With billions of web pages out there the vast majority of Internet users have become reliant on search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN, to find the information they are looking for. As a result being listed near the top of appropriate searches has become a much-coveted goal for many sites. How do they achieve this? That’s where search engine optimization (SEO) comes in.

SEO is the art of building, or tweaking, a web site so that it will be well-placed in search engine rankings for a desired set of key terms. On achieving this a site will also find that it attracts a better quality of visitor — one who is actually interested in the subject matter. It should be noted that SEO primarily concerns itself with organic searches; that is, unpaid search results as opposed to pay-per-click (PPC) advertising.

In this introduction to search engine optimization we will outline some of the basic principles of SEO and explain how they can be used to improve your web pages’ performance in search results.