You enjoy surfing the web. You like finding a quick answer to those random questions you have (Example: How tall is the tallest mountain?). You expect to easily find the top-rated restaurants near you. You assume a site ranking on the first search engine results page will be related to your search.
My goodness, you are one demanding user!
Then again, so is everyone else when it comes to being on the search hunt. Search engines have had to grow with each user expectation in order to give the best user experience possible. Let’s be honest, there are quite a few search engines in play these days, but most of us likely have a favorite because it basically reads our minds, bringing us the results we were ultimately searching for.
So, how do the search engines bring you exactly what you were searching for? You have a few people to thank for that. On one hand, you have the search engines, which are super speedy when it comes to delivering pages upon pages of results related to your search query.
On the other hand, you have websites that are targeting audiences for specific topics related to their brand and/or service. Both of these entities technically work together (to ultimately read your mind) and provide the relevant content or resources you were searching for in the first place!
Now, how do you choose which result to click on to fulfill your searching needs? If you're like most people, you quickly scan the text snippets and decide if the description is related to your need. These snippets contain both the title tag and meta description, which are specifically optimized by the websites to drive you to content they have waiting for you on their site.
Once a site grabs your attention, the website has successfully overcome three major hurdles:
- Ranking on the search engine results page.
- Driving their target audience (you) to click toward their relevant content.
- Making sure their website meets or exceeds your expectations.
This website now has a job of keeping you engaged and providing easy interactions throughout your visit. How do sites do this? Ideally, the website should be well-defined and easy to navigate. As a user, you’ve probably had unpleasant experiences with certain sites due to confusing navigation and architecture of how their content is portrayed. It’s important for websites to serve a purpose, whether that’s a site providing various content to educate users on a specific topic, or driving users to contact the company to schedule a service.
All three of the hurdles mentioned above are vital to the SEO success of the website. Could you imagine what the World Wide Web would look like without SEO or search engine algorithms? 0 for 3 hurdles would be achieved. If you searched for ‘pizza places near me,’ sites talking about the latest birth of a zebra could appear within the search engine results pages even though it’s not even relevant. How frustrating! So, next time you utilize a search engine to find a quick answer to those random questions you have (How tall is the tallest mountain?), appreciate the effort that has gone into reading your mind and providing you close-to-perfect results!
(To learn more about VI's SEO services, click here)
