Inside Small Business | Small Business & Home Business Marketing

What is Search Engine Optimization?

The simple answer to this question is that search engine optimization (or SEO as it’s commonly referred to as) is the process of optimizing a webpage or website to rank well for specific keyword terms and phrases in a search engine such as Google, Yahoo!, or MSN. The complex answer to the question is, well, more complex.

Search engines use complex mathematical algorithms to calculate what words a particular webpage should rank for and where it should appear in the rankings. These algorithms are, allegorically, a search engine’s secret sauce. And they, like restaurants, keep the ingredients for their secret sauce very secret. One reason why search engines keep their algorithms secret is to prevent webmasters from abusing the knowledge to rank higher for certain keywords that they probably shouldn’t be.

Since people generally use search engines to find information, search engine programmers wanted to be able to provide the most relevant information to its users so they would come back again next time they were looking for information. They weren’t doing a very good job of this in the mid nineties, as was obvious to those of us who remember.

Then along came Google and turned the search engine world on its side with a new-fangled algorithm that seemed to give everybody the exact results they were looking for. It worked great, until somebody who wanted to sell snake oil to people looking for camping gear figured out a way to abuse the new algorithm.

To stay ahead of the game, search engine algorithms are in constant flux in an attempt to provide us users with the information we desire while keeping out irrelevant results.

So, to get back to the original question, SEO is about showing the search engines that your site is relevant to whatever keyword term you are attempting to rank for. This requires keeping a constant finger on the pulse of the search engine world, knowing proper search engine strategies, and having the ability to implement them all while being flexible enough to adjust to the constantly changing world of search engine optimization.

Posted on Monday, April 14th, 2008 at 2:17 pm and is filed under Boardroom, Search Engine Optimization. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.