When it comes to how the users search, things are pretty straightforward. Like mentioned above, a search for “t-shirts” is of a higher maybe competition than a search for “prosthetic legs” and this is due to the term’s popularity on the web, or in other words, how many more websites talk about “t-shirts” than “prothetic legs”.
Another distinction than popularity can be how specific the search term is or not. A search for “t-shirts” is a broader search than “long sleeve pink t-shirt for men”. We expect less websites to talk specifically about “long sleeve pink t-shirt for men” than “t-shirts” in general. Here is a an example :
Broad search term | More specific search term |
t-shirts | long sleeve mens’ t-shirts |
car | car maintenance |
cafe | cafe near Westminster |
business cards | business cards in black and white |
You get the point. Users will mainly search for broader terms than specific ones, and this is where search engines’ artificial intelligence steps in. The more broad the search users do, the more websites there are to list as possible results. But the question is how to rank then so that the most relevant and “important” to the user, comes on top. User’s tend to click the top results first and try to seek the information they need in that related website. So the higher the result in the search page, the more important the user thinks it is ( and actually, in most cases, it is ).
Due to competition these days, thinking that our website can rank amongst the first in search engines, could be not that easy or maybe not that possible. We will be doing SEO on our website to increase the possibilities, not bring the website ranking first. You need to understand that ranking first in search engines, could be possible but it cannot be a promised result after applying SEO.
So we now have a rough idea of how users search for websites on search engines. Now let’s look at our website and how to perceive it, before we move on to specific optimizations.