SEO is short for "search engine optimization." To have your site optimized for the search engines means to attempt to have your site appear in the top of the search engine results pages whenever a specific keyword is typed into the query box. 

Search engines have two types of listings: those that are paid for, which are usually distinguished as "sponsored links" and those that are organic. 

To the right is a screen shot of a Google® search results page. The listings in red are paid ads, and the listings in the green area are organic results. 

Organic search engine listings are those that appear down the middle of the page. See the diagram above to see where organic listings and paid listings appear in the Google search engine results page. 

Spider-driven search engines such as Google®, Yahoo!® and MSN® use "robots" or "crawlers" to score Web sites across the Internet. Robots "spider/crawl" each site and "score" pages based on how relevant they are. A Web site's score or placement within a spider driven search engine is derived from hundreds of variables such as link popularity, density and frequency of keywords in page content, HTML code, site themes and more. You will want to focus many criteria in order to position yourself well among the major search engines. Here are two of the most influential factors:

Spider-driven search engines use robots to spider Web sites across the Internet by traveling through links from web page to web page. A Web site's score or placement within a spider driven search engine is derived from hundreds of variables such as, link popularity, click popularity, keyword density, Web site themes and more. 

Google is the most popular spider-driven search engine. Its database currently has about 4 billion pages indexed and is known for finding the most relevant information. When Google spiders the Web, it finds sites by traveling through links. The more sites that link to you, the more important the engines believe your content to be. You should focus on getting many important sites to link to your site. You can do this in many ways: submit to online directories, exchange links with business partners and industry-related sites, or participate in Link Building. 

Search engine spiders can only spider through text. They will use the content on your site to determine what your site is about, which in turn will help to decide how highly your site will be ranked for specific keyword phrases when visitors type them into the search engines. For this reason, keyword research is critical to obtaining top search engine placement. 

You will need to know how many people are searching for your keyword phrases and what kind of competition you are facing when attempting to obtain a top spot in the search results. Keyword research, text writing, submissions and site analysis. 

Amardeep 

Business Development Manager