This term is most accurately used to describe the efforts to improve organic results on the search engine results pages (SERPs). Since the search engines take into consideration hundreds of constantly changing variable this is not always easy to understand what is the most important. When getting assistance with any SEO improvements current trend knowledge and experience are highly important.

Search Engine Optimization should always start with your own website. Before spending an exhaustive amount of time or money make sure the site will receive the most benefit from future marketing efforts. Search Engines provide the most consistent, relevant, free traffic available today. Make sure all pages of the site can be viewed and indexed by the spiders or the site will never benefit completely. Any number of site problems could seriously hurt your performance.

Take the time to do the basics. Makes sure every page has unique content that is relevant and useful. Go through each page and create individual Titles and Meta Descriptions. All URLs should be simple and clean with relevant words so you can identify the page based on the URL alone. Once the basics are complete building links will have an increased benefit.

By definition this term encompasses all marketing efforts for the search engines but typically this term is used more specifically in relation to Pay Per Click advertising through Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing and MSN AdCenter. Pay Per Click marketing is one of the strongest advertising tools in any media because it allows for extremely accurate tracking and cost/benefit analysis with almost zero lead time. Clear goals must be determined along with proper campaign creation and management to ensure success. Additionally tracking all performance of the website with an analytics program is essential to identify problems and effectiveness.