On an entry level they work by having 3 basic functions: 

1. Crawling the internet to find new web pages and documents

2. Putting that content in a giant index / database

3. Ranking that content on various factors

We are going to be going into this in a bit more detail now.

Crawling: How Does A Search Engine Crawl The Web?

Search engines discover new content by sending out search engine spiders, or crawlers, to find it.

Crawlers are computer programs or robots that find new content like web pages, PDF files, videos, and images by visiting links on web pages.

These crawlers can visit web pages very quickly which allows them to discover new websites, pages, and other content.

When creating new content, linking to it from existing pages on your site or from another site is a good way to make sure it gets discovered by the search engines.

Crawlers also tend to visit popular websites that create new content more frequently than smaller unknown websites. Getting a link from a popular website could result in your content getting discovered more rapidly

Creating a sitemap also helps search engines crawl your site. A good sitemap will link to every page on your site.

Signing up for a Google Console account is a good step to take if you want to see more data on pages that get Google has crawled. You can also see any crawling errors that may have occurred.

A few issues that might cause pages to not get crawled include poor navigation structure, redirect loops and server errors.

In the past, it was popular to “submit” your site to search engines, but this is no longer needed as they have become much more advanced at detecting new content that is published on the web!

Indexing: How Does A Search Engine Read and Store Website Information?

When crawlers discover new pages and content, they store the information in an index.

You can think of an index as a very large database containing all the web pages on the Internet that a search engine has found.

Search engines will analyse and fetch content from their index when searchers enter a search query.

By default, search engines will crawl and try to index every page on your site that they can find.

However, if you have pages you don’t want web searchers to be able to find through search engines, like private member-only pages, then use can use Robots Meta Tags will help.

You may also want to exclude pages that aren’t useful like tag and category pages in WordPress.

Ranking: How Does A Search Engine Rank Websites?

Search engines use algorithms to analyse websites and decide how to rank them for various search queries.

These algorithms assign scores to various ranking factors and then rank web pages with the best scores from highest to lowest.

Search engine algorithms also change over time in an effort to improve search results. Keep in mind that the goal of search engines is to provide quality content so that their users are satisfied with search results and keep using their search engine.

So what factors do search engines use to determine what content ranks at the top?

We discuss the top ranking factors in the next chapter!

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Have you ever wondered what are the top Google ranking factors that can actually help boost your site and move you up the ranks?

Search engines don’t reveal how they rank exactly but many SEO experts believe that search engines use between 80 – 200 different ranking signals.

We don’t need to worry about all of these rankings, just a couple of these make up the majority of what really produces results.

Where should I focus my effort?

To boost traffic, here are some of the top search engine ranking factors.

Content

To rank high in search engines, you need to have content that ranks and answers the query someone has entered into a search engine. It sounds easy but actually creating the content is often something that it missed. A lot of people try to rank their homepage for every single keyword.

What you want to do, is show search engines that your website is about pages for each service you offer or each product.

Without these other optimised pages, search engines don’t know what you website is going to be about. That’s why having your content optimised is one of the highest google ranking factors.

On-page Optimisation

What you content is ready to fo, you will want to make sure it’s optimised so search engines know what to look for.

The first step is to make sure your keywords sit in your title tag and meta description. A web page’s title tag is the text in the link that shows up on the search engine results page. Another good step is to include your keywords and meta description tags. Writing a description can help convince searchers to click on your link from Search Engine Result Pages.

Look to include your target keywords naturally in the content of the actual web page.

Content Length

The length of your content also affects search engine performance. It’s known that writing content with over 1,600 tends to rang higher than those with shorter content.

Google tends to prefer long-form content that fully addresses the user’s questions. when writing long-form content, you will cover most of the things the user is looking for.

That being said, long content does not always rank better if the searcher’s intent doesn’t match.

Some queries like searches for recipes or quotes might work better with short content as such individuals are likely looking for quick information.

So how long should your content be to optimise search engine traffic?

Well, the content should be long enough so it providers valuable information to the reader.

It’s sometimes of benefit to check out your competition and see how their articles are ranking and you should look to create something which is better than theirs.

Search Intent

Search intent  is another factor to consider. Even if you do everything right to optimise your web page, it still won’t rank if you are targeting the wrong keywords with the wrong content type.

Google tends to rank more articles over product pages generally. If you search right now for “best email marketing software,” you might notice that Google is ranking articles about the best marketing software, as opposed to a product page from one of the top brands.

Google thinks the intent of the search is not to buy software immediately but to figure out which software is best through reviews.

In this case, it would be very difficult to rank your product page for “best marketing software,” and if you wanted to rank for this term, you would want to match the content type that is ranking.

To evaluate search intent, see what types of web pages are currently ranking when you type in a search query.

Keep your content fresh

Content freshness is also a ranking factor. Google provides the freshest / most current content, so keep your up to date.

Inbound Links

Another important ranking factor is links, including links from other websites to your website as well as internal links within your own website.

Links are like votes for your website – If a lot of people are linking to your website, search engines see your website as popular and therefore can rank you higher.

Quantity Of Links

Getting a large number of links to your website is a good thing and can help you rank in the search engines if those links appear to grow at a natural pace. Generating awareness for your brand and publicity will result in other people linking to your site naturally.

You can also get more links to your site by doing email outreach and building relationships with other website owners or even asking for links.

Quality Of Links

Another important factor to consider is the quality of the links you receive. Your website can rank well with just a few high-quality links from high authority sites.

For example, a link from CNN.com would have much more value than a link from your friend’s personal blog. The reason is that CNN already has a ton of inbound links from other sites as is therefore considered an authority site.

