What is Search Engine Optimization?

Search Engine Optimization or SEO is the process of increasing quality traffic to a website from Search Engines similar to Google.com, Yahoo.com, and Live.com. SEO is the end result of higher rankings for a keyword and its traffic. Google recently has added Images, Video, and Local Search.

Search Engines normally have algorithms that produce results in a particular layout. SEO looks at optimization of a websites coding, links, content, and on page optimization. Spiders are known as the program that runs through the algorithms set by Search Engines. You should be careful with SEO, you can be black listed with Black Hat Methods such as building links on link farms, keyword stuffing, and spamdexing. This can harm your website and result in being Black Listed.

The term Search Engine Optimization was created by industry consultants who carry out optimization on projects for clients they have created relationships for. Because effective SEO Requires HTML source code of a site, SEO is normally incorporated into a sites design. This is called search engine friendly which means the front end (design, menus) and backend (Content Management System) are easily optimized.

Webmasters and Search Engines

Search Engines recognized that webmasters were making efforts to rank well in the search engines starting in 1997, and even manipulating the pages rankings in search results. Thats when search engines like InfoSeek and Yahoo.com started changing algorithms to prevent webmasters from manipulating rankings.

Due to the high marketing value of targeted search results, there is potential for an adversarial relationship between search engines and SEOs. In 2005, an annual conference, AIRWeb, Adversarial Information Retrieval on the Web, was created to discuss and minimize the damaging effects of aggressive web content providers.

Some SEO companies try aggressive techniques that can get there clients black listed. In 2005 Traffic Power a company that was known for those techniques was banned from the search engines.

SEO is an every changing platform and is recommended for long term results. In short term - depending on the cost of conversion, many experts would recommend Search Engine Marketing(SEM). SEM is used when you pay for results and get a sponsored listing on certain keywords.

SEM continues to be one of the most important factors for establishing a successful online business. Unless your site is a household name like Ebay or Amazon, your site is virtually invisible to most web users. Search Engine Marketing is the logical choice for online marketing.

In closing both SEM and SEO can be used to create great results to any website if analysis and correct steps are taken to ensure a powerful campaign.

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About the Author :
Terry Parker is an SEO Master and recommends for San Diego Internet Marketing Seohaus