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 Search Engine Optimization is a part of Search Engine Marketing that aims at getting maximum quality traffic with the help of your organic search engine listings. Here's the definition we're most attached to:
Search Engine Optimization is the use of search engines to draw traffic to a web site. It is the technique of attaining a higher ranking in search engines and directories via changes to a site to make it more search engine compatible.
Mainly, it deals with spider-based search engines (i.e. those that find, read and index your site automatically). However, if your site is content-rich and well optimized, it will also gain a lot more weight when a human editor browses your resource and ranks it appropriately for a directory. With the directories, it is as important as with the spider-based engines that your site is error-free, your content is relevant, and your link popularity is considerable. Search Engine Optimization is important as it helps you get traffic for free. You may discover that you can obtain the same or even more visitors by optimization alone, without having to pay for advertising. Many Web surfers tend to ignore paid (sponsored) results displayed by the search engines, yet if your site appears on the top of the first page of SE results for their query, you are almost certain to turn those searchers into visitors.  Research of where Web searches tend to look first in the search result page (Source: Gord Hotchkiss, http://www.enquiro.com/eye-tracking-pr.asp) It is vital for every business, small as well as medium and large, to take into consideration how its Web site ranks in the major search engines and directories. Many companies underestimate the importance of search engines and fail to understand the ranking process so they end up ignoring what may be the most crucial ingredient of Internet marketing strategy. Unless you sell something so unique you've got no competition, there will always be at least hundreds of sites offering the same products and services. Actually, depending on the specificity of the offering, the number of competition may vary from thousands to millions. Most of them are taken into consideration by the search engine together with your site. Did you ever ask yourself how high your chances are to bring your message to the casual Web surfer searching Google for the keywords denoting your service? If you are reading this material, you probably have. A recent U.S. study has found that the World Wide Web contains more than 2.1 billion documents and is growing at the rate of seven million pages per day (according to http://www.cyveillance.com/). If you work for or run a large company and its rankings are not in the top-10 for the related keywords, your company's prestige and reputation is seriously damaged. If a business's rankings for related keywords are lower than top-30, it might as well be invisible on the Web. Research has shown that users hardly ever go beyond the top 30 search engine rankings for a single search (according to Forrester Research Inc.). It is estimated that the top 30 results receive over 90% of search traffic. Here's how Internet consumers mostly find Web sites, according to the survey of Forrester Research Inc.:
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Search engines: 81%
Link from another site: 59%
Viral marketing (word of mouth): 56%
TV: 48%
Guessed URL: 41%
Online advertising: 20%
Radio: 19%
Direct mail: 10%
------------------------------------------- So, SEO is what helps you bring your message to the broadest and most targeted audience. SEO helps you not to get lost in the huge amount of competition. The other reasons to consider are listed below: - Major search engines attract more unique visitors than almost any other Web site. Yahoo! alone boasts 65 million registered users!
- 85% of all Internet user sessions involve someone browsing at a search engine. Your search engine ranking determines a major slice of your site traffic.
- Consumers use search engines to locate and buy goods or to research many decisions (such as choosing a vacation destination, medical treatment or election vote).
- People finding your site via search engines are more qualified targets for your products and services because they have actively sought out your site by typing a search phrase directly related to your site content.
Importance of SEO for your budget Absence of risk. In many cases, paid advertising is subject to click fraud risk and competitor's black techniques (such as using software that would click your ads thousands of times without any real profit to your site; however, you pay for each click to the search engine). High-tech pay-for-performance programs (such as Google AdWords) claim to have advanced protection against such behavior (and they do), however the risk can never be reduced to zero. SEO is free of any risk. Unless you spam or make obvious mistakes, it cannot damage your business. 
Cost-effectiveness. Second, SEO is a more cost-effective way to increase your traffic. Here's the relationship between cost and traffic in a PPC campaign as compared to an SEO campaign: Reliability. Banner ads or paid search engine placement work until the marketing budget is depleted. Then, the site disappears from the listings, and your returning customers can't find you anymore (of course, new visitors can't find you either). SEO helps buffer this process, so you can gradually reduce the advertising budget as you're increasing your results obtained from organic search engine listings. Also consumers are more likely to purchase from a site ranked high in the search engine results than from an evidently placed advertisement. Brand awareness. A web site having a high ranking means more people see the name of the company and become familiar with the company and its products, even if they haven't made a purchase. A survey by NPD shows that consumers are twice as likely to recognize businesses ranked in the top three search engine results than those appearing in banner ads. Targeted traffic. Choosing the wrong keywords can be devastating to an SEO campaign. In many cases, the wrong theme words will produce good ranking but very poor traffic or the wrong type of traffic. Because in the Integrated Approach these keywords are carefully selected and the type of traffic generated is highly targeted. Affordability. In comparison to banner ads, which cost between $2500 to $35000 a month, an outsourced SEO plan costs as little as around $500. After this course you won't need to hire an SEO expert or outsource an SEO campaign anyway. Because of these reasons SEO provides a high ROI for most companies. How optimization helps The Integrated Approach to SEM involves both promotion and maintenance goals. By on-the-page and off-the-page optimization you achieve good rankings and increase traffic flow. By regular keyword research, traffic analysis and page adjustment you achieve high conversion rate, thus achieving the full potential of your Web site. The technical maintenance and troubleshooting helps keep your site trouble-free, enhancing your visitor's experience and improving search engine spider compatibility. Website maintenance, while of course an important task, is secondary to the primary search engine marketing goals of promotion and traffic analysis.
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