What is a Search Engine and How Does it Work?

Search engines are systems that organize information on the internet and allow users to easily access this information. They basically consist of three main stages:

Crawling: Search engines discover web pages by visiting websites. This process is carried out through software called "spiders" or "bots." Spiders follow links on a web page to navigate to other pages, thus crawling billions of pages on the internet.
Indexing: The information obtained during the crawling process is added to the search engine's index. Indexing involves analyzing the content of pages, identifying keywords, and categorizing pages accordingly.
Ranking: When a user performs a search, the search engine finds the relevant pages in its index and ranks them using specific algorithms. Ranking depends on the quality of the page's content, keyword density, link profile, user experience, and many other factors.

Key Points:

Search engines constantly crawl the content of websites and update their indexes.
Ranking algorithms are complex and constantly changing.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a set of techniques aimed at ensuring that websites rank higher in search engines.

What are the Different Types of Search Engines?

Search engines can have different purposes and features. Here are the most common types of search engines:

General Purpose Search Engines: Search engines that cover a wide range of information on the internet, such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo.
Vertical Search Engines: Search engines that focus on a specific topic or industry. For example, travel search engines (Kayak, Skyscanner), e-commerce search engines (Google Shopping), scientific search engines (Google Scholar), etc.
Meta Search Engines: Search engines that aggregate results from multiple search engines. Such as Dogpile, Metacrawler.
Visual Search Engines: Search engines that allow you to search using a picture or visual. Such as Google Images, TinEye.
Video Search Engines: Search engines used to search for video content. Such as YouTube, Vimeo.
Social Search Engines: Search engines used to search for content on social media platforms. Such as Twitter Search, Facebook Search.

What is SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and Why is it Important?

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the entirety of efforts made to ensure a website ranks higher in search engines. SEO helps you attract more organic traffic by increasing your website's visibility. Organic traffic refers to free traffic from search engines and is generally the most valuable type of traffic.

Importance of SEO:

More Traffic: Ranking higher allows you to attract more visitors to your website.
Better Brand Awareness: Appearing at the top of search results increases your brand awareness.
Higher Credibility: Websites ranked highly by search engines are perceived as more trustworthy by users.
Higher Conversion Rates: Organic traffic is generally more targeted and qualified, resulting in higher conversion rates.
Competitive Advantage: SEO helps you stay ahead of your competitors and increase your market share.

SEO Basic Elements:

Keyword Research: Identifying the keywords your target audience uses.
Content Optimization: Creating high-quality and informative content using keywords.
Technical SEO: Ensuring your website can be easily crawled and indexed by search engines.
Link Building: Getting links to your website from other websites.
Mobile Compatibility: Ensuring your website displays properly on mobile devices.
Page Speed Optimization: Ensuring your website loads quickly.
User Experience (UX): Ensuring your website is user-friendly.

How Do Search Engine Algorithms Work and What Do They Evaluate?

Search engine algorithms evaluate a complex set of factors to provide the most relevant and appropriate results for users' search queries. These algorithms are constantly evolving and being updated. Here are some of the key factors that search engines evaluate:

Keyword Relevance: How relevant the keywords in the page's content are to the user's search query.
Content Quality and Depth: How informative, comprehensive, and original the page's content is.
Link Profile (Backlinks): The number, quality, and diversity of links pointing to the page.
User Experience (UX): Whether the page is user-friendly, ease of navigation, page speed, and mobile compatibility.
Page Authority: The overall trustworthiness and reputation of the page or website.
Freshness: How up-to-date the content is and whether it is regularly updated.
Social Signals: How much the page is shared and engaged with on social media.
Technical SEO: Whether the page's technical structure is easily crawlable and indexable by search engines.

Real-Life Example:

When a user searches for "best Italian restaurant Istanbul," the search engine first finds pages that contain these keywords. Then, it evaluates the quality of the content on these pages, the links from other websites, user reviews, the restaurant's location, and other factors to rank the most relevant and reliable results. For example, a restaurant with high ratings, numerous positive reviews, a central location, and links from other popular websites is more likely to rank higher.

How to Conduct Keyword Research for SEO?

Keyword research is a fundamental step in SEO. Identifying the keywords your target audience uses is important for optimizing your website's content and attracting the right people. Here's how to do keyword research step by step:

Know Your Target Audience: Determine who you want to reach and what words they use.
Brainstorm: Create a list of possible keywords related to your business, products, or services.
Conduct Competitor Analysis: Examine which keywords your competitors are using and what topics they are creating content on.
Use Keyword Tools: Use tools like Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs, SEMrush, Moz Keyword Explorer to find the search volume, competition level, and related keyword suggestions for keywords.
Focus on Long-Tail Keywords: Longer and more specific keywords (e.g., "gluten-free pizza delivery in Istanbul") usually provide less competition and more targeted traffic.
Create and Prioritize a Keyword List: Prioritize the keywords you find based on search volume, competition level, and relevance to your business.

