Search engine optimization (SEO) is a subset of search engine marketing, and deals with improving the number and/or quality of visitors to a web site from "natural" (aka "organic" or "algorithmic" search engine) listings. In effect, SEO is marketing by appealing to machine algorithms to increase search engine relevance and ultimately web traffic. This is analogous to foot traffic in retail advertising. The term SEO can also refer to "search engine optimizers", an industry of consultants who carry out optimization projects on behalf of clients.

Search engines display different kinds of listings on a search engine results page (SERP), including paid advertising in the form of pay per click advertisements and paid inclusion listings, as well as unpaid organic search results and keywords specific listings, such as news stories, definitions, map locations, and images. SEO is concerned with improving the number and position of a site's listings in the organic search results.

SEO strategies vary widely, in accordance with the specific site. Broadly speaking, SEO may be geared towards increasing either, or both, the total number and quality of visitors from Search Engines. The quality of a visitor can be measured by how often a visitor using a specific keyword leads to a desired conversion action, such as making a purchase or requesting further information.

Search engine optimization is available as a stand-alone service or as a part of a larger marketing campaign. Because SEO often requires making changes to the source code of a site, it is often most effective when incorporated into the initial development and design of a site, leading to the use of the term "Search Engine Friendly" to describe designs, menus, Content management systems and shopping carts that can be optimized easily and effectively.

A range of strategies and techniques are employed in SEO, including changes to a site's code (referred to as "on page factors") and getting links from other sites (referred to as "off page factors"). These techniques include two broad categories: techniques that search engines recommend as part of good design, and those techniques that search engines do not approve of and attempt to minimize the effect of, referred to as spamdexing. Some industry commentators classify these methods, and the practitioners who utilize them, as either "white hat SEO", or "black hat SEO".[1] Other SEOs reject the black and white hat dichotomy as an over-simplification.

SEO, as a marketing strategy, can often generate a good return. However, as the search engines are not paid for the traffic they send from organic search, the algorithms used can and do change, and there are many problems that can cause Search Engine problems when crawling or ranking a site's pages, there are no guarantees of success, either in the short or long term. Due to this lack of guarantees and certainty, SEO is often compared to traditional Public Relations (PR), with PPC advertising closer to traditional advertising.

Trying to get visitors to come to your Web site can be a big challenge. Search engine optimization attempts to take some of the guesswork out of this challenge by getting your Web pages to place highly in search engines. When you use search engine optimization, you aren't employing tricks or hacks, but instead writing your pages so that they provide exactly what your customers want while simultaneously showing it to the search engines effectively. These five tips will help you learn search engine optimization to get better rankings for your Web pages.

Step One: Pick a Target Phrase

When using search engine optimization, you need to determine one phrase that describes what your page is about. This is called your target phrase. A target phrase for your Web page should be three things:

• Important
  Your phrase should be an important part of the page information.

• If your page is about cat food, then your target phrase should include "cat food" and not just the word "cat".
• Accurate
  One of the commonly tried hacks with search engine optimization is to try to optimize on a phrase that isn't accurate for the content of the page. Just because the terms "sex" and "xxx" are popular doesn't mean you should optimize for them on your cat food page.
• Popular
  If your page is about cat food, your target phrase should be one that people will search on. People don't search for "cat chow" nearly as much as they search for "cat food", so "cat food" is a better choice.

There are several search engine optimization tools you can use to find good target phrases:

• Overture is a great tool for assessing popularity as well as brainstorming ideas for target phrases.
• Google is great for brainstorming target phrases.
• Word Tracker can help you assess popularity and also compare how the competitors use the target phrase you're after.

Step Two: Analyze Your Competition

The second step in search engine optimization is to determine who your competition is. Remember that when you're doing search engine optimization, you're working at the page level, not the entire site. So while you might consider any site on pets to be your competition, for your target phrase "cat food" your competition is more specialized perhaps Purina.com or another cat food company rather than cats.about.com.

• Check Yahoo and Google to see what shows up when you search for your target phrase.
• Examine the pages on the first page, note where and how they use your target phrase. You can use the "Cached" page option in Google to see your targeted phrase highlighted.

Remember that the more popular a target phrase is, the more competition there is likely to be. Sometimes it makes sense to target a less popular phrase where you can corner the market rather than aiming for the highest popularity phrase there is.

Step Three: Write Your Page

Search engine optimization is not all about meta tags. In fact, focusing solely on meta keywords will only help you a little bit, and if you go overboard can actually hurt your ranking. Take the following focused approach to search engine optimization:

1. Include your target phrase twice in the meta title tag <title> Make sure that your title is "clickable". This is what most people see when they search, so keep your title logical and descriptive.
2. Include your target phrase twice in the meta description. This description is used by most search engines as a short paragraph below the clickable title, make sure it extends on the title, and doesn't just repeat what the title says.
3. Include your target phrase in the meta keywords. Don't flood your keywords, use just a few, and don't get carried away.
4. Include your target phrase in the title or headline for your page. Write that headline using a header tag for your headlines, as search engines often weight words in these tags higher.
5. Include your target phrase in subheads, using header tags here too.
6. Finally, be sure to include your target phrase in the first paragraph of your page, and twice if you can. Also include it in other locations on the page, including external links, headlines, and sidebars.

• Text within the title tag
• Domain name
• URL directories and file names
• HTML tags: headings, emphasized (<em>) and strongly emphasized (<strong>) text
• Term frequency, both in the document and globally, often misunderstood and mistakenly referred to as Keyword density
• Keyword proximity
• Keyword adjacency
• Keyword sequence
• Alt attributes for images
• Text within NOFRAMES tags
• Content development

Signals that influence a page's rankings include:

1. Keywords in the title tag.
2. Keywords in links pointing to the page.
3. Keywords appearing in visible text.
4. Link popularity (PageRank for Google) of the page.

Step Four: Promote Your Page

Make sure that when you announce your page, you use your target phrase in both the link text and any explanatory text. If you run a blog, you will want to blog your page with at least two references to your target phrase.

Step Five: Check Your Results and Tweak

If Google or Yahoo don't crawl your site on a regular basis, then submit your page to them. Wait about a week and then go to those engines and test your search engine optimization target phrase. Your goal should be to get to the first or second page of search results for your target phrase.

Search Engine Optimization Isn't Rocket Science

It's more like magic, in many ways, but there are ways to get your pages to show up higher in search rankings, and these five tips should help you to improve your search engine optimization.