Webmasters from all across the globe know the value of high search engine rankings, the only thing most are not very sure of is how to achieve them. Webmaster communities have come together to debate and discuss this issue which represents the difference between zero visibility and extreme search engine popularity.

This is where the famous terms SEO and SEM comes into consideration. SEO simply stands for "search engine optimization" and SEM for "search engine marketing"; a balanced and passive-aggressive implementation of both strategies can certainly sky-rocket a webmaster's advertising or affiliate income.

Besides search engine placement, webmasters gather in a certain community or discussion board to discuss several other topics such as advertising networks, on-page as well as off-page optimization, services, etc.

There are millions of web pages available on the web but only a low percentage makes it to the top of the search engines such as Google or Yahoo for a specific term, and this is often one concept which confuses new webmasters. Ranking high in a search engine in particular doesn't mean ranking for every single imaginable keyword in a niche. It simply means that due to well done on-page and off-page optimization a site or a page within the site, could rank high for a single term. Depending on the marketing strategy and link diversity method used the web source will acquire relevant backlinks which use a specific anchor text needed to climb on the SERP (search engine result pages).

Besides optimization, every webmaster also deals with time management issues, content generation difficulties and design. The later causes many controversies because some great designers create incredibly looking sites which hurt on-page optimization, for instance, a great site created in Photoshop can display amazing graphics but each image has its own size/weight and when loaded from an average dial up connection (56K) it would take several minutes to load in the user's browser, and we all know that if a site doesn't load within 3-10 seconds people tend to leave the site quickly.

Link building and link baiting strategies are important to build high quality and relevant one way links, but it is also misunderstood the effects of obtaining many backlinks in a short period of time. Some link networks offer reciprocal link trading to improve search engine placement and relevancy, the only problem is that all of the links are acquired in a matter of days or a week, all anchor texts are similar if not the same, and the linking network can easily be identified. This particular practice will only hurt a web site because to Google it would seem that the webmaster is trying to manipulate the SERP through aggressive linking methods, and so the sand box effect takes over.

The best way to avoid all of these pitfalls is to constantly read webmaster forums and high quality blogs which provide up to the minute information such as Digital Point, Webmaster World, Matt Cutts, Joe Hayes, Search Engine Watch, etc. The best SEO strategies are keeping up the ever changing technology, test, test some more and then test again.