Search engine optimization or SEO, is the art and science of making your websites pages appear attractive to the search engines. The better optimized your webpages are, the higher the ranking it will receive from a search engines web crawlers and spiders. The higher it ranks, the more traffic your website will receive. The more traffic your website receives, of course, the more profit you will be able to generate. The key to all of this is good Internet search engine optimization.

Why is having a high ranking website so important to the future success of your online business? Studies have shown that consumers seldom view websites that don't rank a spot on of the first two pages the search engines displays. Websites that receive a ranking that places them on the third page (or any other page subsequent to that) see a significantly lower amount of traffic at their websites then one that is ranked on the second page. There is even a staggering difference between the first and second page. In the world of e-commerce ranking and strong search engine optimization is paramount.

At first, search engine optimization may feel like trying to rappel down the Grand Canyon. There is a huge scary world full of big words like web crawlers, PageRank, Meta tags, and algorithms. You may have never heard of any of these things. A quick internet search of the world algorithm doesn't help; all you may get is a printout of strange symbols and numbers arranged in complex algebraic equations.

Sit back, take a deep breath, and try to relax. Search engine optimization is much more simple then you may think.

Algorithms really are every bit as complex as they look. Simply defined they are a finite set of carefully defined instructions. Most, if not all, computer programs are designed with strict algorithms.

PageRank is simply the program Google designed to search, index, and rank it registered webpage's. PageRank operates on a link analysis algorithm. PageRank is credited for Google incredible success.

Web crawlers are tools search engines use to browse the World Wide Web in a methodical, automated manner. When web crawlers are browsing websites they are looking for algorithms.

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. Simply stated 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. What this means is that you must cram as much information about your product into your website as you possibly can.

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 compliment it.

Lastly, there is Link Popularity. What is this link popularity anyway, and why do you need it? Link popularity is a score that is accessed to a web site based on how many external and internal links are pointing or linking to any particular page. External links would include those that come from any other web site other than your own whereas internal links would be those that come from within the same domain name. Link popularity is also based not only on the quantity of links but the quality of those links as well. Therefore, to have a good link popularity score, it is not necessarily required to have a large number of links pointing to your site but rather a good number of quality links.