Simply put, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of applying changes to a website in order to take advantage of an algorithm with the goal of ranking higher on search engine query results.
SEO is a relatively new term, but its consideration by website administrators has become an important marketing technique. Why exactly should one worry about search engines when it's the human visitors that count the most?
Well, visitors are the prime reason why people develop websites, but with over 7 billion webpages in existence, it's no wonder that achieving high levels of traffic is difficult. There are too many pages to visit, and too many people to compete with.
Because there are so many webpages on the internet, it is almost impossible to find one that specifically contains the information you are looking for unless you use a search engine. Google alone is receiving more than 180 million searches daily — and that's only one of the 400 or so search engines in operation today!
Search engines have strived to make their databases as large and concise as possible while simultaneously returning "relevant" search results for their users, and this has paid off in a big way. Most search engines can now dig through the "junk" and return clean, concise webpages for nearly any query. Given that search engines use computers to rank websites for a given search phrase, there must be a computer program behind the scenes driving the search engine.
Almost every search engine program is built around a "formula" used to rank pages. This formula is the core of the entire system and takes into consideration numerous page properties and criteria in order to rank websites in an order of relevance. This formula (known in technical terms as an "algorithm") varies by search engine and is kept a secret.
Through systematic analysis it is possible to almost "reverse engineer" the algorithm, although it is not possible to devise the exact formula used to rank webpages. Furthermore, search engines modify their algorithm on a frequent basis so that they can increase the quality of their results.
We believe that our SEO tips will help you rank higher in search engines based on our research of search engine algorithms and scoring methods. Please read through our SEO knowledgeable and study the techniques we believe can be used to help you score better with search engines.
