Search Engine Optimization & What It Is

You have probably heard the term Search Engine Optimization, but the question is, what is it exactly? Search Engine Optimization is a process of determining the most preferred targeted keyword or keyword phrases related to your website to ensure that your website ranks high in the search engines so that when someone searches for specific phrases it returns your website at #1 or as close to #1 as possible. Simply put, it fine tunes the content of your website along with the HTML and Meta tags, and it involves an appropriate link building process. The most popular search engines are Google, Yahoo, MSN Search, AOL and Ask Jeeves.

Search engines keep their methods and ranking algorithms secret in order to get credit for finding the most valuable search-results and to deter spam pages from clogging their results. A search engine may use hundreds of factors while ranking their listings where the factors themselves and the weight each carries may change continually. Algorithms can differ so widely that a webpage that ranks #1 in a particular search engine could rank #200 in another search engine.

New sites do not necessarily need to be "submitted" to search engines to be listed. A simple link from a well established site will get the search engines to visit the new site and begin to pick up its contents. This is called a web spider or web crawler. However, it can take from a few days to even several weeks from the referring of a link from such an established site for all the main search engine spiders to commence visiting and indexing the new site. Understand that it is the keywords that will trigger the search engines, so choosing the right keywords is important to your search engine optimization experience.

Moreover, if you are not able to research and choose keywords to work on your own search engine ranking, you may want to hire someone to work with you on these issues.

Search engine marketing and promotion companies will look at the plan for your site and make recommendations to increase your search engine ranking and website traffic. Also if you wish, they will also provide ongoing consultation and reporting to monitor your website and to make recommendations for editing and to make improvements to maintain and increase your website traffic flow and to keep your search engine ranking high. Normally your search engine optimization experts will work with your web designer to build an integrated plan right away so that all aspects of your website's design are considered at the same time.