Search Engine Optimization is the process of gaining higher ranking in the result set of a Search Engine search.  Now for that to make sense, let’s do some defining of terms and processes.

Here’s the quick and dirty…

A Web site is born
You’ve just started a business and need to put your web site up.  Well, the first thing you will do is figure out your focus.  This usually comes from the products or services you sell, or the demographic of the clients you are servicing.

These are your keywords. Keywords define your site.  Now, sometimes keywords are setup in the META tags of a site, but sometimes the keywords are just generated from the content you’ve created.  Mostly likely, it’s the content that defines your site more so than the keywords.  Although, keywords are very important, so don’t neglect them.

A Search Engine finds out you exist
One way or another, A Search Engine will figure out you exist. You either submitted your site directly to an engine or you posted a comment in a blog with your URL…either way, the engine will see that there’s fresh meat out there and they will send their bots and spiders.

Bots and Spiders – no, that’s not my Halloween costume
Bots and Spiders are what Search Engines send through the Internet to scavenge your site.  These “Spiders” will “crawl the net” and index your content, and various other pieces of data.  They are the ones that check to see if content has been updated or not and will check your relevancy, etc.

Weights and Value
Each time a spider indexes your pages, they will rank you and provide a weight as to the value of your content.  This is the secret sauce for most Search Engines.  If you were to figure out what algorithms they use to figure out weights and value, you could trick them into putting you up top on any keyword you wanted.  It’s assumed that no one person at any company (Google, Yahoo, MSN), has that information; different departments share pieces of the algorithm so that it can’t be stolen.  In some cases, the Search Engine will also change this weighting system which may been after a change, that your site will jump up or drop down in rank just based on how they are looking at your site now.

A user is on the prowl
Now, we have a user on a Search Engine who puts in a keyword they are wanting to find a relevant site for. They type in their keywords and hit search, the Search Engine now goes through it’s database of indexed content and displays results for what they think is the most relevant web site to satisfy the users query.

This is based on data and content saved by the Spiders when they visited your site.

Now, the difference between SEO and SEM:

1. SEO is the process of making changes to your site so that the Spiders will give you a better weight and value based on what you’ve done internally. This means you’ll organically move up the Search Engine Results list.  When you think SEO, think slow, steady, and long-term.

2. SEM can sometimes include SEO, but mainly it’s the process of paying for clicks or “Pay Per Click (PPC)”, paid inclusion, or paid placement, where you are buying clicks. If you pay G
oogle, Yahoo, or MSN for a sponsored link…you’ll show up at the top or the right side but you’ll pay each time someone clicks on your link.

In some people’s definition, SEM can also mean Search Engine Marketer, which is a person or group that provides Search Engine Optimization (Organic), Pay Per Click Management, Social Media Optimization, and other Internet Marketing Techniques.

Hopefully you learned something…we’d love to get your comments!

Cheers,

Arif Gangji
Neon Rain Interactive
www.neonrain.com
Web Design – Application Development – SEO SMO SEM – Email Marketing