What is SEO?

SEO, or search engine optimization, is the way to optimize your business' website and create a great traffic flow of viewers and customers. However, it is a complicated process that takes time and experience to properly accomplish. With all of the newest rules as to how you can use SEO to your advantage, it's helpful to understand where SEO started.

Going back a little
When the Internet first started being developed in the late 1970's and early 1980's, the programs were simple and the use of the Internet was strictly within a small network of people – generally government sites and other businesses. However as people began to realize the possibilities of using the Internet on a larger scale, there was no going back to the simpler times.

E-mail was created and websites began to be born. Made with the simplest of programming lines, these websites weren't easy to find unless you already knew that they existed: enter the idea of the Search Engine. The search engine was generally run by the webmaster themselves and would go through the programming information on the websites to see if what the person was searching for matched the text in the website. If so, that website would be listed first, and the searcher would generally go to that website.

However, these early systems were based on few restrictions. These search engines branded SEO as something that occurred when the search term matched words within the webpage itself. So, all a web site developer had to do was add numerous keywords in order to be ranked higher on the page of search results. Many times, the website wouldn't even be relevant to the search that an Internet user was performing, but since it contained the highest number of the search terms, the relevancy was ranked higher.

But this didn't sit well with those web pages that were relevant to the searches, though they didn't contain enough of the search terms. This was the beginning of the Google revolution and organically looking through the information on websites to see if it truly was relevant to a web search. Instead of just ranking in terms of keywords, there were more restrictions. Pages could rank higher if they:

• Used keywords in the links that led to a page

• Had keywords in the title's tag

• Had keywords that were found in the text

• Were popular with other users that searched for the term

Always a bad egg
However, there are still websites that manage to manipulate the system in order to bring more visitors to their page. And while search engines are getting better at realizing when they are being deceived with hidden keywords and other covert methods, it's up to the business itself to be sure that their site is SEO and that it uses legal methods of doing so. Not only does this instill confidence in the business, but it also provides the opportunity for the business to be seen as honest.

About the Author:
This article was written by Sytsma Morris-Reeves. Mr. Morris-Reeves runs NewMediaDenver,an Internet technology company located in downtown Denver, Colorado (http://www.NewMediaDenver.com).
Added: 25 Oct 2006
Article Source: http://articles.simplysearch4it.com/article/40417.html