What is Search Engine Optimization… and why you need SEO… is a common question that many newbie online marketers ask us.

This post is targeted for those newbies… who have just entered into the wonderful world of SEO.

Thankfully, most of us here know what SEO is.

However, for those who came in late… SEO stands for search Engine Optimization.

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is not something new nowadays. Basically, if you want your online business to be successful, it's a good idea to optimize your site regularly to maintain that top spot on the search engines.

Most of you know that… but how in the world you go about optimizing a site or blog?

Therefore, in other words SEO means if you are trying to optimize your site for the search engines, you are basically optimizing your page for those keywords for which you want a high page ranking. However, to maintain that top spot, you have to be aware of what is taking place in the ever-changing search engine industry.

Search engines analyze title tags, image tags, link structure, directory structure, keyword density, prominence, and proximity, total words, total words in specific areas, alt tags, input tags, word repetitions, comment lines, domain name, directory name, filename, etc. The list is endless. Moreover, to complicate things further, each engine has it's own unique way of ranking pages, so you need to create different pages to exactly match the criteria of each one.

So, do you have to use SEO?

The answer to why you have to use SEO is an easy one. You need Search Engine Optimization for your site or blog to be listed on the page number one of site engines, or maybe at least make your site income generating.

For the past few years, search engines were the most widely used internet tool by people to find the sites, product, or information that they needed. Most people that use search engines use only the ten top search results in the first page. Therefore, you need to get it done right. In other words, you need an expert…

Now once again, why do we need to pay for SEO, when we can do it ourselves?

When you get online, you would want people to visit your blog and for this you will need traffic and for that, you need Search Engine Optimization. The problem is that SEO costs a lot, but it is the best way to drive targeted traffic to your site. Alternately, you can always do it by yourself, but you have to be skilled at it. Likewise, maximizing the benefits of an optimized website will also yield lots of earnings for the marketer.

It is not that people cannot make money from the net; it is because people can’t get traffic to their site. This is mainly because one of the common mistakes in generating traffic, which we all tend to make, is the method of how we generate traffic. The biggest mistake here is that you are not focusing on generating traffic, but instead, you have tried almost every method out there that can supposedly increase the traffic to your site.

If we adopt a pattern, that is to say, the first day, you try and find more links for better SEO, then the next day, you try and generate traffic with article marketing and the following day you try obtaining with CPC advertising – then the chances of getting traffic are much better.

Understanding how search engines and robots work.

Before you can actually begin to start optimizing a site, you must understand how search engines and their robots work. This information will give you a head start on the process of building an optimized web site.

Almost daily, we meet web designers who do not truly understand the function of search engines. This usually results in poorly developed sites in regards to search engine placement that usually disappear. Sure, anyone can build a site with a little practice. However, knowing how search engines work and building a site that meets its ever-changing ranking criteria and also achieves top ranking results for key search terms, is quite different.

There presently exist two types of major search engines, robot-indexed and human-indexed. It is important to understand the differences between the two because the way they index pages will dramatically affect your sites position within them. The main idea of website optimization is about getting a high ranking on search engines. Therefore, it has nothing to do with how fancy your website looks or being ranked in the last few pages. This is where the page rank plays an important part for which SEO is an important criterion.

Obviously, it is important to have a practical and easy navigation system and favorable looks, so that you can maintain the visitors you receive from the search engines, but those all come to play after the page rank.

About 95% of the search engines on the Internet are self-indexing or spider / robot indexed. The other 5% are human indexed and are usually referred to as directories. At this point, the important point to learn is that human indexed search engines cannot be manipulated and optimized for, as freely as a spider index search engine can. The good news is that with the advancements in the robot indexed search engines and their algorithms, they are getting closer and closer to human indexed search engines.

Search engines will simply keep on producing traffic forever once your site has been indexed. The problem is getting a good placement (first page) on good keywords that gets lots of searches. This is not always easy, especially if you are in a competitive field. Even if you have a poor search engine placement, you will still get some traffic. Search engines frequently change the algorithms they use for page ranks and for ranking sites. They don't want unscrupulous site owners manipulating their indexing methods in order to get high rankings. By doing so, they damage the integrity of free search!

Regardless of how poorly the site has been optimized, the domain name (URL) will be indexed in most search engines and in almost every case; search engines will be able to return a web site address when asked. This means that if you were to go to a major search engine and type in your site name, you will probably see it right on top of that search engines results. Don’t be deceived by this type of search engine response as search engines categorize sites based on keywords, and visitors search for sites using keywords not the site URL.

Bottom line, most search engines will be able to return the correct URL address for any site if asked to, provided the site was indexed by them. This does not mean that the site is ranking well.

Once again, if someone searches for your domain name, it should pop right up on most search engines.

In fact, if this does not happen, that means your Internet presence has some fundamental deficiencies. To be successfully ranked on a search engine means your web site must achieve a favorable position over others based on a scale such as the keyword used for the search.

As mentioned earlier, the search engine industry is continually evolving and it is difficult to put the entire process into one post. It would take a couple of pages to go about each phase and for those interested in hard-core SEO, it is better to get hold of a book or a much more detailed article source.

Basically, just use the above to get a brief idea on how and where you should focus your efforts on Search Engine Optimization.

Summarizing, you must optimize your site regularly to stay on top of the search engines. This ensures success for your online business. Despite your page ranking status, you have to be up to date on what is happening in the search engine industry. The algorithms and other factors that got you to the top page yesterday would literally be useless tomorrow!