Most people could explain what a search engine does, but here we take it back to basics to where we started our research.
Fundamentally a search engine is a computer with pre-programmed instructions on which results to display given any user inputted search. The computer is often
referred to as a 'robot' and the instructions are called 'algorithms'. Websites are submitted to the search engine robot and are subsequently 'crawled' by what
are known as 'bots' to keep copies of website pages ready to display to users searching.
All quite logical, simple to understand, results are displayed
in pages of 10 and are relevant to the user search. So, the next logical question was what are the 'rules'? Where is the list of algorithms to comply with?
Despite our searching we were unable to find a 'list' - we found snippets here, theories there but no list of what we were required to comply with.
With all the research we had completed, we knew that a website must have good content, of a good standard, relevant content and
these principals were implemented.
But despite all this work, the compliance with everything we had researched and read,
we were not achieving the desired ranking in some area's that we expected to.
With no definitive list of the algorithms that search engine providers use, we started to look at why we did not appear.
The first step was to combine what we already knew, i.e., 'results being fed by a sequence of algorithms, the logic would be that these are formulated
by a human and the implemented by the 'robot' to return relevant websites', with new research into how we as individuals searched for products, articles,
local businesses or services. The results returned fundamental issues that affect many websites through no fault of their own.
By applying logical principals, following all the guidance and the requirements to rank highly in organic results, it unfortunately
becomes a simple catch 22 situation with various factors such as domain dominance, trust, user interaction effecting the ability for a website to achieve natural high organic ranking.