"All really great lovers are articulate, and verbal seduction is the surest road to actual seduction."

The story of lust, enticement and seduction continues. In real life, in digital life. Making sense of Marya's statement in this age and time if you are a webpreneur, the same would be "all really great websites are articulate, and textual seduction is the surest way to actual success." If the web is your playground then Google and other search engines are the studs. You gotta entice them. If you do manage it's an instant love affair, between success and you that is. The way to entice the search engine is SEO.

SEO - the tool to search engines success

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is an established process of improving how your website interacts with search engines and thereby improving your free (organic) search engine result pages listings. SEO uses a set of methodologies aimed at improving the visibility of a website in search engine listings. It involves a process of improving web pages so that it ranks higher in search engine for targeted keywords.

The question is why SEO?

Consider this you have a website that sells a travel related product or service. In March 2005 there were 6,769,166 searches for "travel" in Overture alone. Probably more in Google. That means around 15,000,000 searches for "travel". Now suppose if you were to pay for a sponsored campaign. The pay per click for a travel related keyword ranges from $1 to $10. That means to get a decent position you would need to spend at least $4 per click. Mind you, not per prospect, but per click, from a person who could be just about anybody and not necessarily your potential customer.

Compare this with if your website was "search engine optimised", the cost of getting this clicks over a time would be almost nil.

Search engine optimisation strategies enable your website

- to achieve top positioning without a continuous payment for positions

- make your site inherently strong to have look term effects on search engine

- free listings tend to have a higher click-thru ratio than sponsored listings

SEO techniques

There are many SEO techniques. In general, these techniques can be categorized as On-Page Optimisation, On-Site Optimisation, and Off-Site Optimisation. There are also two schools of SEO: white hat SEO and black hat SEO. White hat SEOs are those that play by the rule (actually guidelines provided by search engines). Black hat SEOs are those that pushes the limit of SEOs and employ some questionable or prohibited techniques.

The success mantra

If you have a website, SEO is your mantra to success. A good SEO campaign is one which follows the rules and makes your site inherently strong to give long term benefits. Remember "all really great websites are articulate, and textual seduction is the surest way to actual success."