Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" (based on relevance and not paid advertising) search results.

Usually, the earlier a site is presented in the search results, or the higher it "ranks," the more searchers will visit that site. 4 out of 5 people click on these "natural" links instead of the sponsored (paid for) links at the very top of the results page. This makes those positions highly valuable.

(Sources: Wikipedia / ComScore Media)

As an Internet marketing strategy, SEO considers how search engines work and what people search for. Optimizing a website 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. This would include META Tags, Page Titles, Site Maps and Bot instructions just to name a few.

If you have ever researched SEO and the associated fees, or know someone who has, you know its often a larger investment than what you paid to create your website. Average fees for professional optimization of your website would be $4,000 to $5,000 with a contract that includes additional monthly fees of $400 or more. In 6 months time you can easily invest several thousand dollars.

Most SEO firms charge you based on what the process is worth, not how much time it took., If your advertising on a national level and are expecting $200,000 in internet sales, then paying $10,000 for top shelf SEO is actually cheaper then national television or radio advertising.

Search Engines look at 4 major (and a few minor) things when adding websites to their database:

Website Content

The days of search engines using only the META Tag <Keywords> are long gone. Today search engine both catalog your content, all ASCII based text is searched thru for relevant words that might come up in a search. The more general your content on your site is, the less relavent copy will be cataloged and the lower your keyword rankings will be.

Tightly focused copy on your website will dramatically increase your keyword rankings. The old rule of print media still applies to the web today - Content is King.

Domain & Page Titles

Believe it or not, your domain name can make or break you. For all the SEO you do on a website dedicated to "Pink French Roses", you will almost always be ranked below a website called PinkFrenchRoses.com. It is always important to consider this when choosing a domain name. For this reason, many online companies will purchase multiple domain names and point them all to a single site. This would also explain why people are willing to pay top dollar for a .com!

Inbound Links

Inbound links are links on other websites that go to a page on your website. The number of of people linking to your site increase what Yahoo! and Google refer to as popularity. If there are 2 sites that sell chocolate covered strawberries with the same amount of content and keywords then the server will consider the more popular one to be more relevant and list it higher than the other. Popularity of a site is becoming increasingly more important as a way for search engines to bring your quality search results although Yahoo! has been using it for over a decade. REWRITE quality of incoming links is better than the quantity.

META Tags

META Tags define an attribute of your page (description, keyword, author, etc). There are many META tags including common ones like <Title> <Keywords> <Description> <Author> and more. There are over 200 different tags that give servers and search bots specific information.

Depending on how you edit your tags. You can tell search results how to include your page. You can give a specific title and synopsis that users will be able to read in the short paragraph listed on the results page. If a website does not have META tags then search results will commonly just include a small random section of text on the page as the example. This would explain to many why they see random information on some results and a focused introduction or comment on other results. If you want a user to click on your link you have to include important META information to let them know what they can find on that specific page.