Have you ever asked someone a question and their response was "just Google it"? How often have you looked at page two or even three of the thousands or millions of results from your search? Your visibility is paramount in a time where the growth of internet increases by the millions every month. Netcraft (one of the leading internet research companies) reported in December 2010 that there were a total of 255 million websites. Only 6 months later in June of 2011 that number jumped to 346 million.

Search engines pose one of the largest challenges to website owners and in an essence, one of the greatest potential to those who utilize SEO. Optimization of your website so it on the first pageof the results on various search engines, let alone popping up as close to the top of that search phrase is more than just adding a few keywords in a meta tag. When you perform a search, that word or phrase is compared to various segments of a webpage. These segments include textual content, image alt tags, meta tags and other factors as well. In order to properly present your website to a search engine, emphasis on specific combinations of characters that would result within the most viable search word or phrase is key to successful search engine optimization.
There are 4 steps to effective search engine optimization:

• Target your intended market
• Target your search phrases
• Write and edit page content
• Tag your website