by Jessica Hughey

Created on: November 16, 2009

Search engine optimization (SEO) can be the most effective way of increasing your website traffic. Most internet users, when searching for information about a product or service, use search engines to find that information and very few of those people ever get beyond the third page of results. Therefore, if your page does not appear on one of those pages, all chance of being found through the search engines is lost.

SEO is the art and science of improving your website's ranking in the search engines for a predefined set of keywords. The search engine optimization, or SEO, industry is changing daily. More and more search engines are relying on link popularity and other factors to determine ranking. In addition, keyword usage in page text, titles and, to a lesser extent, meta tags, in concert with strategic page layout design and quality link management, are all essential factors in your quest for successful search engine optimization.

Every site is different. Some target keywords which are highly competitive, returning millions of results in the search engine listings. Others are less competitive. The first step in your search engine optimization project will be to analyze your chosen keywords. Don't choose words that have too broad a meaning, as you will encounter too much competition for those keyword and keyword phrases. Try to be as detailed and targeted as possible when choosing which keywords you want to use in your SEO campaign.

To maximize your site's chances of being found in the search engines, it is necessary to understand a little about how search engines rank web pages. Each of the major search engines has it's own, slightly different method, or algorithm, for deciding where each page should rank within it's index in response to a particular search term being entered. Most rely on some variation of keyword relevancy ranking. When a search term is entered, the search engine first looks for pages which contain the exact search term in it's titles, page text and, to a lesser extent, keyword and description meta tags. Pages on which these particular search terms appear most often are ranked more highly than others since the search engine considers these pages to be more relevant to the search query. Pages which carry the search terms in their page titles are also ranked more highly than those which do not. Conversely, page enhancements such as frames and javascript, can have an adverse effect on search engine rankings. Javascripts which appear high in the underlying HTML code of a page can push keyword laden text toward the bottom, rendering it all but inaccessible to search engines.

In the end, the practice of writing targeted, relevant content which uses, but does not overuse, your keywords is the best way to make sure your pages rank highly within the search engine results. Avoid so-called "Black Hat" methods of search engine optimization, such as hiding repetitive keywords at the bottom of your pages as these methods can get your pages downgraded or banned altogether from the search engine's indices.

Learn more about this author, Jessica Hughey.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.