What is Search Engine Optimization?

Search engine optimization or S.E.O. is the process of constantly improving the visibility of a website or a web page in search engines such as Google via the “natural” or un-paid (“organic” or “algorithmic”) search results. In Google, a paid search result or an ad is highlighted in pale yellow.

Sites appearing on top of the page result normally get more traffic, and this is why website owners spend huge amounts of time and money in both ethical and unethical SEO techniques.

There are several factors to consider when writing content for a website or blog. Search engine “spiders” constantly crawl or search for content in websites and analyze it for indexing in the search engine’s servers. When a search is made, the search engine shows results in the computer screen based on its indexing of related content from various websites. So the primary job objective of SEO is to make sure there are no barriers within its website contents from the search engines’ indexing activities. Optimizing a website involves but is not limited to editing contents and HTML and associated coding to both increase relevance to specific keywords. Promoting a site to increase the number of “backlinks”, or inbound links, is also a common SEO technique. A site is said to be well optimized if other sites or websites constantly refer back to it, through links, for reference in their contents. A very novel strategy in SEO is to create 3 or more sites, hosted in different servers and linking back to each other, or pointing references to a common site. This technique has been attributed by most of the successes of top internet marketers.

SEO is taken into consideration right when the website is being coded or built. SEO tactics must be incorporated into the development and design of a website. A site is said to be “search engine friendly” if its design, menus, content management system, images, videos, shopping cart, and other elements have been optimized for search engine exposure. There are companies who specialize in SEO and they offer SEO as a stand-alone service or as a part of a broader marketing campaign.

SEO is also a constantly changing discipline, since search engine algorithms and rules keep changing, to keep pace with current internet trends.