"What's the point of having a website if nobody can find you?"
One thing that is overlooked by a great many companies is that if your website cannot be found, by the major search engines, then it is never going to be found by your potential customers online.
This is where SEO comes in. It is the practice used to improve a websites position or ranking within the Search Engines, such as Goggle, Yahoo, Bing etc.
SEO can be split into two categories - Onsite & Offsite. You cannot expect to achieve success unless you perform both of these techniques.

Onsite Search Engine Optimisation
For Google and the other search engines to consider your website relevant for specified search terms it is important that the content is optimised with specific keywords in mind. This is known as Onsite SEO.
It consists of making sure you have set up your website with the correct Meta page titles, Meta tags, page headings, image 'ALT' tags, filenames and content. All of these need to include your keywords or key-phrases which you want your site to be found in the search engines for.
It is also important that you website navigation and folder structures are correct in order for the search engine 'Spiders' or 'Crawlers' to find all of the pages on your website. To aid effective crawling, sitemaps need to be created that list the hierarchy of your website and all of its pages.
Finally, it is also important that the websites programming code is optimized and structured in the best possible way. Well structured website coding will ensure that the most important parts of your page are read first when being crawled.
Due to the nature of how search engines crawl your website it can take up to a month for any changes made to your website to be updated by the Search Engines .

Offsite Search Engine Optimisation
Once the content of your website has been optimized, the next stage - and arguably the most important - is Offsite SEO. This activity constitutes the largest proportion of any effective campaign.
Offsite SEO is the process of building strong, quality links to your website. The way Google ranks a website is by looking at other websites who have a link pointing back to your site. In effect, the quality of such links are interpreted as a vote in favour of your website.
Depending on the quality of the website, linking to you, and how relevant that site is deemed to be, in relation to your search term, the more weight that vote has in your favour. This can be further enhanced by using keywords in the 'anchor' text linking to your site.
Offsite techniques include using online directories, submitting article & press releases, blog writing and social networking: All designed to gain links back to your website.

So...
There are many factors which Google (and other search engines) take into account when deciding how to rank a website for a particular search term. The Google Algorithm is a closely guarded secret and is forever changing in order to stay one step ahead of everyone.
Here are just some of the factors which are taken into consideration by Google when ranking a website: Keywords in domain name, KW in title tag, KW in header tags, KW in website text, KW in internal links pointing to page, domain age & date of registration, links pointing to domain, quality of links pointing to domain, link age, anchor text of links, page content/keywords.
Unfortunately SEO cannot achieve immediate success. It takes a lot of time and effort to achieve long lasting results, and nobody can guarantee number one positions. But with the correct strategy, a well thought out campaign could lead to a significant increase in visitors and revenue to your website.

by Mark Meader on 2009-11-03
About the Author
Mark Meader is a web designer for Bromley Web Design, specialising in design and Search Engine Optimisation for new & small businesses in London & Kent (UK)

Article Source: Goarticles