What is SEO?

Recent professional studies have shown that over 75% of internet users use search engines navigate the web. Such studies have also shown that half of web users spend 70 percent or more of their time searching online. This means that when people want to find something on the internet (products, services, information, etc.) they to to a search engine to find it.

Other surveys and studies have shown that an overwhelming number of people will only look at the first two pages of search results before moving on or making a choice. A very large percentage only looks at the first 4 or 5 results! A site with good search engine placement can get thousands of new visitors each day from the search engines.

This means that if webmasters and internet entrepreneurs want internet users to come to their websites, they need to be in the first few results to get the lion's share of traffic for their chosen keywords. For example, if I have a website that sells dog biscuits, I want to appear in the top 10 results (even better would be top 3) on the search engines when people search for things like "dog biscuits", "dog food", and similar phrases. The thing is, there must be thousands of websites that sell dog biscuits, that means that we are all fighting for the top spots. It is the search engine's job to figure out what the best, most important, and most relevant "dog biscuits" sites are and list them first.

So the search engines want webmasters to build websites and let the search engines decide which ones are the best ones to show searchers. But entrepreneurs aren't willing to do this; John Doe built that dog biscuit site to make money. Webmasters know search engines direct most of the internet's traffic, and most will be damned if they are going to idly stand by while search engines push them to the bottom of the search results and send traffic to their competitors.

In an attempt to get their website to the top of search engine results while competing with thousands and sometimes millions of other webmasters for certain keywords (or keyphrases), numerous techniques and strategies have been developed. This is the birth of search engine optimization. Because search engines are constantly changing, evolving, and getting better at finding out which sites sites are using these artificial techniques to boost their site's search engine placement it has become a very technical, specialized, and time-consuming prospect; this is the birth of the search engine optimization expert. There are countless firms and individuals who do nothing but try and cook up new ways to get their client's sites ranked higher than their competitors.

Webmasters who attempt to optimize their sites often find themselves on the opposite side of a battlefield as the search engines. A webmaster wants as many visitors as he can get to his site; so in an extreme case if someone searches for "Brittany Spears", I want my dog biscuits site to come up #1, if someone searches for "viagra", I would want my dog biscuits site to be #1, not to mention all the obvious key phrases like "dog biscuits", "pet accessories", etc. However, if an internet user searches for "viagra" they do not want to see a dog biscuits site listed #1, if they do see this, they go to a different search engine to find what they are looking for; this is bad for the search engine for obvious reasons. Now, like I said, that is an extreme example, but one can see the more realistic and likely implications.

So search engine optimizers try to get their sites ranked #1 for as many key phrases as they can, search engines try to keep their results relevant to maintain a good search engine that attracts searchers.

That is an extremely simplified explanation about what search engine optimization is. This is a very complex topic, books can and have been written about this very subject.

Divergent Lines offers SEO services, if you would like professional help with your site's search engine optimization, please contact us.