Start with the vocabulary
Guides to evaluating a website often assume you already know the words. This one does not. Below are the core terms you will meet most often, in plain language, followed by an honest account of what an evaluation can and cannot do.
What a search engine does
A search engine is a service that collects information about web pages and then uses it to answer searches. Its work is often described in three stages.
Crawling
Crawling is the process by which a search engine’s software visits pages, usually by following links from one page to the next. It starts from pages it already knows and discovers new ones along the way. If a page has no links pointing to it and is not listed anywhere the software looks, it may never be found. Site owners can give hints and instructions, such as a robots file that asks crawlers to stay away from certain areas.
Indexing
Indexing is what happens after a page has been visited: the search engine analyzes it and decides whether to store it in its large database, called the index. Only pages in the index can appear in results. A page can be crawled and still not be indexed, for example if it is judged to be a copy of another page or to offer little value. The two stages are covered in more detail under crawling and indexing.
Ranking
Ranking is the ordering of results when someone searches. Search engines combine many signals to decide which pages to show and in what order, and they do not publish the details. Rankings differ by person, place, device and time. This is why no honest guide can promise a particular position.
Other terms worth knowing
Relevance. How closely a page matches what the searcher wants. A page about hiking boots is relevant to a search for hiking boots, but a page that only mentions them in passing is much less so. Relevance depends on the topic, the wording and what the searcher is trying to do, which is the idea behind search intent.
Organic results. The ordinary results shown for a search, as opposed to paid advertisements. “SEO” is about these.
SEO. Short for search engine optimization: the practice of making a site easier for search engines to understand and more useful to visitors. It includes the technical, content and link-related work described elsewhere in this guide.
Title and description. Title tags are the names of pages, shown in browser tabs and often in search results. The description is a short summary that may be shown beneath the title, and meta descriptions are written by hand. Search engines sometimes display text different from what you wrote.
Link. A clickable connection between pages. Links within your site are internal; links from other sites to yours are often called backlinks, and backlinks basics start from the idea that other sites vouch for yours.
Redirect. An instruction that sends visitors and crawlers from one address to another, often used when a page has moved.
Canonical. The preferred version of a page when several addresses show similar content. Canonical tags are one way of stating that preference.
Sitemap. An xml sitemap is a file listing pages you would like search engines to know about. It is a helpful hint, not a guarantee that pages will be indexed.
Traffic. The visits a site receives. Organic traffic means visits that came from ordinary search results.
Audit. Another word for evaluation: a structured review of a site’s condition. Sometimes “audit” suggests a more formal process, but the purpose is the same.
What an evaluation can tell you
A well-run evaluation can show:
- Whether pages can be reached and read by people and search engines.
- Where content is unclear, outdated, thin or repeated.
- Whether the site’s structure makes sense and whether important pages are easy to find.
- Where speed, phone layout or security might frustrate visitors.
- Which fixes seem most likely to help, based on evidence and common practice.
It can also give you a baseline to compare with later, so you can see whether changes made things better or worse.
What an evaluation cannot tell you
It is equally important to know the limits:
- It cannot guarantee rankings or traffic. Fixing problems removes obstacles, but search engines weigh many things, and competitors and algorithms change.
- It cannot reveal exactly how a search engine judges your pages. You see the site from the outside, with imperfect tools.
- It cannot replace knowing your audience. Whether content is truly useful depends on what your visitors need, which no checklist knows.
- It is a snapshot. Results reflect the site at the time of review.
- It can be wrong. Tools misreport, samples mislead and reviewers have blind spots. Treat findings as strong hints to confirm, not as final verdicts.
A sensible way to begin
If all of this is new, start small. Read your own site as a visitor. Search for your site’s name. Check that your main pages load and make sense on a phone. Then look into each term above as it becomes relevant. Understanding a few concepts well, such as how pages are found and why relevance matters, will help more than memorizing a long list of rules, and will make every later step in an evaluation easier to follow.