Search Engine Optimization is a series of tasks you need to perform when designing/redesigning your website and building your website traffic that will result in improving your search engine ranking.
Search Engines are sites that are trying to gather as much information on the Internet as possible, index it properly and than to deliver that information to Internet users worldwide. They use programs called spiders to index websites. These spiders crawl the Internet following all links they can find on every website and index as many pages as possible.
When user is looking for something online, he/she goes to some search engine and types some specific words (referred as keywords) in the search query. When he/she clicks on "search" button, Search Engine delivers all previously indexed information about websites that use specified keywords. Indexed information consists usually of a title, short description and a link to specific websites.
The aim of Search Engines is to deliver users information about sites that are most relevant to the keywords they entered in the search query. Therefore Search Engines will make a difference between websites. The most relevant ones will be shown first.
Now as there are simply millions of websites worldwide that use same keywords, only the most optimized websites will receive traffic from search engines, because noone has time to list all pages. People will usually list first few pages and click on links to a sites listed in those pages. You know this by yourself. I personally have very rarely went past third page.
There are countless search engines on the Internet, but the most popular ones are Google, Yahoo and MSN. They reach more than 80% of Internet users worldwide. Of course there are other search engines that can also be a very good source of a quality traffic.
Traffic from Search Engines is the best traffic you can receive. This traffic is highly targeted because people are actively searching for a content your site has to offer. It is also FREE as a majority of search engines don't charge money for listing your site. The only problem with search engines is your competition. As there are millions of sites that shares same or similar keywords, your site may be lost somewhere in those numbers.
The aim of Search Engine Optimization is to improve your site's ranking, so that people can find you more easily. One part of SEO is focused on every webpage of your site and this is called on page SEO. The other part is focused on building quality links back to your site and this one is known as off page SEO.
-On Page SEO
-Off Page SEO
You probably wonder why I didn't mention anything about how to get your site indexed first. That is not necessary. If you do correctly the off page optimization, your site will be found by search engine spiders and you don't have to do anything. Sometimes your site can be indexed in a few days! However, you can manually submit your site, or use some service for submitting, but as I already mentioned this is NOT necessary.
