Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is often considered the more technical part of Web marketing. This is true because SEO does help in the promotion of sites and at the same time it requires some technical knowledge - at least familiarity with basic HTML. SEO is sometimes also called SEO copyrighting because most of the techniques that are used to promote sites in search engines deal with text. Generally, SEO can be defined as the activity of optimizing Web pages or whole sites in order to make them more search engine-friendly, thus getting higher positions in search results.

One of the basic truths in SEO is that even if you do all the things that are necessary to do, this does not automatically guarantee you top ratings but if you neglect basic rules, this certainly will not go unnoticed. Also, if you set realistic goals - i.e to get into the top 30 results in Google for a particular keyword, rather than be the number one for 10 keywords in 5 search engines, you will feel happier and more satisfied with your results.

The first basic truth you need to learn about SEO is that search engines are not humans. While this might be obvious for everybody,the differences between how humans and search engines view web pages aren't. Unlike humans, search engines are text-driven. Although technology advances rapidly, search engines are far from intelligent creatures that can feel the beauty of a cool design or enjoy the sounds and movement in movies. Instead, search engines crawl the Web, looking at particular site items (mainly text) to get an idea what a site is about. This brief explanation is not the most precise because as we will see next, search engines perform several activities in order to deliver search results - crawling, indexing, processing, calculating relevancy, and retrieving.

Truly organic SEO relates to the website code and pages within the site. It has nothing to do with link development (which we'll discuss later) or any other type of external Internet marketing. There are literally dozens of of SEO do's and don'ts you should be aware of when designing your website. Understanding the answer to the question what is SEO? is fundamental to effectivenss of your ranking in the search results.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) involves any method of marketing through one or more search engines (such as Google or Yahoo). The three most common methods of SEM are Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Link Development, and Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC). PPC involves bidding with other businesses for ad placement typically in the "Sponsored Results" area of the search results page.

Link Development is also an SEM strategy because it involves working outside of the website being marketed, ultimately to improve the number of incoming hyperlinks. Many search engines (including Google), weigh the number of quality incoming links as a determining factor for positioning in the search results. Good incoming links are a commodity these days. SEO experts and website owners are beginning to understand and capitalize on having high PageRank by selling outgoing links from their websites. No more link to me and I'll link to you, those days are over thanks to search engines like Google. What is SEO in terms of link development? Expensive.

Although the basic principle of operation of all search engines is the same, the minor differences between them lead to major changes in results relevancy. For different search engines different factors are important. There were times, when SEO experts joked that the algorithms of Yahoo! are intentionally made just the opposite of those of Google. While this might have a grain of truth, it is a matter a fact that the major search engines like different stuff and if you plan to conquer more than one of them, you need to optimize carefully.

There are many examples of the differences between search engines. For instance, for Yahoo! and MSN, on-page keyword factors are of primary importance, while for Google links are very, very important. Also, for Google sites are like wine - the older, the better, while Yahoo! generally has no expressed preference towards sites and domains with tradition (i.e. older ones). Thus you might need more time till your site gets mature to be admitted to the top in Google, than in Yahoo!.

The word SEO is an acronym for Search Engine Optimization. What is that? It is a term used to describe how to design web pages for the highest possible placement in search engine results pages. SEO began in the 90's as more and more people started using the Internet mostly just to share information. When businesses realized the potential of this new market, they hired analysts to help them improve visibility on the Web. These technical analysts became SEO experts and search engine optimization was born.