If you're going to understand what search engine optimization and marketing is than it only stands to reason that you would need to first understand what a search engine is. Most people know that they can go to a site like Google or Yahoo and type in a collection of words to find websites on thousands of different topics. But you might not be aware of how these sites find their search results for things ranging from Edmonton botox clinics to flower shops. This article should give you the basics to understanding search engines.

The goal of a search engine is essentially to index all of the millions of pages and sites that exist on the whole of the Internet so that it can present the best options when users are searching for any number of topics. Users type in a series of words related to the information they would like to find and then the search engine matches those words with the sites that are more relevant. It attempts to put the most useful sites at the top of the results. So, if you were searching for a catering Toronto company it would list the most popular and relevant sites on the first page.

Search engines find all of the web pages and sites that they can by using software robots called spiders. These spiders are responsible for indexing all of the words on each page that they think relate to that site's main focus. For instance, if they were looking at the site for a Toronto mortgage broker they might take those three words as well as things like "loans", "finance", and "homes". The spiders could index hundreds of different words relating to each page that they view.

When creating the order of results, search engines are attempting to put what they think the user is really looking for as close to the top of the list as possible. They do this by looking at the popularity of the site and the amount of indexed words that site has related to the given topic. They can also give priority to company sites with a location close to that of the user. So, if you're looking for a site in Toronto you might get a Canada trademark business site over its American counterpart.

It is the job of SEM and SEO companies to get their clients a better position when it comes to search results on the top search engines. They do this through working with the site itself so that it's indexing the best possible words and by creating more online popularity for the site. Everyone from a strapping machine manufacturer to an online dating service could benefit from better results on sites like Google. This is why so many people are now putting Internet marketing into their operating budgets.