Search engine optimization also known as SEO, is a process of choosing appropriate and targeted keyword phrases that are related to your website, and ensuring that these keywords achieve high organic listings in search engines. When someone searches for keyword phrases that you have optimized, your website will appear on top. To rank high, it basically involves fine-tuning the content and architecture of your website, as well as appropriate link building campaign. This process is usually known as the optimization process.

The major search engines with lots of traffic everyday are Google, Yahoo, MSN Live, AOL and Ask Jeeves. Search engines use different algorithms to determine the ranking of a website. They will not disclose the algorithms to the public so as to prevent spam sites from clogging up the search engine results page. A search engine may use hundreds of factors to rank a website and it continually changes its algorithms. Therefore, this makes it quite impossible to know exactly how a search engine gives a high ranking to a site.

It is very common to see a website ranks number 1 in a particular search engine, but rank number 100 in another search engine. This is because algorithms can differ so widely among the major search engines. For example, Google factors more on backlinks when compared to other search engines.

If your website is new, you will not need to submit to the search engine. By getting an established website to place a link pointing back to your site, search engines will visit your site and begin to crawl its content. The time taken for search engines to crawl your site through an established referral site may take a few days to even weeks.

Why is search engine optimization important for your business? By ranking high on search engines for keywords that directly related to your business, you enable your potential customers to successfully locate your website through search engines. If you are selling gifts, I am sure that you want your website to appear on the 1st page of search engines rather than the 20th page, when someone types in keyword phrase like "gift hampers". By ranking high on organic listings, you are allowing your customers to find you more easily and hence more business for you.

Search engine optimization is a very time-consuming process as continual fine-tuning and monitoring need to be done. Therefore, it is advisable for you to hire a search engine optimization agency to plan out the optimization plan for your business.

A professional SEO agency will look at your site and make recommendations to increase your search engine ranking and website traffic. Once they start to optimize your website, they will provide recommendations and monitoring reports for you to know the progress of it. One last thing to note is that for optimization to work successfully, it is very important for your SEO professionals to work closely with your website designer so as to build a website which is both visually appealing and search engine friendly.