What really happens with your website when a company does search engine optimization?

The internet can be a confusing world especially when it comes to ranking for particular key phrases. This is an attempt to explain what needs to happen without all the technical jargon. It's important as a business owner to have a solid foundation of the internet. The ones who decide to trust, instead of understand, are the ones who are taken advantage of. Yes there are companies out there that will take your money and do absolutely nothing for you. Let's say we live in a perfect world and we are starting from scratch. The first step is to understand how people are actually searching for the product or service that you offer. A beginner tool that is free to use is the Google Adwords Keyword Tool. It will give you a great idea of how many people you can reach. Keep in mind that this is just on Google. There are many other search engines that people use as well. After you have assessed there is valuable traffic, the next step is to obtain a url that matches that key phrase. For instance, if you are a plumber in Atlanta and went onto the keyword tool, you would notice that there are thousands of people who type in that key phrase every month. A good domain name to purchase would be www.plumberatlanta.com. It immediately tells Google that you are a relevant response. For real small key phrases, this may be the only thing necessary to get to the top. But what if you still want more traffic? This is when you start to deal with what is called on-page optimization. It is simply tagging particular key phrases of interest and making sure that the content on the page reflects those key phrases. Keeping with the same example as before, you would want to make sure that on your main page it has the words plumber and Atlanta repeat more than once. Do not list more than 10 times and try to spam your page or create mirror pages. You will be flagged and it will end up costing you more harm than good. What if you do this and are still not getting on the top? I say that it's actually pretty good news. It means that there are competitors and valuable traffic that will make your business thrive as soon as you can get above them. The most important phase of search engine optimization is linking. In Google's algorithm, the most popular becomes the most credible. This is why you will find companies who do not match the previous criteria and are still ranking higher than you. This is truly about 70% of the overall equation. There are three different kinds of links. Inbound, Outbound, and Reciprocal. There are different rewards for each one. It depends on what type of business model you are trying to run. The majority of websites out there are concerned mostly with inbound links. It would be the same for the plumber in Atlanta. Inbound links are other sites that have your information on that can point people to your website. The higher the PR ranking of the site, the more credibility it adds to yours. That's it. So let's get back to the main point of what a company really does when they say search engine optimization. They will be checking content on your homepage and establishing links. There are a number of different ways to establish links. It can be done with directory submissions, social bookmarking, article submissions such as this one you are reading, and other social media realms. You can check to make sure that work is being done on your website by checking the links on Yahoo Site Explorer. Every type of link building strategy has a different response rate. You also have to wait for the Googlebots to come around and recognize the changes. Do not expect everything to change overnight. Hopefully this will help you gain a little bit better understanding of search engine optimization. At least of where your money should be going if your paying someone to do it for you. The truth is that you can do this on your own. It simply takes time and effort. Unfortunately something that not a lot of small business owners have. Using these tools will at least help you check in to make sure you get what you deserve.