Studies of search engine results have shown that searchers rarely look at websites that do not have a ranking on of the first two pages of search engine results - indeed most searchers do not look much past the first four or five results. Web pages that are ranked on the third page or after will see only a very small proportion of the traffic available for any given keyword or phrase. In the world of e-commerce and internet marketing, ranking and strong search engine optimization is ALL!.

For the beginner, search engine optimization may feel at first, like trying to climb Mount Everest, a huge scary world full of unfamiliar jargon like web crawlers, PageRank, Meta tags, and algorithms. You’ve probably never heard of any of these things until now. A quick internet search of the word ‘algorithm’ doesn’t offer much help - just more jargon and odd symbols.

However, this is something that can be learnt! Sit down, take a deep breath, and try to relax. Search engine optimization is a lot simpler then you might at first think.

Let’s take it from the top.

Algorithms actually are just as complex as they look. Simply defined they are a finite set of carefully defined instructions and rules. Pretty much all computer programs are designed with strict algorithms so Google is doing nothing that is not already happening inside your computer every second it is working..

PageRank is simply an output from the Google designed algorithm. It is a system that enables Google to assess how important a webpage is to the users of the internet. The development of PageRank is credited with bringing Google’s incredible success.

Web crawlers are software robots that search engines use to browse the World Wide Web in a methodical, automated manner. When web crawlers are browsing websites they are checking the content of the page against the algorithms to assess their value and to record where a page is and how it was reached.

Meta tags are special HTML tags that provide information to about a web page. Meta tags are written directly into the title tag and are only visible to the search engine.

The reality of search engine optimization is that you can start to optimize your website without any knowledge at all of the technical stuff involved in search engine optimization. The very first step in designing a website that is going to be well ranked by the search engines is to create a content rich site. In internet marketing we have a saying ‘Content is King’ and this is absolutely true! What this means is that you must put as much information about your topic/subject into your website as you possibly can without appearing unnatural - both readers and search engines can detect when a page’s content is unnaturally stuffed with keywords to artificially boost a page’s search engine rank.

The third step to search engine optimization is to fill your site with keywords that will attract the web crawler’s attention. The final step in a wonderfully optimized website is to submit it to the search engine that will complement it.