Search Engine Optimization is the science and art of getting a website ranked higher in a search engine than it would rank in the absence of SEO.

SEO (short for search engine optimization) is the process of increasing the visibility of a website by increasing the ranking of that website when a search term (“keyword phrase”) is entered in a search engines, such as Google, Yahoo or Bing. The higher a Website ranks in the results of a search, the greater the chance that that site will be visited by a user. SEO is done by a series of programming techniques, and changes to the content of a website.

SEO impacts the rankings on the main part of the search page, which is the unpaid portion that is ranked by the search engines based on their criteria. SEO is known as “natural” or “organic” search to distinguish it from “paid search”. With SEO there is no fee for each time your company’s web page is clicked; SEO is almost always a fixed fee service regardless of the number of “hits” to your website.

PPC are the links usually found on the right and sometime of the top of a search page, typically with the term “sponsored link”. PPC is paid advertising; the more money a company pays the higher a company’s PPC ad is placed. Each time someone clicks on the advertiser’s website link a fee is paid to the search engine. These fees can range from 10 cents to more than $50 a term, depending on the term. A bidding system is used to establish prices. PPC terms, like advertising, have lower credibility and lower viewership than the main section of the search page. PPC has the advantage of speed; the moment you pay to be listed at a certain visibility level on Google Adwords your company can be on page 1 of Google; you just need to be prepared to pay dearly for that visibility every time someone clicks on your link.

When properly executed. SEO has a lower cost –per-lead than traditional advertising because people typing a search term into a search engine are looking for specific information (inbound marketing) whereas in traditional advertising companies are making their services widely known in the hopes that their message is seen by someone who happens to be looking for that product. It should be noted that many SEO campaigns are not well executed, either from the beginning in selection of the keyword phrases, or in the initial optimization and ongoing SEO services.

Therefore, the quality of the lead generated by SEO is much higher, and the conversion rate for sales leads is also much higher than traditional outbound marketing.

Numerous studies have shown SEO is the lowest cost form of customer acquisition; PPC is often second, online yellow pages and other buying portals third, then trade shows and finally direct mail is the most expense way to acquire customers.

Keyword phrases are the key to success in search engine optimization. Keyword phrases are the terms that people type into the SEARCH bar. There are many alternate ways that people may search, and the selection of the keyword phrases that will yield the highest quality website lead in the greatest numbers requires careful analysis using a number of tools as well as experience and patience. The selection of the optimal keyword phrases is the first, important step in internet lead generation.

No SEO provider can guarantee rankings, because the search engines make the ultimate decision on where each web page is ranked and there are often millions of web pages competing for the top positions. The ranking of your website is heavily influenced by the popularity of the phrase that you want ranked and the strength of the websites you are competing against. What a good SEO company can do is get your website ranked higher, often much higher, than it would be ranked in the absence of SEO services.

A quality SEO company should have a solid method to forecast the likely rankings for each search term you are considering, so that you can make an informed decision about which keyword phrases to optimize.

You should see improvement within two to four months, but it often requires six to 12 months to start to see meaningful business results. However, the business benefits in terms of high rankings and increasingly more terms that are highly ranked come over years, not weeks or even months. Our clients with continuous SEO services are often able to dominate the search engines in terms of both rankings and number of terms. Some search terms that are very competitive may take a year or longer to achieve high rankings; when you select your keyword phrases you may need to make a tradeoff between selecting a less trafficked search term that is quicker and easier to get highly ranked, versus a search term with more traffic but a longer time to rankings and potentially a lower long-term ranking.

Simply put, search engines don’t want you to know how to rank high. They want to control that process.

Search engines compete against one another in delivering the best search results to users, because the usefulness of the search results that are returned to the searcher is how people decide which search engine to use (and therefore advertisers decide on which search engine to advertise).

Each search engine has its own secret algorithm to determine the ranking of every website page for each keyword phrase. They do not publish their secret formulas for ranking keywords, and they are constantly changing their search ranking criteria. Google, for example, has said that it uses more than 200 criteria for ranking, and that it change about 10 to 15% of the criteria every month.

Because the search engine algorithms are secret, SEO companies have to try to figure out what they are, and how they have changed from the previous month. Experience in optimization and having a large base of clients help SEO companies test and monitor the frequent changes in rankings and adjust their optimization techniques. This ability to test and modify is why SEO companies will, over time, deliver better results than a clever single web developer or programmer.

In the very first years of SEO, in the late 1990’s, meta tags were a primary technique to help improve search engine rankings. However, the search engines’ algorithms are much more sophisticated now, and the use of meta tags for SEO purposes has very little benefit; Google hasn’t used meta tags in its search engine algorithm for at least five years. Definition: meta tags are HTML codes inserted after the page title. They are invisible in browsers unless the viewer looks at the page’s source code, but the search engines see them. Meta tags are often used to list a string of keyword phrases that a website wants to be highly ranked for.)

You are correct; search engines do not see flash (though this is starting to change), so they do not give the website “credit” for the content on flash, so search engine rankings tend to be lower than non-flash websites. Because search engines heavily base their ranking criteria on content, flash websites essential look like a book with no words in it from the viewpoint of a search engine SEO companies need to use special techniques with this type of site to minimize the disadvantages of.

Often website program a “starter set” of SEO when they create a new website, and some firms offer SEO on a one-time basis. These are not effective for search terms that are difficult to get ranked, because search engines are constantly changing their methods and criteria for ranking sites. An ongoing maintenance program is essential to get and maintain high rankings. Companies with a one-time service will ultimately drop in their rankings because they compete against websites that use ongoing optimization.

Search engine optimization is a moving target; the search engines are continually changing and refining their ranking techniques. Google has stated that they modify about 15% of their 200+ search engine ranking criteria each month. SEO is like a never-ending race; your competitors with SEO are constantly trying to move up in the search engine ranking; if you stop moving you will fall behind.

Not at all, when done correctly by a “white hat” SEO company. Search engines make it clear what is and what is not ethical SEO behavior.

However, there are optimization techniques that the search engines consider unethical – for example placing a large number of keyword phrases in invisible type—white on white, for example, or participating in a “link farm” where many links from unrelated websites directed to your website by a third party vendor— the search engines may delist your website and you will never be ranked above the bottom in any search.