Overview

Can't find your site using search engines? A search engine is a website which provides a means for gathering and reporting information that contains or is related to specified terms available on the Internet. To optimize is make the best of something. So, search engine optimization is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a website from a search engine.

More commonly known as 'SEO', search engine optimization is crucial in the competitive virtual world known as the internet. By now, you've probably heard of Google, MSN Search, or Yahoo Search. Those are search engines. Just type a few words in a box, hit enter, and up comes a list of sites that are relevant to those keywords. There are thousands of sites that are relevant to those keywords. But, how do those lucky websites get on the first page of the search results? It's not luck. You need deep pockets for your site to be highly ranked. However, you should plan on investing some time.

How It Works

Though every search engine uses different criteria to rank sites, they all follow three basic tasks. See below.

• Search the internet based on keywords.
• Save indexes of keywords found and where they are found.
• Allow users to search for keywords found in those indexes.

Do

• Use keywords. Think of what your target audience would search for and use those keywords and phrases.
• Be specific. Keywords are great, but key phrases are better.
• Give your uploaded images names that are relevant to your site.

Don't

• Avoid using keywords that don't reflect you organization.
• Don't duplicate pages of your site. Search engines can detect this and view it as spam.
• Do not use the same color text on your page as the page's background color. Search engines can't be tricked by this and you page will be marked as spam.
• Don't rely on Meta Tags to raise your ranking. Meta tags only slightly impact the way you are ranked.

Links

• How Search Engines Work
• Search Engine Watch
• SEO Chat
• SEO Grader