What is Search Engine Optimization?

"Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results. Typically, the higher a site's "page rank" (i.e, the earlier it comes in the search results list), the more visitors it will receive from the search engine. SEO can also target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, and industry-specific vertical search engines.

As an Internet marketing strategy, SEO considers how search engines work and what people search for. Optimizing a web site primarily involves editing its content and HTML coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines.

The ultimate goal of search engine optimization (SEO) is to drive more traffic to your web site. Why getting more traffic is so important? It is important because the more traffic the web site (or online store) gets, the more chances are that the sale will be made, or service requested.

The main search engines that are used are:

• Google (includes AOL, Hotbot, Netscape, Excite)
• Ask.com (includes Excite, iWon, MyWay.com and My Web Search)
• Yahoo (includes AllTheWeb, Altavista, Inktomi, Lycos, Hotbot, Overture)
• MSN

Search engines above are not listed in any particular order, but if you are interested you can find out more about search engine market shares.

How do these search engines differ from one another?   They all use different search algorithms and put a different values on the different things.   For example, if you are searching for "web design services" all of these search engines will return different set of results.  Why?  Because their search criteria is different:   Some put more value to the number of inbound and outbound links, some on page title, some on key word density, etc.

There are many tools available to help you understand your web site traffic, analyze web logs, compare web page rankings, get conversion ratios, and learn which keywords are driving traffic to the web site. Some of them are free, and some of them are paid for (for example, Advanced Web Rankings, WebLog Expert, etc.), and one of our favorite ones is in particular gives a good insight to the traffic and keywords, and works well with the Google Ads program.

To get the best possible organic search engine results, and keep them that way, SEO and search engine marketing (SEM) should be considered as ongoing process.