The terms "SEO" and "web site optimization" or "web page optimization" are thrown about a good bit - what actually do these terms mean?

SEO stands for "search engine optimization" and it describes strategies and techniques used by webmasters to make their web sites friendly to the search engines. A web site that is "optimized" means that the editor of the page has written or re-written the page to communicate clearly with the search engines.

That being said, realize that the large search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN employ very capable engineers whose job it is to program the search engine to yield relevant results. The Internet, as you may have noticed, contains hundreds of thousands of sites that are designed to trick the search engines - usually to generate revenue from products like AdSense (an Adsense page has ads on it that generate money for the site owner if you click on the site).

Less common, but still out there, are sites that purport to be about one topic, but in fact lead you to something entirely different - such as porn or gambling sites.

How can an honest, legitimate business person compete with search engine optimizers whose entire focus is to trick the search engines using fake content and tricks?

The simple answer to this issue is relevant content. Every day that you are in business, opportunities arise where you can generate new, relevant content. You should be on the lookout for:

• success stories
• case studies
• client testimonials
• new product or service introductions
• expanded FAQ (frequently asked questions) sections
• stories about your employees
• stories about your business' community involvement

Your web site, in other words, is never a finished product. You should always be looking for opportunities to add to it. This "unfinished product" model, by the way, has led to the proliferation of blogs, which are a type of web site that is extremely easy to update frequently.

Search engine search algorithms are designed to identify web sites that contain relevant content and that regularly receive updates of relevant content.

If you were shopping for clothes or an automobile, would you visit a store that has not changed its inventory in two years and offered little selection or customer service? Probably not. But if that store had fresh inventory, helpful information and attentive and well trained salespeople, you would be more likely to buy. The search engines work in basically the same fashion.

So, a big part of effective optimization has to do with content and your efforts to regularly add and update your content. If you have not yet realized this, most people use the Internet as a research tool. And if you can start the process of establishing a relationship with your prospective customers, you greatly increase your opportunity to make your web site an effective sales and customer retention tool.

New content, however, does not comprise the entire optimization picture.  The Internet, after all, consists of millions of computers and the search engines use sophisticated computer programs called "spiders" to mechanically evaluate millions of web pages every day.

This means that your web pages need to be designed to be easily read and understood by the search engine spiders.  This is where "on-page search engine optimization" enters the picture.

On page optimization means that each page of your site must clearly communicate a message to the search engine spider.  An SEO consulting firm like g5Research writes and re-writes your content page to feed the spiders unambiguous information about the pages of your site.

Our starting point is keyword research.  We research your market and identify the most widely used search phrases in your market (in other words, what search terms are your customers entering into the Google or Yahoo search box).  Once we know what your customers are looking for, we create or modify your content to match those search terms.

We also make sure that your page contains the correct HTML tags (title tags, header tags) that you may have never heard about but which can be very important to search engine rankings.

Then, through linking and article exchanges, we enlist the help of other legitimate, content heavy web sites associate pages of your web sites with these search terms.

The end result of this SEO process should be an increased likelihood that pages from your web site will appear at the top or close to the top of the search results for various searches entered by people that fit your customer or client profile.

SEO, to be sure, is not an exact science since the exact search algorithms used by the search engine companies are closely guarded secrets.  However, in most business markets, very few companies take the time and effort to properly optimize their sites and even fewer update their sites regularly.  In many cases, therefore, you have a tremendous opportunity to jump ahead of your competition in the hunt for Internet dollars.

More recently, we have been using online press release distribution services to place optimized press releases in news aggregators like Google news, Yahoo news and MSN news.  Right now very few small or mid-sized businesses use press releases to drive traffic to web sits and there are some tremendous opportunities to use online public relations for optimization purposes.

Finally, we are encouraging all of our clients to utilize professional blogs as a tool to easily and inexpensively generate new content.  Blog programs allow anyone to "syndicate" blog content back to web sites or to your Google, Yahoo or MSN personal home page meaning that your blog content can pull double duty and also appear on your web site.

If your web site does not have much traction on the search engines, let g5Research show you how to improve your site's web site placement.

Technorati Tags: SEO, search engine optimization, blogs, syndication, header tags, HTML, linking campaigns, new content, content creation, articles