Most people put a website up on the internet, put their website address on all their promotional advertising like business cards, flyers, etc. and then sit back and wait while they fantasize about all the money that will soon be rolling their way. The problem is that the money never comes. So what are they missing? The answer is search engine optimization or SEO. You see, your website has to rank high in order for people to be able to find it among the thousands or hundreds of thousands of competitors you may have on the internet. The following basic terms may help you understand the need for and basics of SEO.

What is search engine optimization?

There are certain techniques and tactics that can help your website get higher rankings. Using these methods with that end in mind is known as search optimization or SEO. One of the most important parts of SEO is including high-quality content on your website. Your content or articles should be relevant to your topic, rich in the right keywords and informative to the reader. The search bots crawl your site and then complicated algorithms are used to rank your site.

What are search bots?

Search bots or spiders are computer programs that scan the content of your website and then relay important information about it back to the search engines. They look for consistency between your Meta tags, titles and keywords. They also check your keyword density, sitemap and other website features.

What is an algorithm?

An algorithm is a complicated mathematical formula that allows a variety of data (from your website) to be used in order to assign a particular value to something. So for your website, the algorithm is going to take a variety of seemingly unrelated factors and can combine them in just the right way to give your website its search engine ranking. The items mentioned above like keywords, keyword density, your sitemap, ease of use as well as other factors like how many backlinks to your site exist on the internet are all taken into consideration.

What is a search engine “ranking”?

Basically, this is what determines how much money your website is going to make. When a person puts a keyword or phrase into an engine like Google, they get back a page of results. Where your website is in those results is your ranking. For instance, the top result in the search has the number one ranking for that keyword. If your site is not on the first page of results the odds of anyone clicking on your site are dramatically reduced.

Hopefully these definitions have given you some insight into the complicated world of SEO. Sometimes it is best to simply hire an SEO expert, especially in the beginning and then you can kind of learn as you earn. SEO is a complicated game, but the rewards are great for those who break the code and remain persistent.

Blake Evans
http://www.articlesbase.com/internet-articles/search-engine-optimization-basics-718973.html

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