When search engine algorithms first appeared it was not long before people began to see the advantadge of having the top result position. Search engine optimization began as an attempt to find ways that website positions could be improved in relevant search results.

Once Google was established and began to collate information about the exact words people were typing into the search engine. Business owners and marketing teams had a very powerful tool for assessing a market place and deciding on how best to create a strategy to sell their products to the world.

The reason we discuss Google in such great depth is simply that the Google Search engine is the worlds search engine. Right now none of the other providers can match it for popularity or accuracy. However this could change as Microsoft is aggressively marketing the Bing "Decision engine" and explores creating a partnership with Yahoo.

Google would like us all to use the Pay Per Click option in which you bid on key word search terms against your competitors. This is a great way to attack key words and market segments yet it does incur a monthly fee and so a successful campaign has to really target your business goals effectively. Once you have decided on the key terms you want to bid for, if your bid is amongst the highest your site appears as a sponsored link in the search results. Which are found at the top and to the right hand side of a search Result page. Pay Per Click campaigns are good for producing immediate results in competitive markets.

The other SEO practice which has developed is the attempt to manipulate the "organic" search results. So that a site appears at or near the top of its desired results page.

To make this work requires that a web site follows the Google guide lines for site construction.This is where the situation can become difficult as Google gaurds the details of how search results indexes and web sites are ranked. However over time the SEO industry has gained a strong understanding of what is required to succeed in a Google search result.

Optimizing for organic search requires an initial site review to identify the technical and X/HTML issues which need to be addressed. The reason for this is simple every website will have been coded differently; every developer has their own methodology for putting a site together. So understanding the ideal Google criteria and ensuring you site adheres to it is vital.

Building links from already highly ranked sites is also very important to success. There are many tools available online which help you asses a website and decide if you want to approach tham for a link.

Once a review has been concluded from this point on a schedule of work can be created to perform the optimization. Unlike a PPC campaign organic optimization is a long term project aimed at improvements over the period of 3, 6 or 9 months as Google crawls a web site and indexes its pages and content.