SEO or Search Engine Optimization is all about optimizing (making the best use of a resource). It is about rearranging or rewriting data to improve efficiency and / or retrieval.SEO is a BIG business as it improves your site to show up higher in search results, meaning more traffic and more business. (See Wikipedia's definition.)
An SEO expert will analyze what search engines look at when they rank websites, then placing keywords in the right places, allowing the search engines to do their work at the most efficient level. Results? Higher rankings, increased traffic, better search results.
The majority of your web traffic is driven by major commercial search engines, like Google, Yahoo !, MSN & AskJeeves … so if your site can not be found by these search engines, or your content is not able to be inputted in their databases, you are missing out on the incredible opportunities available via search on the internet. Search engines are the primary method of navigation for the vast majority of Internet users. Targeted visitors to a website can and will provide exposure, publicity, revenue, increasing traffic helping your business succeed. SEO is a valuable investment whether it's because time or finances that can have an exceptional rate of return for your business.
Search Engines technology is a constantly evolving project looking to improve methods, along with crawling the web deeper to increase relevant results to internet users. Additionally, SEO can help boost rankings where relevant content can be found so searchers will see it. This being very important as the online environment has become increasingly competitive, with companies who do perform SEO have an advantage in visitors and customers.
Can I do this myself? Or do I need to hire someone?
There are some simple basics to put in place as it's really not "rocket science", it's figuring out some keywords for your site, then putting those keywords in the right places. Those places include – title bar (text that shows up at the top of your browser), headers, headlines and / or bold text on a page and meta data (helpful information in a page's code that's not visible in a browser). This task can seem daunting to a lot of people so using a firm with good SEO experience would be advisable for those.
For those of you who DIY … Some great SEO tools to use. Google: SEOTOOLS
How does your page rank?