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Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of enhancing the volume or level of quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via “natural” or un-paid (”organic” or “algorithmic”) search results compared to search engine marketing (SEM) which refers to paid inclusion. In simple terms, SEO is a simple activity of ensuring a web site can be discovered in search engines for suitable words and phrases

Importance of SEO

JupiterResearch has discovered that the standard organization gets about 80 percent of its commercial search engine referrals from organic results and the rest from PPC ads. The study also confirmed that 90% percent of searchers only visit sites in the first 10 results. This trend is only accentuating with time, as people get accustomed to the top results being appropriate, and sufficient to answer their query.

The art and science of SEO

SEO is part art and part science. SEO employs a variety of techniques to ensure that a site will be found by a search engine, such as manipulation of a search engine’s indexing mechanism, cross linking between websites, or the editing of a site’s content to include and/or repeat keywords highly relevant to a wide variety of search queries.

SEO is the art of attracting more traffic, and therefore more business to your website; doing so by moving it as far as possible up the search engine results page (SERP) as possible. It is an art because there is no certainty involved in the results and it depends on many creative factors such as keyword usage, tailoring on-page content, arrangement of site content, meta tagging, linkage to other sites and various factors determined by the search engines.

SEO can also be a science and is accomplished by optimizing certain sections or “elements” from the HTML coding of every page. You are able to calculate factors such as keyword density within the page copywriting & meta tags, optimizing html codes including various factors such as anchor text, and website linkage density.

What is the relationship between SEO and the search engines?

Search engines are always working towards improving their technology to crawl the web more deeply and return increasingly appropriate results to users. Search engines like Google “spider” your entire site by following all the links on your site to new pages, much like a human would click on the links of your pages. Search engines use intricate, secret and ever-changing mathematical algorithms to rank sites. The search engine spiders look at links from other websites as approval votes, just as a newspaper review might inspire readers to eat at a restaurant.

Notable SEO consultants

Notable SEOs, such as Rand Fishkin, Barry Schwartz, Aaron Wall and Jill Whalen, have studied different approaches to search engine optimization, and have published their opinions in online forums and blogs. SEO practitioners fall into 2 main groups – White Hat and Black Hat SEO. White hats tend to produce results that last a long time, whereas black hats anticipate that their sites may eventually be banned either temporarily or permanently once the search engines discover what they are doing. White hat advice is generally summed up as creating content for users, not for search engines, and then making that content easily accessible to the spiders, rather than attempting to trick the algorithm from its intended purpose. Black hat SEO attempts to improve rankings in ways that are disapproved of by the search engines, or involve deception.

Learn more about SEO. Stop by AdVantage SEO’s site where you can find out all about search engine optimization and what it can do for you.