If you’ve heard of the Santa Fe Institute – a think tank founded by scientists seeking a way to explore their research outside of the bounds of normal structures – you may have heard about Complexity.
Search is the ultimate complex system that is probably impacting you and or organization right now. Since the beginning of Internet Time, computers have been indexing and ranking websites. Systems like search engines use signals, combined with the content and meta content within your website, to determine if your website or content is the best search result.
The impacts can make or break a business as it moves in and out of a popular search category.
But what are the elements of this system? How can you impact your own search results?
1. Other websites referencing you. For example, if I wanted to get this website to rank well for restaurant hood cleaning, the anchor link used signals to search engines that this website (robauto.ai) found the content important enough to link back to it.
2. Site speed. Particularly Google wants to serve fast, mobile friendly websites.
3. Community support. This is where your social media comes in. Even if your posts don’t get a lot of interaction, people liking and commenting around a URL is just another signal you are sending.