Overview

SEO is often confused with being synonymous with SEM, "Search Engine Marketing"; which it is not and far from it. Some self proclaimed "web experts" or "webmasters" have wrongly melded some of SEM practices into SEO. Article writing, site submissions, etc. are NOT part of SEO but are in fact portions of SEM.

SEO is the process or procedures used to "optimize" a website's pages to enable them to be better suited for optimum search engine compliance. This allows the search engines to be able to find them and rank them higher than those pages which are not optimized.

Much of the SEO programming can and should be done when the site is developed but in truth developing or designing a site has little to do with SEO compliance. Its more of an evidence of a good designer or developer, knowing certain things should be done anyway regardless if the site will perform its contracted duties without it. These are adding meta tags, keywords, image discriptions, etc.

SEO cannot, however, compensate for poor content. If your site has little to do with a keyword you are trying to use, its likelihood for success is limited at best. As an example, if you are an attorney and all your site has to display are self grandizing content, a keyword such as "personal injury attorney" will not find much, if anything, in common with your site when the search engine scans for its relative content. Just because you use a keyword does not negate irrelevant content. Irrelevant content is on Googles HATE list. They want their searches to bring up relevant information in relation to the content AND the keyword.

Analyzing your keywords and their search rates is important and crucial to your increasing your SEO efforts. But highly searched keywords which have nothing to do with your site have no positive impact on your site at all. A million visitors who don't want your products or services is worthless vs a fifty who do.