SEO is important for a business or an individual as a form of distinguishing oneself from a crowd. Just imagine yourself in a situation where you have come up with a novel solution to a common problem and would like to market yourself to the world through the internet yet find yourself frustrated since you feel invisible. As the internet as grown by leaps and bounds and matured into its modern form, separating yourself from the pack seems like an increasingly insurmountable task.

However once you find a marketing strategy to market your solution you than have the potential of increasing profits and expanding your customer base as well as increasing mind share for your new brand.

At the most basic level SEO is the science of customizing elements of your website to achieve optimal yet organic search engine rankings in Google and Yahoo. In terms of a ranking of a website there are a multitude of elements of a site that can affect the way it’s ranked.

These elements include but are not limited to information such as:

• Relevant content. An online flower shop would have relevant content about flowers whether as an informational page or as a blog.
• User friendly interface. An intuitive interface with clearly categorized content makes looking for information easier. The last thing anybody wants is to be confused when needing information.
• Site popularity. A website which can retain its current base of regular visitors as well as maintain growth in unique hits typically signals that the website is of a certain quality.
• Title tags. A title is useful with respect to determining the direction of a site’s relevant content. If a title of a website states “Top computer retailer” it should contain information on computer products that the retailer sells to its customers.
• Keyword tags. A website must determine its relevant keywords that pertain to its website. A business that deals with mortgage lending would most likely have keywords that reflect its offered plans such as VA Loan or Fixed Rate Mortgage.
• Description tag. A description tag contains information that is delivered to a person who is running a search query. While a good description isn’t going to directly get you a high ranking but if a tag is well written and contains content that the person is looking for than the probability of a hit increases from the initial impression.
• On-topic links. Topical links help build on the existing notion of having useful content.

Search engine optimization is inherently difficult because these elements are emphasized and weighted differently by competing search engines. Furthermore SEO has a dynamic nature so within the same search engine the criteria will change. For example links are more important to some search engines while keyword tags are more emphasized in others and over time they are subject to change for the same search engine. This means that one needs an appropriate SEO maintenance strategy as a long term marketing plan.