Introduction to SEO

Search Engines are one of the primary ways that internet users find on web sites. That's why a web site with good Search Engine Listings may see a dramatic increase in traffic.

Everyone wants those good listings. Unfortunately, many web sites appear poorly in search engine rankings or may not be listed at all because they fail to consider how search engines work.

In particular, submitting to search engines is only part of the challenge of getting good search engine positioning. It's also important to prepare a web site through "Search Engine Optimization."

Search Engine Optimization means ensuring that your web pages are accessible to search engines and focused in ways that help improve the chances they will be found.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) changes your web pages so search engines can index and rank them better. You do this by modifying the HTML (the code) so search engines can easily navigate the page and identify significant words. You also add content (pages of text) so the search engines have something to index and rank. Thus your target audience will be able to find you when they are researching their interests. The goal is not just to get #1 ranking. The goal is sales. You measure success by showing an increase in leads, conversions, or sales.

Unpaid Links in Google: When a user searches in Google, she sees two types of links: unpaid links and paid links. The unpaid links are the result of Google's search technology. They scan the web and rank the links. The links at the top of the page get the most clicks, so every merchant's question is how to get his link to the top of the search engine. (The paid links, which are paid advertising, are on the right side of the page. This is covered in the chapter on PPC.) This chapter shows you how to improve your web page so they show up higher in the unpaid listings.

At Google, the links on the left are unpaid. These are indexed and ranked by Google's search engine. The paid listings are ads ranked by bids. Unpaid links are also called natural search results or organic search results. These names are misleading because there's nothing natural about it. Google uses complex rules to evaluate these results and SEO Companies put sophisticated efforts into getting the best possible ranking.

Let's go forward and explore first the two major ways search engines get their listings, then see how search engine optimization can especially help with crawler-based search engines.