Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an efficient way to improve the 'findability' of your business website. Proper use of a few HTML elements and sensible formatting of content can raise your site's position in web search results.

There's no guarantee that your site will be shown on the first page of results (unless you pay), but SEO can make a big difference. This article is an introduction to the broad topic of SEO and includes some simple improvements that can have far-reaching effects.

How Web Search Works

Some search directory companies hire people to read and categorize web pages, which are then added to an ever-increasing directory of listings. About.com is an excellent site that uses this approach.

The largest search engines, like Google, Yahoo and MSN, have sets of computers that constantly browse billions of web pages. These sets of computers are called 'spiders' or 'robots' and follow rules which determine the sites to visit, how many pages of each site are to be processed, and how frequently sites are to be visited.

Information collected during visits is stored in gigantic indexes and cataloged according to content and importance. When a web user visits a search engine and enters a specific phrase, the index is searched for matching results, with the most relevant results returned first. Let's look more closely at how Google handles web searches.

Google

Google enables web searches with three main processes;

• Googlebot is a web 'spider' that retrieves web pages. Googlebot locates web pages by following links it encounters as it crawls the web, and by having URLs submitted directly. (Googlebot image above by Ben Rathbone).
• The Indexer receives web pages from Googlebot, sorts every word on every page, and assigns each URL a 'pagerank' based on more than 200 factors. The indexer then stores pagerank, key words and a copy of each page in an enormous, searchable index.
• The Query Processor accepts search terms from users and compares them to the index, returning the most relevant links first.

Google handles hundreds of millions of searches every day and has indexed billions of web pages. So how can your site be seen by potential customers? The answer is by rising high in the organic results set. Before we offer suggestions on how to raise your site's visibility, let's define a couple of terms.

Organic Search

Organic search results are non-paid search listings returned from queries. 'Organic' refers to the natural process of assigning pagerank (topic relevance) to web pages, and then ordering those results based on that ranking.

Search engine optmization is the adjustment of web page content so that pages have higher ranking in organic search results. Most customers consider organic search results as more reliable than paid search (advertised) listings.

Paid Search

Paid search is a form of advertising where bidders jockey for position above or alongside the organic search results. The more you're willing to pay, the higher your ad will display. Paid search results are shown in lists separate from organic results, in sections typically labelled 'Sponsored Links'.

If your company produces baking pans, but your website isn't well known, it may make sense to pay for search terms like "baking pans", "baking supply" or "baking" for a while. Paid search can quickly become expensive, so if you pay for search terms, check your costs every day and calculate the return on your investment.

What You Can Do

Here are some things you can do to optimize your web pages for higher placement in organic search engine results.

Meta Tags

Include and edit these HTML tags to reflect your content:

These meta-tags should clearly indicate overall site focus and page contents, respectively. Below are examples of description and keywords meta-tags from two well-known websites. Apply the same sort of treatment when describing your site.

CNN News

Southwest Airlines

Highlight Your Search Terms

If you want those searching for "baking pans" to find your site, and "baking pans" is one of your key word phrases, then use the phrase "baking pans" in your page contents, title, headers, body text or all of the above. Headers are said to be given more importance than body text, for instance. Be literal and give seekers exactly what you want them to find.

And make sure to use text characters to display key phrases, not graphics. Search engines can't read text embedded in a graphic.

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