The promise of search engine optimization is that, done properly and combined with search engine marketing, it can deliver visitors that are looking specifically for a company’s products and services using associated keyword searches. These types of visitors are highly sought after by any type of business due to the fact that they are already on the verge of changing their status to consumer as opposed to a visitor and are thus considered highly qualified. Often times these consumers have already been sold on a product and are searching for easiest way to make a purchase, whether it’s from the site or from the nearest physical location.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the practice of guiding the development of a website so that it will naturally attract visitors by winning top rankings on the major search engines for selected keyword phrases. For a page or site to be optimized keywords must be strategically placed in titles, meta tags, headlines, and links so that they can be found easily by the devices (aka crawlers, spiders, etc) used by search engines to read the content on a site’s web pages. Search engine optimization, to be successful, must be accompanied by search engine marketing (SEM). Search engine marketing focuses on the promotion of the company’s website and generating traffic using links from related sites, blogs, and creating relevant content.