Search Engine Optimization or SEO is a marketing strategy which has a vital place of its own in the field of Internet Marketing. As the world is getting net savvy, companies have found that marketing via internet is a very profitable business and reaps heavy returns on a very nominal investment and almost every company came up with a website of their own to market their services and products.

Google, Yahoo and MSN brought on a revolution when they cataloged all these websites into categories and provided a database to the internet using people where everything you want was just a click away. They all launched their own search engines where you can find almost everything from doctors and computers to clothes and vegetables.

All the search engines available on the internet have their own guidelines for evaluating and ranking a website. When you look for a commodity or service on any search engine, it comes up with all the websites it could found related to it but displays them in a sequence most important to least important.

A website is ranked on the basis of its navigation, content, back links etc. A website lagging behind in these areas is ranked low and stays out of site of the user most of the time. This is where SEO comes for rescue. Search Engine Optimization is a process where a website is checked for its quality, content and all other aspects which matter in the ranking of a Search Engine, hence the name Search Engine Optimization.

All the Small and Medium Enterprises have started to realize the importance of SEO and recently investments in SEO have increased remarkably. According to a recent survey, most of the companies have described SEO as a profitable marketing strategy in the coming years. In recent times most of the small businesses have increased their website's performance by using Search Engine Optimization (SEO). The survey states that more than 70% SMEs are now spending on SEO campaigns to increase their sales. SEO is preferred over other marketing strategies as SEO is far more cost effective than other marketing strategies.

Categorizing a website in search engine friendly way is a very lengthy and tedious job and it needs an expert to manage it. Therefore, the SMEs started looking for an option like any SEO Company which can manage their site. Many Internet Marketing Companies grab this opportunity and opened their own SEO Company. These SEO Companies started providing assistance to the SMEs in managing their websites and optimizing them so that they can stay ahead in the competition.

In the running time Google is the leading search engine and has captured about 60% of Market in the field of Internet Marketing. Yahoo and MSN are also not far behind. Many companies started using unfair practices like cloaking to get a better listing on the search engines and over a period of time they become a pain for the search engines. Due to these unethical practices being used by some companies, Google and others have now changed their policy and are very stringent about how to deal with SEO companies. Many SEO companies have been banned by Google and other search engines for using unethical practices. All the companies running or planning to run a SEO campaign are advised to be very careful with their strategies and should ensure to follow the guidelines set by these search engines.

Today SEO has become a necessity for the websites to get a good listing on the search engines. Most of the SMEs have realized this fact and are using SEO to its most and reaping huge benefits from it. Others will be following the suit sooner or later.