Search engines use automated systems to discover and organize billions of web pages. While the exact systems are complex, you can understand the basic process through three important stages:

01 — Crawling

Search engines discover pages through links and other available signals and access the content on those pages.

02 — Indexing

The information found on a page can be processed and stored in a search engine’s index, making it available for potential search results.

03 — Ranking

When someone searches for something, search engines use many signals to determine which relevant results should appear and in what order.

Simple formula:

Crawl → Understand → Index → Match → Rank

Photo/Image idea

A visual SEO workflow diagram:

Website Pages → Crawler → Search Engine Index → Search Query → Search Results

Use:

• Website icon
• Robot/crawler icon
• Database/index icon
• Search bar
• Ranking/result cards