The experts believe that Search Engine Optimization is a defining aspect of the Internet marketing as a whole. The main reason for this thought process is based on the fact that nearly 90% of all Internet traffic is driven by search engines. It is this phenomenal power why many search engines have become the backbone of the web business. Therefore optimizing a websites visibility on search engines has become a billion dollar business. In 2008, American advertising spend online was valued at a staggering $13.5 Billion. In fact the commercialization of this concept has lead to the historic rise of Google and the theory of Search Engine Marketing.

Delivering Value
Let’s just put this in perspective if your web site cannot be searched or found on a search engine, then your site can never be successful. Search Engine Optimization ensures that customers are able to find whatever you are offering. The site may offer content, services, products or even general information – only through a search engine can this be delivered to the relevant consumer. The website design structure should always ensure that it has the keyword density and the link building attributes that can navigate the user through directly into your website.

In 2002, a World Wide Web report suggested that it would take approximately 8 years to check every single webpage online. This clearly shows that you need a relevant indexing module which delivers content exactly where it is required.

The Success Mantra
There is no one solution to ensure that your website gets the highest visibility on big search engines. It is because they do not clearly state the parameters on how they are indexing the web sites. Apart from the paid links on major engines like Google, the other listings are based on a confidential algorithm based program. Therefore the websites have to constantly keep optimizing its site engine listing. This can never be a one-time event.

The website design structure has to focus on certain critical items. The popular ones are listed below

- Link Building: Ensure that there are many links coming into your website. This is a good yardstick to determine that other sites are linking to your pages as your content is compelling. Link building is a huge concept and has many aspects which require a well thought out plan of action.
- Social Bookmarking: The social network sites have made a huge impact on the Internet world. They provide an opportunity to create communities for services and products that you offer. This form of marketing will increase participation of users towards your site.
- The Blogosphere: This again requires a well thought out strategy of not just creating a blog for the sake of having a blog, but maintaining it with frequent relevant updates and linking it to other blogs and vice versa.

It is critical to keep your eyes and ears open as this is a highly competitive market. The paid link process is the easiest way to get a high listing but obviously it comes with a cost. The more organic way or non-paid methodology takes time and has to be constantly updated. One cannot imagine the state of the online business without search engines.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is basically a process of increasing the quality and volume of traffic to a website via a search engine result which is purely organic and not paid. The higher the website appears on a search result, the greater the chance of traffic going to the website. Therefore not only does it create a web presence for a website but has spawned a global industry of advertising and SEO experts. On the other hand, paid links does not constitute SEO but SEM, Search Engine Marketing.

The Olden Times 
The concept of SEO started during the mid 90s during the early stages of the World Wide Web explosion. It was a time when the Search Engines began cataloguing the websites by a crawling program which would extract external links from a website and then add it to the search engine database. The concept of using meta tags as a guide to describe the web page content proved inaccurate as irrelevant sites got higher ranking due to false meta-tagging and manipulated link building

The Evolution 
In 1998, things started to change when the dynamic duo who founded Google started to develop an algorithm which would rank pages based on the volume and strength of inbound links. The idea was called Page Rank and in its early avatar it ranked pages based on the fact that a website will be reached by a user through links if he/she is randomly surfing the Net. This was the big bang moment for the Internet, however despite the ideas success there were many ways how a webmaster could manipulate search engine optimizing using deceptions link spamming. Sometimes up to 1,000 websites were created as a link building exercise to the main website. However, Google has been able to use several new methodologies to rank a website; these methodologies are both confidential and patented.

Ranking is Dead 
In early 2005, search engine behemoth Google started to customize search results depending upon the previous history of searches. This would in affect end the concept of ranking, as customization depended on user preferences. As preference would be different for different users – the concept of ranking made sense; however the process of listing or indexing sites on Google is constantly evolving and the algorithms are getting more complex as search engines are battling with web site administrators and others who want to manipulate the system.

Methods to Madness

- Indexing: As a start, the website has to be added to the Google, Yahoo, and others which can be done in variety of ways. Such as paid for submission which may not guarantee the ranking though, For example Google asks its users to use the Google Webmaster tool to submit the website. 
– Crawling Concepts: Search Engines sometimes exclude sites from their database which are not desirable. It programs the crawling application in such a way that the program has set parameters to ignore pages from a website. 
– Increase Value: There are many ways a site can get a prominent presence in search engines. Cross linking of content, using relevant keywords which are frequently searched by users. The web design should ensure that the entire content structure avoids link spamming and false tagging.