What Is Search Engine Optimization

Over recent decades the internet has changed the way we do business in many sectors from buying things at auction, to insurance to booking flights and buying a holiday and so the list goes on. But in order to find business or find any piece of information on the internet, there needs to be a process or a website that allows you to search for what you are looking for.

These websites tend to be called search engines, something which we will talk about in later posts. Over the decades though more and more sites were added to these search engines in fact it is estimated that millions of pages every day are added. This creates a problem of how do you decide which results should be shown to the consumer when they search for a particular business or piece of information?

Well each search engine has its own particular calculation of what results it should show to you and me when we action a search with them. This calculation is called an algorithm which again we will talk about in later posts.
So search engine optimization is where someone learns about the algorithm and applies this information to a website to help get that website near the top of search engine results. During the early years, some black hat techniques were used to try and manipulate the search results, something which the odd unscrupulous SEO company may still try and do. However most search engine companies pretty much know all the techniques and have applied filters to prevent these tactics working anymore. The results mean that now, normally what is good for the visitor is good for search engine optimization purposes also.

In fact Google states, do what is right for your visitors in order to get better SEO (search engine optimization) results. A good SEO company will know this and the work they do will have a double effect of keeping visitors and improving SEO results.