SEO, or search engine optimization, is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a website from search engines via “organic” or “algorithmic” or “natural” search results.

As you know, you type a word into a search box at a site like Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask, and so forth, and you are presented with approximately 10 links, plus in most cases some ads surrounding this list of links.

The ads are part of Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns, and you can learn more about PPC by following the links here at this site. They are basically paid for versus organic results. The higher the spot, the more the advertiser has paid for it. (Though Google also takes close relevance to the term being searched for as well.)

SEO is all not about buying your way into the top spot, it is about writing interesting, well organized pages, to improve your organic results. In terms of the organic results, usually, the higher a site appears in the list of search results, or the higher it “ranks”, the more searchers will visit that site. In particular, the goal is to get “above the fold” in search results, in other words, be visible instantly, so that the searcher does not have to scroll down to spot your link.

Because everything on the internet is organized view keywords, SEO can also target different kinds of search, including image search, and industry-specific vertical search engines such as health information.