What is search engine optimization?

Search engine optimization or 'SEO' for short is method of using keywords or phrases of keywords that are targeted for your site helping it to rank high in the search engine results. What this means is that when someone types a keyword or phrase that you have chosen to target your site should come out on top if done right.

SEO in reality involves some complex work. You have to choose your keywords carefully, you then have to, where possible, include these keywords or word in your HTML code, in your meta tags, in your descriptions for advertising, pictures and videos posted online, etc. Although nobody really knows about how search engines work, we do know that the main factors involved are good content, well used (not over-used) keywords, a site that is easily laid out for the search engines 'bots' or 'spiders' to crawl through and finally, never, EVER spam!

To get your site recognised on search engines, most of them have a facility to submit your URL to them for consideration. What will happen here is you will submit your link, which will then go onto a list to be crawled by the search engines 'bots'. This can take anywhere from a day to a few weeks so be patient. Another way of doing this which sometimes works faster is to get a link back to your site from a site that is already established. This could be through writing blogs and posting a link on it, using a decent thread on a good forum and placing your link at the end, the possibilities here are endless. What i must stress here though is don't just write any old dross, the content in most of these blogs, articles and forums is vetted and if it is bad content or a clear attempt to sell an item and nothing else, then it will not do you any favours.

Most people get stuck before the first hurdle of "What keywords do I use?" Well the easiest and most effective way is to do your research by using free tools available from companies such as Google, you can also buy good SEO software such as Market Samurai which will analyse your site and those of your top ten competitors to help you achieve the best results.

There are companies that you can employ that will do all of our SEO work for you, although these can be good, they are usually very expensive, and most of the time cannot guarantee results at all. Also, there are a lot of scams out there in relation to SEO companies so tread carefully.