What is Search Engine Optimization?

To completely understand how search engine optimization works and why it is so important to the success of any website,  please read the Search Engine Marketing article and the Link Marketing article.

Many people confuse the term search engine optimization with search engine marketing. search engine optimization is part of the search engine marketing process. Search engine optimization or SEO as it is sometimes referred to as is the process of defining or optimizing a website or webpage. Once a search engine knows what a website or particular webpage is about, it can then display that site or page when it is showing search results from a search performed by a user..

So what does it take to optimize a website or web page? As you know, a website is made up of multiple web pages and each and every web page can be optimized or defined to reflect the information on that particular page. It's About Text..Text..Text!!! Unique content is king. Pretty pictures and flash files are nice for a consumer to look at but search engines need text to decide how to define or index a particular page or site in their database. That does not mean you can't use pictures or flash on your site or on a particular page, you just need to make sure that you have enough text and key words so a search engine knows exactly where to index your site in their database.

What are keywords? Why are they important?

In the text you include on your site, you need to emphasize words(called keywords) which help the search engine define your site so they can index it. You will notice for example that on this page search engine optimization and SEO are used multiple times. This is so that when a search engine reads this page, it will know this page is about search engine optimization or SEO. Then when people type in the phrase search engine optimization or SEO into a search engine, the optimized page should come up in the results. Where they come up in the results is based on link marketing and other factors. Read the article about link marketing to understand more about this aspect of website marketing.