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What is SEO?
SEO or Search Engine Optimization is a way for you to improve your sites' ranking by identifiying your target market and relevant keywords. Basically what the SEO process does is let you focus your efforts in the right direction, to make sure that your site is seen by the people who really want to see it. The SEO process achieves this goal by writing the keywords your target customers generally use to search for a site like yours, into Meta tags, page titles, and content in your site. This step ensures that your site is properly prepared for submission to search engines.

Once your site has been fitted with Meta tags, it is time to submit it to search engines, which generate between 80-90% of all Internet traffic. That statistic alone should be enough to inform you on the amount of potential customers you are missing out on if you do not get your site listed in the top search engines. In addition, according to the latest statistics, less than 10% of all users look past the first three pages of search results, a statistic which speaks volumes of the importance of getting your site in prime position in the major search engines. Currently there are only 10-20 search engines that matter, so don't be fooled by advertisements that claim to be able to put you in 300,000 search engines for one low price. Over 90% of users turn to the top 10-20 search engines, rendering the remaining 299,980 of them worthless. These services also employ shameless mail bombing and spamming techniques that can end up doing serious damage to your site's ranking in the big search engines over the long run. If you plan to employ SEO techniques to improve your site's position in the major search engines, turn to a reputable web promotion firm, and be sure to research their history and results thoroughly before making your decision.

What is a Meta tag?
A meta tag is basically a line of code that contains keywords and is inserted into the HTML code of your web site without altering the look and feel of your web pages. Search engines use meta tags to index and rank sites in terms of relevancy with certain combinations of search words.

Without meta tags, or with bad meta tags, your site will be extremely difficult to find, and your site will miss out on the large majority of its potential customers.

Things to Remember
So you've finished your site, put in your meta tags, and are ready to submit it to the major search engines. Before you submit your site for review, however, there are a number of important things to keep in mind that can have serious consequences on your sites ranking in search engines. For some tips on things to avoid, see below:

Auto Redirection The use of any form of automatic redirection will have negative effects on your sites ranking in the major search engines. When a search engine robot or spider runs into a redirect, it will typically stop reading and not finish indexing the remainder of the page. If you aren't sure whether or not your site uses auto redirection, type in your url of your homepage and see if it changes when the page is loaded. If the url changes, the chances are that your site uses automatic redirection, and will have a difficult time securing a high ranking in search engines. Another type of redirection, Virtual Domain Redirection Service, which is offered by many free hosting sites, also has negative effects on your chances of getting a good ranking in search engines. This redirection service takes your true url of http://www.majorsite.com/myhome.html, and turns it into http://myhome.majorsite.com. When you use this service, your page is typically displayed in an invisible frame, and it is very likely that many of your pages will not be indexed. In addition, very often, your meta tags and titles will not be given preference in search engines. If you decide to use redirection, it is important to submit your real url to the search engines, no matter how long it may happen to be.

Links When you are creating your website, it is important to understand that search engines typically use the links on your homepage to locate your subpages. If the robot or spider can't see the links to your subpages, they will not be indexed, and there is a good chance that your site will not be listed at all. In order to prevent this from happening to your site you must make sure that your links are done in simple html code, and that all of your subpages are linked together, or create a site map and submit it as well. These steps will help you ensure that you whole site gets listed, and will help give you the best chance of securing prime position.

Frames The use of frames is generally an SEO no-no, and despite the recent trend of using no-frames tags on a frames page to allow it to contain indexable information, frames do have negative effects on search engines. If you do plan to use frames, be well aware of the consequences, and if possible go with a no-frames design. In today's ultra-competitive Internet world, it is more important than ever to provide your site with all the advantages needed for success. By getting your site listed in prime position in the search results of major search engines, using the search terms most likely to be used by your target audience, SEO ensures that the users who are looking for your products and services can find your site. Although there is no guaranteed way to ensure that your web site is successful, SEO is the best way to increase traffic and sales, to help you get the most out of your web site.