The act of modifying a web site so that it does well in the organic results, crawler-based listings of search engines. The process of selecting targeted keywords that reflect the content of a Web site, placing them within the meta tag and in the page content.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is often considered the more technical part of Web marketing. This is true because SEO does help in the promotion of sites and at the same time it requires some technical knowledge – at least familiarity with basic HTML. SEO is sometimes also called SEO copyrighting because most of the techniques that are used to promote sites in search engines deal with text. Generally, SEO can be defined as the activity of optimizing Web pages or whole sites in order to make them more search engine-friendly, thus getting higher positions in search results.

One of the basic truths in SEO is that even if you do all the things that are necessary to do, this does not automatically guarantee you top ratings but if you neglect basic rules, this certainly will not go unnoticed. Also, if you set realistic goals – i.e to get into the top 30 results in Google for a particular keyword, rather than be the number one for 10 keywords in 5 search engines, you will feel happier and more satisfied with your results.

Although SEO helps to increase the traffic to one's site, SEO is not advertising. Of course, you can be included in paid search results for given keywords but basically the idea behind the SEO techniques is to get top placement because your site is relevant to a particular search term, not because you pay.

SEO can be a 30-minute job or a permanent activity. Sometimes it is enough to do some generic SEO in order to get high in search engines – for instance, if you are a leader for rare keywords, then you do not have a lot to do in order to get decent placement. But in most cases, if you really want to be at the top, you need to pay special attention to SEO and devote significant amounts of time and effort to it. Even if you plan to do some basic SEO, it is essential that you understand how search engines work and which items are most important in SEO.

    - Create Title tags with keywords. For example, if your site is www.newegg.com and you sell Computer Parts and Accessories, instead of your title saying "Newegg", it should say something like "Newegg - Computer Parts and Accessories"

    - Use a lot of text on your site. At minimum we would recommend 100 words. Search engines cannot read graphics. If your site is primarily graphic based, then it will have trouble getting good rankings.

    - Create Meta Tags for your site. Meta Tags are code hidden in the background that tell search engines what your keywords and descriptions are. Almost all Web Design programs like DreamWeaver and Frontpage have an option to insert Keyword and Description Meta Tags. However, if you are hand coding with HTML then you can use our Meta Tags Generator to create Meta Tags.

    - Use your most important keywords about 3-8 times per 100 words.

    - You can use our Meta Tags and Keyword Analyzer to check your keyword Density and make sure your Meta Tags are in the correct format and length.

    - Create a lot of pages of content on your site

    - On each page of your site use relevant title tags that have keywords

    - If you are using a shopping cart system or have a database driven site, make sure it is search engine friendly and configured to pull the item titles and puts them in your title tags and descriptions are pulled to be placed in your Meta Tags.

    - The more links there are to your site the better your rankings will be

    - Start a link exchange campaign with similar sites in your industry. You can look for link partners or post requests in our Link Exchange Request Forum.

    - The more relevant the page linking to you the better

    - Download the Google Toolbar and check the PageRank of the sites that you would want to do link exchange with. Try to only link with sites having a link pages of PR 3 or more.

    - Purchase banner ads or text links on other sites, but make sure not to use tracking code as that will not benefit your link popularity. You want the link to be a straight link to your domain.

    - Include your keywords in the anchor text of the links. For example, if your site is www.newegg.com and you sell Computer Parts and Accessories, instead of your title saying "Newegg", it should say "Newegg - Computer Parts and Accessories"

    - Check your Link Popularity using our Link Popularity Check Tool to keep up with your progress.

    - Make sure that your most important pages are linked from all of your other pages.

    - If you are using graphical, Java Script or Flash based navigation and link buttons, then create text links on the bottom of all your pages.

    - Try to include keywords in your text links to your internal pages. This will tell the search engines what your pages are about.

    - Do submit your site to major search engines manually or using a website submission service like ours. It will speed up the process of your site being discovered, specially if it is a new site and you do not have any links.

    - For brand new sites or sites that change their content on daily basis, we highly recommend the Overture Sitematch program which powers the Yahoo Database and will spider your site every 48 hours. If your site has been around for a while, your main page probably does not need this, but your sub-pages might need it.

1. If you absolutely MUST use Java script drop down menus, image maps or image links, be sure to put text links somewhere on the page for the spiders to follow.

2. Content is king, so be sure to have good, well-written and unique content that will focus on your primary keyword or keyword phrase.

3. If content is king, then links are queen. Build a network of quality backlinks using your keyword phrase as the link. Remember, if there is no good, logical reason for that site to link to you, you don’t want the link.

4. Don’t be obsessed with PageRank. It is just one isty bitsy part of the ranking algorithm. A site with lower PR can actually outrank one with a higher PR.

5. Be sure you have a unique, keyword focused Title tag on every page of your site. And, if you MUST have the name of your company in it, put it at the end. Unless you are a major brand name that is a household name, your business name will probably get few searches.

Submissions of properly optimized articles or content to content directories do not only help in the promotion of web pages or products, but it can also improve a website’s SEO score. Content submission directories are also good sources of one-way links to a particular site.

Several websites that reciprocate links with each other must be importantly from the same category or keyword topic. Exchange links help in traffic sharing between two websites.

You may test different combination of strategies from time to time, but never fail to examine results. Make a comparison study of the strengths and weaknesses of each campaign in order to establish those strategies that truly work.