Introduction to Search Engine Optminization

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 for targeted keywords.

The famous saying still holds true. You can have the best looking site on the planet, but if no one can find it, then what good is it?

Please note that according to statistics:

• 85% of traffic/visitors are coming from top 3 search engines: Google, Yahoo & MSN!
• about 75% of visitors are coming from the first 10 listings in the search engines results (page 1).
• less than 20% of visitors are coming from the second 10 listings in the search engines results (page 2).
• less than 5% of visitors are coming from the first 10 listings in the search engines results (page 3).
• the rest little percentage is coming from listings beyond 30.

There are two ways to be able to get noticed by search engines.

One is through pay-per-click-advertisements. A good example of a pay-per-click system that is employed by search engines is the Google Adwords system. It has created a hype and has given Google around 5 billion dollars in terms of revenue per year. Webmasters can place their bids to be shown when a keyword is searched by a surfer. The highest bidders will get their sites to appear first when the search is being done.

The second way of GETTING high rankings from search engines is through organic searches. Search engines evaluate websites by using what they call “spiders.” These programs scan the websites and collects information about them. They then collate the information and pass it on to the search engine. This area is primarily the main arena of search engine optimization. It utilizes a set of methods to be able to get search engines to list the website on high ranks.