Did you know that more than 80 percent of Internet users find the sites they're looking for by using a search engine? Every single day, more than 57 percent of web users search the Internet, making website searching the second most popular Internet activity after email (according to Statistical Research, Inc.). The majority of Internet users use search engines and web directories as their primary method to find information or resources on-line.

Search engine listings outscore banner and button ads by more than two to one on measures including awareness, likelihood to click-on, and overall opinion, in a recent study by NPD Group. The survey also found that consumers are five times more likely to purchase your products after seeing search listings versus banners.

Search engines drive extremely targeted traffic. The visitor who finds your site through a search engine is already actively looking for exactly what you provide. You can't find a more targeted form of marketing than that.

However, with approximately 4 billion web pages publicly available on the World Wide Web, and growing competition in every sector of the provision of data and services, high search engine rankings are no accident. They have to be thoughtfully planned and executed like the other tactics in your marketing strategy.

In order for the Internet surfers to find your web site, it has to be optimized correctly for the search engine spiders to recognize it. Once your site is optimized, your company's web presence on Internet search engines will increase significantly.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) uses knowledge and observation of exactly 'how' search engines and web directories decide which web sites to return as results for queries, and applies this to attain significantly higher placement for particular web pages and sites. SEO is the process of assisting the search engines and directories to accurately evaluate which search queries your web content can answer effectively, and additionally seeks to provide a certain level of preference for ranking your sites within the search results for those queries.

Most people new to Internet marketing are under the false assumption that once they submit their site to a list of search engines, they will get high rankings. In reality, search engine optimization goes far beyond that. Below are just a few tips on basic search engine optimization.

Search engines rank sites by relevancy and will consider a variety of factors when ranking a web site, including:

Meta tags: In order for Meta tags to be effective, they need to correspond to the web page they are associated with. To do so, your Meta tags must be related to the content on the page and not over exaggerating what the site is about.

Web site content: Search engines also rank web sites based on how much content they have and how relevant they are to the search term query.

Site design: Your site should be easy to navigate for users and search engine spiders alike. You can do this by adding a static navigation links on each page.