Anchor Text

The anchor text  (or link text) can influence your rankings as well. “Anchor Text” is the text that is linked. Anchor text can let search engines know what your webpage is about.

Usability

Another ranking factor that websites should pay attention to is usability and user experience. Websites that are not user-friendly could cause users to get frustrated and even leave, even if the content is good.

Bounce Rate

Have you ever visited a website, realised it’s not what you were looking for and immediately closed the window?

That’s called a “bounce” and in analytics, you can watch your bounce rate to make sure that it’s not too high.

If a visitor comes to your website and immediately returns to the search results page to click on something else, then this behaviour could tell the search engines that your web page is not a result that people want to see.

Page Speed

With today’s fast internet speeds, users are impatient!

If your website loads too slowly, visitors will leave before your site even has a chance to load – which is why having a fast website is increasingly important.

Search engines also like websites that load quickly, so be sure to optimise your website for speed. Slow loading pages frustrate users and cause them to leave.

Mobile-Friendly Design

Mobile search traffic (people searching on their phones) is now outpacing the number of people who search from their desktops. Making sure your website looks good on mobile is very important.

Be sure to test your website to make sure it’s compatible with various devices and web browsers.

Security & HTTPs

SSL are important for websites and help you rank by up to 2-3% better than if you didn’t have one. Secure browsing is particularly important for e-commerce sites that are collecting sensitive data like credit card details.

Conclusion

By focusing on these top Google ranking factors, you can start ranking and getting traffic from Google and other search engines.

Focus on creating great content, getting links, and providing a great user experience and search engines will reward you with the traffic you deserve.

Keep it original and keep it to the point.

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First Things First: What Even is a Chatbot?

A chatbot is a software application used to conduct an on-line chat conversation via text or text-to-speech, in lieu of providing direct contact with a live human agent.

Sounds complicated? Let’s come up with an imaginary example.

Let’s imagine you want to buy some trainers from (the very imaginatively named) Trainer Zone. Ordinarily, you’d go to their website and browse at your leisure until you’d found a pair you’d want to purchase. Well, if Trainer Zone decided to make a bot then you could replace this process by instead simply messaging them on e.g. Facebook. Having asked you what you were looking for, a conversation opens up much akin to an actual in-store experience.

‘But what about things other than trainers’ I don’t hear you ask but will answer anyway…

Want to find out the weather? Need help picking out next week’s groceries? Fancy some financial advice? You’re covered. Weather bots, Grocery bots and Personal Finance Bots all exist and are ready at your convenience. Heck, in China there’s even a bot called Xiaoice acting as nothing more than a friend to over twenty million people. Pretty crazy right? But it’s true, with bots the possibilities are endless.

But Why Make a Bot in the First Place?

Yes, they technology seems impressive enough, but what’s the big deal? Is it really worth a company spending their valuable time and energy on them? In short, absolutely!

For the first time ever, messenger apps are being used more than social networks, so if you want to build a business online, you’ll naturally be drawn to where the people are: inside messenger apps.

As Aaron Batalion from Lightspeed Venture Partners writes:

“Major shifts on large platforms should be seen as opportunities for distribution. That said, we need to be careful not to judge the very early prototypes too harshly as the platforms are far from complete. I believe Facebook’s recent launch is the beginning of a new application platform for micro application experiences. The fundamental idea is that customers will interact with just enough UI, whether conversational and/or widgets, to be delighted by a service/brand with immediate access to a rich profile and without the complexities of installing a native app, all fuelled by mature advertising products. It’s potentially a massive opportunity.”

In short, it comes down to those last two words: it’s a ‘massive opportunity’.

So How Do They Work?

Surely, it’s Artificial Intelligence? That must be incredibly complicated? How on earth can they talk to people and answer questions? I can’t do that myself, can I?

All good questions and in answer to the final one, yes!

There are two types of chatbots. Let’s take a look at each of them now.

Chatbots that function based on rules:

This type of bot is only as intelligent as it is programmed to be, responding only to very specific commands.

Chatbots that functions using machine learning:

This type of bot is far less limited, with its AI enabling it to understand language rather than just commands, thereby becoming increasingly intelligent with each and every conversation it has with people.

What doesn’t change, though, is the fact that companies create each with a purpose, whether that be to facilitate a purchase or answer customer support queries. Either way, it seems the days of ringing up businesses are numbered.

Artificial Intelligence

Some good news…Thankfully, you don’t need to be an AI expert to create a great AI chatbot. It would though be recommended to apply the old adage of not trying to run before you can walk. Try not to over promise on your application’s abilities and even hold off until you’re ready. Anyone with the ability to code can certainly incorporate some level of artificial intelligence into their products, so it might be worth keeping this in mind when listing the ‘required skills’ in your hiring process!

Building Chatbots

Before you delve into the how, you’ll have to take a look at they why. In other words, what problem is your bot going to solve? Once this question has been answered, it’s time to choose which platform your bot is going to live on. Next, you’ll need to set up a server to run your bot from and then decide which service you will use to build your bot.

As Matt Hartman, the Director of Seed Investments at Betaworks, writes:

“The difficulty in building a chatbot is less a technical one and more an issue of user experience. The most successful bots will be the ones that users want to come back to regularly and that provide consistent value.” 

Don’t worry. There’s no gold rush leaving you behind. As is usually the case, it’s worth taking your time and remembering that quality wins in the end.

Time to Join the Chatbot Revolution?

Chatbots are not an entirely new phenomenon. In fact, they’ve been around for decades. It’s only due to recent advancements in artificial intelligence and machine learning that the aforesaid “huge opportunity” has arisen. Whether you’re currently building or wanting to learn how to build a chatbot, as always from the Byter Team, good luck!

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