Search Engine Optimization (SEO) begins by understanding that the web was created to exchange information and to have documents easily searched from various remote locations.  Search engines were created around the same principle.

Simply put it is about the words that you use and how you put them together.  It isn’t about the fancy colors, images, flash, and videos; although, these help your visitors once on your web site, they do not help them find your web site.

Try a little exercise today and really watch the results you get.  In Google type in “website” and see what the results look like, see how many times you see the word “website” in the title and the text description of each web site.

Now, do another search with the term “web site”.  In this case take particular notice if the order of the web sites changed, or maybe you see a completely different set.

An added bonus, type in “websiet”, yes it is intentionally misspelled.  First notice that Google will give you a suggestion of what term they really think you are trying to search for, and usually Google will also display a couple of results from the word that it is guessing you are looking for.  Go below these suggestions and what is there?  The word is a real word, just not an English word.

One last thing to try is repeat these three searches in the different search engines and see what results come up, are there any similarities?

This exercise is all about getting an understanding about how a search engine treats a query (that is geek speak for “question”).  Each time someone is trying to find your web site they are searching with different terms, possibly misspelled terms, and more than likely variations in the order of the words.

What does this tell you about how to deal with the text in your web site?  A lot!

When a professional SEO company looks at the copy, or words, on a web site there are three things that are considered: keyword density, readability, and is it scanability.

To follow what a professional SEO company would do:

• Make a list of phases, three to four words, that you think people will use to find you.
• Look at the words currently on your web site; are any of the phrases currently on your web site?
• Is there more than one combination of that phrase on you web site?
• How many times do you mention those phrases?
• Are those phrases used in your headings?

Small changes to your text on your web site can mean gigantic changes to the way the search engines read your web site, as well as the ability to match what you are saying to how people would find you.

Happy keyword hunting!