In pursuit of this goal, search engines attempt to rank the quality of a web page – how good its content is, and how likely it is to contain the information that any given surfer is hoping to find.

The massive scale of the Internet, however, makes it impossible for human eyes to examine every page and make qualitative judgments about their content. So search engines scan web pages to assess their content, their design, and their relationship, via backlinks, to other popular web pages. Then they apply algorithms – mathematical decision-making processes – to develop a quantitative index which ranks a page’s relevance to popular search terms, or keywords.

SEO, then, is about learning what factors search engines view as indicators of quality content, and incorporating them into a webpage, and into efforts to publicize that page. And since many of those factors revolve around the most basic elements of web design – how page content is written, for instance – effective starter SEO strategies can be built around a few very simple concepts which are easy to comprehend and implement.

We’ll discuss how to apply those concepts in upcoming installments of our “Fundamentals of SEO” series (subscribe to our RSS feed, on the bottom right of this page, to be notified when new posts about SEO and other topics are available).

Meanwhile, we thought we’d recommend a few online resources that introduce readers to the history of SEO, its basic terminology, and useful tools that help web page owners assess their existing SEO efforts. See you next time…

Online SEO Resources

Wikipedia’s SEO page: Useful as an introduction to basic concepts and terminology

SEOMoz: A massive collection of SEO information and tools. See especially their “Beginner’s Guide to SEO.”

The “Search Engine Guide” Blog: The self-styled “small business guide to search marketing” regularly offers up-to-date information on SEO tactics and strategies that beginners and resource-challenged companies can readily implement.

ProBlogger: Blogging can be a cost-effective way to build impressive SEO results quickly, and on a budget. The ProBlogger site is a leading source of advice on how to develop a lively and informative blog that keeps readers coming back.