Search engine optimization, or SEO for short, is the act of enhancing the volume and quality of site traffic to a site or a particular web page by search engines. SEO targets free traffic rather than paid search traffic or direct traffic. The idea behind this marketing technique is that if a search engine finds that your website is of high quality and relevant, then it will rank your site higher for that specific keyword. In effect, you are promising yourself free search engine traffic when you promote your website in this manner.
This type of internet marketing method is very popular among small business owners who want to maximize the amount of available web traffic but do not have the time or skills needed to generate that traffic on their own. Small business owners often find themselves in situations where they need to hire someone to increase the traffic to their web pages. Hiring an internet marketing expert or consultant can be helpful in increasing the targeted traffic to a particular web page. These consultants typically make use of tools such as keyword analysis, link popularity and page ranking analysis. They also look for other signals such as backlinks, which can be defined as incoming links to a particular webpage that are directed at it from another website.
On the other hand, SEO companies provide their clients with a wide range of techniques that can be implemented on the client’s web pages. Some of these techniques include on-page optimization that concentrates on things such as meta tags and keywords. Other SEO companies concentrate mainly on off-page optimization such as directory submissions, blog commenting and forum posting. It is up to the client to decide what type of SEO they are looking for, and whether or not they can handle doing the SEO work on their own.