Search engines are the way 90% of internet users search for information and making sure your website is easily found by these engines is the basic concept of search engine optimization.  However, search engines may be the best way to find information on the internet, but because they are so efficient in what they do they often cause a headache for users.  While this may sound like a contradiction, the simple explanation lies in the fact that a search can produce a million results and how does one hunt through all this material?  The websites that attract the most visitors are those that come up highest in the search engine results; if not at the top, then in the first page (or at lest the second).

When people use search engines, they type in a keyword or phrase and the engine searches the internet and lists out all the pages that are related to the search term.  The more relevant the content of your webpage is to the search, the higher up your website will appear in the results.  That means that the more often the search word or phrase appears in your website, the more relevant the search engine will think your site is to the search.  This is search engine optimization explained in its simplest form.

However, you must be careful not to over use the keywords because not only will the text in your site seem awkward and even unreadable, search engines are now very sophisticated and will remove any site that seem to be stuffed with keywords only for the sake of good search rankings.  A website that sells coffee makers and uses these words 75 times in a page containing 700 words of text will be ignored by search engines because it is an obvious case of artificially forcing keywords to get higher ranking and has nothing to do with the relevance of the site.  Of course, many, black or unethical ways of optimizing a webpage have come up over the years, but with the advanced technology that the search engines use, things like link farms and hidden keywords are soon discovered and the websites indulging in this are banned.

A great website is not guarantee of success; there is far too much competition to sit back and relax without making every effort to get traffic to your site.  The most effective way of doing this is by making your site search engine friendly.  Optimization involves a great deal more, but this is the basic concept of search engine optimization explained.