Search Engine Optimization

Search engines are programs that search documents for specified keywords and returns a list of the documents where the keywords were found. A search engine is really a general class of programs, however, the term is often used to specifically describe systems like Google, Bing and Yahoo! Search that enable users to search for documents on the World Wide Web.

Web Search Engines

Typically, Web search engines work by sending out a spider to fetch as many documents as possible. Another program, called an indexer, then reads these documents and creates an index based on the words contained in each document. Each search engine uses a proprietary algorithm to create its indices such that, ideally, only meaningful results are returned for each query.

As many website owners rely on search engines to send traffic to their website, and entire industry has grown around the idea of optimizing Web content to improve your placement in search engine results. Learn more about search engine optimization (SEO) in this Webopedia' definition.

Common Search Engines

In addition to Web search engines other common types of search engines include the following:

Local (or offline) Search Engine

Designed to be used for offline PC, CDROM or LAN searching usage.

Metasearch Engine

A search engine that queries other search engines and then combines the results that are received from all.

Blog Search Engine

A search engine for the blogosphere. Blog search engines only index and provide search results from blogs (Web logs).

SEO - search engine optimization

SEO is short for search engine optimization. Search engine optimization is a methodology of strategies, techniques and tactics used to increase the amount of visitors to a website by obtaining a high-ranking placement in the search results page of a search engine (SERP) — including Google, Bing, Yahoo and other search engines.

Optimizing Visibility in Search Engines

It is common practice for Internet search users to not click through pages and pages of search results, so where a site ranks in a search results page is essential for directing more traffic toward the site. The higher a website naturally ranks in organic results of a search, the greater the chance that that site will be visited by a user.

SEO helps to ensure that a site is accessible to a search engine and improves the chances that the site will be found by the search engine. SEO is typically a set of "white hat" best practices that webmasters and Web content producers follow to help them achieve a better ranking in search engine results.

Optimizing Search CTR

SEO is also about making your search engine result relevant to the user's search query so more people click the result when it is shown in search. In this process, snippets of text and meta data are optimized to ensure your snippet of information is appealing in the context of the search query to obtain a high CTR (click through rate) from search results.

SEO may also be called search engine optimizer when using automated tools to assist with the optimization process.

SEO certification

SEO certification refers to the education, information, practice or training that leads to an individual's certification, or skills assessment and knowledge, as it relates to search engine optimization and search engine marketing. Many SEO certifications are online courses or collection of webinars and online exams that you do at your own pace. Some courses are free while others range in price from $50 up to $7,500 to obtain the SEO certification.

General SEO & SEM Certifications Versus Job Experience

There is an amount of debate about SEO certifications, with some in the SEO community and forums suggesting that free online SEO guides from reputable experts are just as good of a learning tool, and practicing SEO on your own site or obtaining an entry-level job where you can optimize a live site is also a good solution, compared to paying for online courses.

Free SEO Certifications

If you choose to try online SEO certification courses, there are a number of free training solutions you can try before purchasing more expensive courses.  Here are five free SEO courses listed by Udemy:

• SEO for Beginners, Created by Daragh Walsh (52,773 students)
• SEO Training Course by Moz, Created by moz.com (103,086 students)
• SEO Training, Created by Eric Schwartzman (15,454 students )

Vendor Certifications

In addition to the general SEO certification courses, some may choose to become certified in specific SEO and online advertising tools. For example, Google offers a professional accreditation and Google AdWords certification for individuals who complete the specified exams.

SEO services (Service Provider) 

An SEO service provider utilizes the practice of search engine optimization to increase the amount of visitors to a Web site by obtaining high-ranking placements in the search results page of search engines (SERP). Typically, a business with a website and online presence will hire an experienced SEO service provider to improve its organic Google search result listings.

Standard SEO Services & Bundles

SEO services help to ensure that a site is accessible to a search engine and improves the chances that the site will be found and ranked highly by the search engine. SEO service providers offer a wide range of services such as keyword and keyphrase optimization and research, technical website SEO audits, optimization of specific pages, robots.txt and sitemaps and additional tasks as deemed appropriate for the client's website and business needs.

Often SEO service providers will bundle types of SEO tasks and services into bundled packages,  ranging from one-time fees for smaller sites to monthly subscriptions for ongoing SEO efforts and support.