SEO: Growth And Profitability

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results. Typically, the earlier a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine. SEO may target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, and industry-specific vertical search engines. This gives a web site web presence.

Search engine traffic has been increasing at an even more rapid rate than Internet usage. According to Jupiter Media Metrix, 80 percent of Internet users start off in search engines before they buy a product or service online. 65% start off at search engines to research before making a purchase offline. Not appearing on the first page of search engine results (SERPS) for your specific keywords can mean the difference between the success or failure of your business.

As an Internet marketing strategy, SEO considers how search engines work and what people search for. Optimizing a website primarily involves editing its content and HTML and associated coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Search engine optimization starts with researching the search terms (or keywords) that describe your services and/or products in the exact form that visitors use to find your website.

Within the content of your pages is a mathematical algorithm that determines the importance and relevance of "keywords" and "keyword phrases" found within the content. Optimization is the art of researching and discovering your most profitable keywords/keywords phrases and optimizing them to the highest importance/relevance possible, while still maintaining a fluid and comprehensible article.

Then there are meta tags, linking, and more, which can be attached to affect your ranking. When a website is submitted, search engines sends out a “spider” to determine the mathematical value for the keywords appearing on the pages of your website. The website then exists in the search engine database to be displayed based upon the search term the visitor uses. In other words, search engine optimization makes your web page search engine friendly so when a web searcher uses the keywords that you've planned for your page, that page shows up on the first page of the search engine results list.

The most common mistakes appearing in web site content are;

• Accidental (We are offering the benefit of the doubt) use of hidden text

• Overwhelming with keyword density (Too many keywords will saturate your cause)

• Immediate keyword repeat (Cambridge roofing, Easton roofing, Salisbury roofing, Baltimore roofing, Charlottesville roofing, Richmond roofing, Culpepper roofing)

• Forgetting to emphasize your keywords (Use bolds to emphasize important keywords and phrases)

• Not using the heading tags (H1-H6) properly.

Search engines are always working towards improving their technology to crawl the web more deeply and return increasingly relevant results to users. However, there is and will always be a limit to how search engines can operate. Whereas the right moves can net you thousands of visitors and attention, the wrong moves can hide or bury your site deep in the search results where visibility is minimal. In addition to making content available to search engines, optimization can also help boost rankings so that content that has been found will be placed where searchers will more readily see it. The online environment is becoming increasingly competitive, and those companies who perform search engine, content writing, and usability optimization will have a decided advantage in visitors and customers.

At WebXsposure, our ace SEO resource is SEOmoz. We read here daily to keep up with the latest trends, changes, tips, and tricks.

We've acquired an excellent starter publication from them called "Beginners Guide To Search Engine Optimization". It's a 30 page Word Document that takes your from What Is to How To. It was published back in 2005, but that does not render it in anyway as old news. No matter how much search engines improve and web technologies advance, the basics of optimization have remained the same.