Keyword Tools Comparison

Tool	Features	Pricing
Google Keyword Planner	Free, basic keyword research, search volume, competition level	Free (requires a Google Ads account)
Ahrefs	Comprehensive keyword research, competitor analysis, backlink analysis, site audit	Paid (subscription model)
SEMrush	Keyword research, competitor analysis, site audit, content marketing tools	Paid (subscription model)
Moz Keyword Explorer	Keyword research, difficulty score, opportunity score, SERP analysis	Paid (subscription model)

What is Technical SEO and Why is it Important?

Technical SEO is all the optimization efforts made to ensure that your website can be easily crawled, indexed, and understood by search engines. Technical SEO helps search engines by improving your website's infrastructure and structure, and increases ranking performance.

Importance of Technical SEO:

Crawlability and Indexability: Enables search engines to easily crawl and index your website.
Page Speed: Improves user experience and boosts ranking performance by ensuring your website loads quickly.
Mobile-Friendliness: Enhances mobile user experience and improves ranking performance by ensuring your website displays correctly on mobile devices.
Structured Data (Schema Markup): Helps search engines better understand your website's content, allowing you to obtain rich snippets.
Sitemap: Ensures that all pages of your website are submitted to search engines.
Robots.txt: Allows you to control which pages search engines should crawl and which they should not.
SSL Certificate (HTTPS): Enhances the security of your website, building user trust and improving ranking performance.
Duplicate Content: Prevents search engines from getting confused by identifying and fixing duplicate content on your website.

Step-by-Step Technical SEO Checklist:

Create a Sitemap and Submit it to Google Search Console: Create an XML sitemap containing a list of all pages of your website and submit it to Google Search Console.
Check the Robots.txt File: Make sure the Robots.txt file is configured correctly and that important pages are not blocked.
Test and Optimize Page Speed: Test and improve your page speed using tools like Google PageSpeed Insights, GTmetrix. Optimize images, enable browser caching, and use a CDN.
Test Mobile Compatibility: Check if your website is mobile-friendly using Google's Mobile-Friendly Test tool and make the necessary adjustments.
Install an SSL Certificate and Switch to HTTPS: Install an SSL certificate to ensure the security of your website and redirect all traffic over HTTPS.
Add Structured Data Markup: Add structured data markup (schema markup) to better explain the content of your website to search engines. For example, use Product schema for products and Article schema for articles.
Detect and Fix Duplicate Content: Use tools like Screaming Frog, Copyscape to detect duplicate content on your website and fix duplicate content with canonical tags or 301 redirects.
Fix Broken Links: Use tools like Screaming Frog to detect broken links on your website and fix or redirect broken links.


<!-- Sample Robots.txt File -->
User-agent: *
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /wp-includes/

Sitemap: https://www.example.com/sitemap.xml

What is Link Building and How to Do It?

Link building is the process of getting links (backlinks) from other websites to your own website. Backlinks are an important factor used by search engines to measure the authority and reliability of your website. Quality and relevant backlinks help your website rank higher in search engines.

Importance of Link Building:

Authority and Reliability: Links from other websites increase the authority and reliability of your website.
Ranking Performance: Quality backlinks help your website rank higher in search engines.
Traffic: Links from other websites can provide direct traffic to your website.

Link Building Strategies:

Creating Quality Content: Create informative, comprehensive, and engaging content to encourage other websites to link to you.
Guest Blogging: Write articles for other websites and get links back to your own website.
Broken Link Building: Identify broken links on other websites and suggest replacing them with your own content.
Competitor Analysis: Examine which websites your competitors are getting links from and try to get links from similar websites.
Social Media: Share your content on social media to reach more people and increase your chances of getting links.
Directory Submissions: Register your business or website in relevant directories.
Local SEO: For local businesses, it is important to register in local directories and get links from local websites.

Link Quality Assessment Criteria:

Criterion	Description
Relevance	How relevant is the content of the linking website to the content of your website?
Authority	How high is the authority of the linking website? (Metrics like Domain Authority, Page Authority)
Traffic	How much traffic does the linking website receive?
Location	Where is the link located on the page? (In the content, in the sidebar, or in the footer?)
Followable (Dofollow)	Can the link be followed by search engines? (Dofollow links are more valuable)

Case Study:

A travel blog published an article on "top 10 boutique hotels". This article included high-quality photos, detailed descriptions, and personal experiences. The blogger shared this article on social media and contacted the relevant hotels. Several hotels shared the blogger's article on their own websites and social media accounts. In addition, some travel blogs and news sites also linked to this article. As a result, the travel blog's traffic increased significantly and it started ranking higher in search engines.