SEO means Search Engine Optimisation and is the process of optimising a website to perform better in the search engines. Wikipedia defines it as "the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results for targeted keywords.



There are more than several factors that all have repercussions on a websites search engine results. Google for example has over 100 individual criteria that they use to evaluate websites and determine their positions in the search results. Some of these are how many relevant links you have to your website from related industries; how your website is designed does it include the keyphrases the searcher is looking for in the body of your pages. It even takes into account the age of your domain.



Every single SEO project is different because no 2 businesses are exactly the same and need their own goals identified and strategy implemented. The Google search engine is the most widely used search engine, however you really need to include all the major search engines when developing your internet marketing strategy. Google gets around 54% of the users, so that leaves 46% of the marketplace using other engines, a big chunk of your potential marketplace that should not be ignored.



One thing to think about……. MSN for example, comes pre installed on most PC’s, so is the default search engine for a lot of users, and if you use BT or AOL to connect to the internet then the AOL search engine will be set as the default on your computer. A lot of people then get used to using these search engines and don’t see the need to change it.



The different search engines are all competing to win your business and all use different algorithms as well as different approaches, for example Yahoo has a strong gaming community which retains a lot of users.



You can hire the services of a Search Engine Optimisation UK company to Increase Web Traffic. I listed one here that I have used and found them to be very professional and achieved some great results for my targeted keyphrases.



To summarise: Google is the most important search engine in terms of numbers of users, however Google aren’t the only search engine, so you also need to look at how your website ranks in some of the lesser search engines.