Search Engine Optimization: An Introduction
Everyday, tens of millions of dollars in commission are generated through
search engines, both through organic listings and Pay Per Click advertising
(PPC).
The underlying principle is this: draw people to your sites: make money.
While it may sound complicated and reserved for eggheads in lab coats,
search engine optimization is actually dead simple.
The most used search engine is Google.com. Everyday, millions of people all
over the world use it to find things that they either want more information on or
would like to buy.
The surfer types in a word or series of words (keywords) and Google returns a
page with 10 different websites on it. This is called a SERPs or Search
Engine Results Page. If the surfer wants to see more different websites, they
go to the next page of results.
A little know fact is that the first page gets about 90% of all traffic from Google
and the other search engines.
In fact, the “Hot Zone” is really the top 5 results and the top 3 are the “super
hot zone” which will get about 70% of all the visitors that look for a particular
term on the search engine.

As a website owner, you obviously want to be in the top 5 and ideally top 3
result spots, since they get all the traffic. This traffic is basically worth its
equivalent in money because you can make money from every visitor by
having them click on your Adsense Ads or capturing their email addresses to
sell them stuff.
So search engine optimization, in very brief terms, refers to the art of getting
your website and its pages to appear in the top 5 result spots for a large
number of terms that surfers enter in the search engines.
That nabs the bulk of the traffic for you and all you have to do is monetize it,
which as you will soon discover, is extremely simple using very easy to
master programs like Google’s Adsense.
The more pages you can get in the “hot zone”, the more money you stand to
make.
In search engine optimization, methods have been categorized in three
sectors or hat colors. This simply refers to how strictly you adhere to the
search engine guidelines.
In short, Google and the search engines will serve as the “big pool” from
which we grab as many surfers as possible, pulling them to our websites
where we will make money when they click ads or buy products and services.
In black hat SEO, as you may have guessed, we only adhere to the guidelines
that make us more money and leave others to worry about the unimportant
stuff.