Search Engines and SEO

How Search Engines Work and Why Your SEO Strategy Needs a Modern Refresh.

The most transformative innovation in marketing in the last 30 years is the free search engine, particularly Google. People searching for information, products, or services are shown results that direct traffic to websites that offer those products or services. Brilliant! 

In the early days of the World Wide Web, it was easy to create a website, write content about products or services, and start getting web traffic and sales. Today, it’s much harder because competition has increased and the search landscape has changed – particularly with respect to AI search. But a few things have remained the same since the beginning:  

  • A great website with great content is the most effective way to tap into search engine traffic. 
  • Companies that have a poorly defined, poorly executed, or outdated search strategy are missing a huge opportunity. 

What is a search strategy? 

Maximizing high-converting organic search traffic requires careful planning and execution. All organic search strategies involve investment in at least one (and usually all) of the following areas: 

  • Keyword research – determining the search phrases that are most valuable. 
  • Content – writing great content to address the search phrases identified during keyword research. 
  • Outreach (or link building) – establishing and nurturing relationships with reputable entities to build a company’s brand through links or mentions.
  • Infrastructure (or technical SEO) – to ensure the site’s content can be read (quickly) by search engines. 
  • Performance reporting/analytics – to indicate whether the strategy is working. 
  • Staying up on trends – staying informed through industry chatter to identify when a strategy needs to change. 

Having trouble finding the right talent to keep your SEO strategy sharp? Confidence Interval can help. Get in touch with us!

How has AI search changed the landscape? 

With the advent of Large Language Models (LLMs), the search landscape has changed significantly. There are a whole lot of questions – general questions – which can be answered directly by search engines without requiring clicks to websites that can answer questions. In one sense, this is completely new territory. But really, it’s been happening for years: search engines continuously look for ways to answer questions more quickly, even if that means there is no click to another website. Is it unfair? Yes, does Google care? No, is Google going to try to take over the world and replace all of its advertisers? Of course not. Google is an advertising platform, and they want more advertising revenue. Nobody would buy ads on Google if those ads didn’t drive revenue for advertisers.  

Anyway, advertisers are going to have to come to terms with this new search landscape. We offer the following perspective: general questions don’t represent as much economic opportunity as specific questions. AI allows search engines to play the role of a facilitator by reducing the time required to answer very top-of-funnel inquiries (i.e., general questions). 

AI Search: AEO and GEO 

Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) – optimizing for AI search results (like Google’s AI Overview) in traditional search engines 

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) – optimizing for genuine chatbots like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot, or Perplexity. 
 
While AEO and GEO differ significantly from traditional SEO, the basic idea is still the same: figure out what works and implement changes to make it happen. 

How do search engines work? 

There are five fundamental concepts to understand about search engines: 

  • Crawling 
  • Indexing 
  • Algorithm 
  • Search Engine Results Pages (“SERP”) 
  • Business model 

To illustrate the relationships among these concepts, consider a simple scenario: a user types something (let’s call it a string) into the location bar of their browser. 

First, the string is analyzed by the browser. If the string looks like a URL, the web browser tries to retrieve a page from the URL. If the string doesn’t look like a URL, the web browser interprets the string as a search phrase and forwards the inquiry to its default search engine. The search engine then returns a Search Engine Results Page (SERP). 

How does a search engine know to return those results? Did the search engine quickly visit every page on the internet on behalf of the user and show the pages it found with matching words/phrases? No, the search engine has previously visited all those pages through a process called crawling and stored the data in a large database organized by the words and phrases contained in the page. This process is called indexing. Think of it like the index of a book, but smart enough to handle both exact and similar phrases. 

And how did Google decide the sequence (or rank) in which to show the search results? The answer is: an algorithm. The Google search ranking algorithm is one of the most complex algorithms known to man, and its details are not publicly available. The algorithm’s nuances are the entire reason for the existence of people in the SEO industry. Although Google emphasizes focusing on Creating Helpful, Reliable, People-First Content, it’s not the whole story. SEO can help companies find new opportunities that aren’t obvious. 

Now, on to the business model. Everything we’ve talked about so far doesn’t generate any money for Google. It only generates an audience of people who use Google. So, how does Google make money? With paid search ads (and paid display/banner ads, but let’s leave paid display ads for another article). 

Paid search, sometimes known as search engine marketing (SEM) or search ads, are promoted results where someone (usually a company) has paid real money to show their links in the search results, either with or without having earned the commensurate organic search ranking. Paid search works on an auction system, where advertisers compete or bid for certain search phrases. The top bidder wins, and the top bidder’s search results are shown in the SERP, above the organic search results. Two well-known paid search platforms are Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising. 

Organic search, also called natural search or unpaid search, is the search results that search engines think are the most relevant for the search phrase used. Organic search results appear below paid search results. 

Conclusion 

The world of search engines cannot be ignored by companies that want to do business online (doesn’t everybody want to do business online?). It’s a complex topic that requires investment, but the rewards are palpable. The only question is whether ‘the juice is worth the squeeze’ – that is, does organic search generate more revenue than its cost? To know that answer, you have to start measuring it.  

Armed with this knowledge about search engines, companies can put the knowledge to use using Google Search Console to start growing through organic search!