What is search engine optimization (aka SEO)?

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Imagine that you’re a cell phone vendor and that a potential customer is searching on Google for the phrase “free cell phone”. That customer will most likely reach a page like this:

There are three parts of this page that we need to note. The first is the search term (in this case “Free Cell Phones”), the second are the paid ads and the third are the natural search results. See image below:

For these tutorials we are only interested in the search term and the natural search results. We can forget about the paid ads as they have nothing to do with search engine optimization. You don’t optimize your site for the paid ads, you bid for them. They are part of Google Adwords program and will be discussed in our Paid Search (aka pay-per-click) tutorials.

Search engine optimization only deals with what are called “natural” or “organic” search results. Nobody pays to show up in the natural results. The results displayed in this section are there only because Google “decided” that they are the best pages on the Web to display for the search term “free cell phones”. If you entered a different search term you would see different results.

Now, with that said, let’s return to our imaginary cell phone site. As a cell phone vendor, your goal would be to have your web site show up in the top 10 - 20 search results for all searches related to cell phones (most people don’t scroll down beyond the top 10 - 20 search results). By showing up in the organic search results for the major search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN, and Ask.com) you can bring in large numbers of potential customers to your website…..for free!

On the other hand, imagine the business you’re missing out on by ranking poorly in the search engines. This is why so many people spend a great deal of time, money, and effort trying to get their sites to rank well in the search engines.

You’re probably wondering, what do I have to do to rank well for the terms and phrases related to your site? Simple, you have to optimize your website for the search engines. That means you have to figure out how the search engines determine their results for any given search and then build your website accordingly. That’s what we mean by “optimization”: building and marketing your website to rank well within the major search engines.

This brings us to our next article: How do search engines rank and determine the order of their search results?

next Post/Tutorial:Taking the search engine point of view