What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

Search Engine Optimization, commonly referred to as SEO, is the application of effective design and content management techniques to drive traffic to a website via natural or “organic” traffic from search engine providers. These providers are typically engines such as Google, Yahoo, MSN (and now Bing, Microsoft’s newest search engine) Ask, and AOL (powered by Google), with a few other search engines making up a fraction of the other online traffic.

When using a search engine the more relevant a website is to the specified search query the higher it ranks on a page. For example, a website selling various automobile parts may be listed somewhere in the 464 million search results on Google for the keyword “cars”, however websites dealing with cars specifically (such as cars.com or cars.gov) are generally seen on the first page of the search results.

Search engines provide results for users based upon complex calculations or algorithms that are designed to apply information retrieval (or IR) processes to their immense databases of websites to determine which websites best match the user’s search criteria and display the results in descending order, beginning with the most relevant search and ranking downward from there. With over 182 million websites existing today effective IR processes are important to provide searchers with exactly what they intend to search for.

SEO is the process of improving websites to increase their relevancy to specific search teams and increase the ranking a site has in search results. The higher the ranking, the more likely the site is to receive traffic from web searches. Applying SEO to a website can help make a website more accessible to search engine IR processes and, in turn, increase its rank and profits.

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