instance, the term “bark” could refer to the outer layer of a tree or the sound a dog makes; the search engine will consider which is more common when it provides search results. This is a basic, not literal, example. There is obviously more than one factor that is used to make the decision on what results are relevant enough to display.
Other Factors that May Be Used
Some of the other factors that determine search results’ relevancy include relative term frequency and link quality. The importance of the site itself based on a number of criteria also has an influence on whether a particular page within that site is displayed in high rank on a search engine’s results.
The verdict here is that if you have a site that is well-written and contains language that properly pertains to your industry, without any keyword stuffing but rather natural use of a variety of related key terms and long tail phrases, you are more likely to rank well.
