Search engine optimization is the bread and butter of any online business. Anyone who still doubts the effectiveness of SEO should simply take a look at how closely related income and search engine rankings are. Still, for most the SEO process remains a mystery: how could it possibly work if Google (and other search engines) keep the exact workings of their algorithms under tight wraps?
A typical answer would be – SEO tools reveal strategies that can be used to improve the ranking of search engine results pages. Of course, the natural question would still be – how can SEO tools be created if no one knows how the algorithm works? Therefore, in this article, we will explain the basic development of SEO, how the data needed for insights is collected, and how the main tools are created.
Basics of SEO
Put simply, SEO refers to web and content development practices that are intended to improve search engine rankings. Almost all SEO revolves around the biggest search engine on the web – Google. Most experts use a wide variety of online tools to analyze and make suggestions for possible web and content improvements.
In practice, SEO is a competitive field that revolves around pushing others out of top positions on search engine results pages. For a long time, best practices were mostly acquired through trial and error, sharing knowledge between experts and following public updates to the Google search engine algorithms. Whenever Google updates its algorithm (eg the Hummingbird update), it shares the broad improvements it made, but not the exact details. Today, the exact details (or the closest possible approximations) are gleaned from Google’s large-scale data collection.
Basically, what SEO experts (and tool developers) can do is collect a large amount of Google data and start comparing their sets of information. On a large enough sample of relevant data, reverse engineering can be used to find out why certain pages are ranked better than others. While the insights will never be exact, they will often be close enough for practical application.
Large scale collection of Google data
Ten years ago, Google’s large-scale data collection would have been nearly impossible. Users would have to collect most of the data they need manually or run very simple scripts that could only extract individual queries.
Nowadays, automated data extraction is becoming more and more sophisticated as good APIs and indexing tools can collect data from multiple pages per second. Indexing tools like SERPMaster use a wide variety of strategies to extract data as quickly as possible with as little negative impact on the website as possible.
In particular, Google’s scraping usually accepts user queries. The scraper then goes to the requested search results page and downloads the source. The data obtained from the source is often analyzed and delivered to the interested party. All this happens in just a few seconds. Therefore, businesses can get incredible amounts of information from search engine results pages to perform any type of analysis they want.
Data creates SEO tools
Everything should be sorted by now. As it might be clear, SEO tools use Google’s scraping tools or services to get a consistent flow of data. Of course, to create an SEO tool, the data flow must be extremely diverse, precise and consistent.
SEO tool developers scrape search engine results pages many times a day. The data is then analyzed through the service or in-house to create easily digestible information. After analysis, the collected data is collectively analyzed to gain insight into the performance of websites and their content. By comparing millions of data points, some aspects of the search engine algorithm can be reverse engineered. This is the primary strategy used by giant SEO tools such as Ahrefs, Moz or Mangools. Of course, they also never reveal their exact inner workings (especially how they analyze the data), but they all rely on the same basic mechanism – Google scraping.
These SEO tools then sell access to their databases and insights to help experts create the most optimized content for search engines. SEO professionals consistently use these databases to analyze pages, benchmark against competitors, and use the data to gain the best positions on search engine results pages.
It should be noted that different SEO tools will often show slightly different conclusions or suggestions. Because no one really knows how the Google search algorithm works, and the amount of data traveling through the engine is so vast, predictions can only be somewhat accurate. In most general cases, many SEO tools will agree on their suggestions. But when it comes to edge cases, where there is not enough data collected on a daily basis (eg time-sensitive SEO), predictions become more diverse.
Conclusion
SEO tools are a mystery to most. Not even all SEO experts know exactly how they collect their data and provide insights. Everything relies on automated data extraction from Google and relevant websites. These SEO tool developers collect large amounts of data from search engines and websites to provide the best possible insight into search algorithms.
Today, even smaller companies can scrape Google data for their own needs. As scraping as a service becomes more ubiquitous, data prices have dropped significantly. As long as a dedicated marketing and analytics team is in place, businesses can use Google data to make better decisions, drive more traffic, and increase revenue.
Read more Author: Freddie George Education
Categories: How to
Source: HIS Education